Talking Points Can be Found at www.HardhatsforHighways.org While Members of Congress are back home for the remainder of the year, the AGC co-chaired Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC) is urging our members to contact their Members of Congress – either in person or via email – and encourage them to permanently fix for the Highway Trust Fund. A new Congress and administration could provide the opportunity to fix the trust fund either through tax reform and/or an infrastructure package (as promised by President-Elect Trump).

Congress overwhelmingly passed and the President signed into law the AGC’s supported Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act. AGC successfully urged Congress to include in the WIIN Act the best provisions from the House and Senate Water Resource Development Act (WRDA) bills, passed earlier in September. WIIN authorizes 38 projects valued at $15.9 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers. The WIIN Act includes the Water and Waste Act of 2016 which makes changes to the Safe Drinking Water Act and Solid Waste Disposal Act. It gives $100 million in subsidized loans and grants through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, and $170 million in federal aid for Flint, Michigan. WIIN also authorizes the EPA approve state coal ash disposal programs.

Construction employers added 19,000 jobs in November, reaching the highest employment level since November 2008, but a drop in public sector investments in construction projects held down employment among heavy and civil engineering firms, according to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials noted that recent construction spending numbers show a decline in most categories of infrastructure investment.

Marcia Kellogg There are just some clients that your business cannot afford to have - you know who they are: the ones who are highly commodity-based and have limited experience, whose projects result in little or no profit, and who are a drain on your firm and its resources. Instead of trying to find projects that suit the firm, client-based firms identify clients with whom they can develop and nurture a partnership over time. It’s a philosophy that is primarily interested in owning the client, not the project. Most importantly, the focus of a client-based business is maintaining the relationship at all costs. Firms that align their cultures with the business goals and objectives of their clients realize a vast improvement in performance, because they have a true belief and purpose in the project and the client with whom they are working, and this spirit resonates throughout everything they do.

Julie Huval, Beck Technology The acronym “BIM” is showing up more and more in our industry. Owners are requiring it on projects, countries are setting standards for it, and firms are touting expertise in it. But what is Building Information Modeling (BIM) and, as marketers and business developers, why should we care?

Mike Clancy, Cynthia Paul, FMI Corporation Contractors’ get work departments can be like a car with a bad alignment. While everyone is working hard to get where they want to go, some of the effort is being pulled toward the “ditch” of low hit rates, missed opportunities and undeveloped client relationships. All that is needed are a few key adjustments to win your fair share of work.

<p>Today, the House passed legislation to address the financial crisis in Puerto Rico. The <u><a href="http://http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/agcleg/downloads/2016-05-23%20Puerto%20Rico%20Letter.pdf">AGC-backed bill</a> </u>would create a debt-restructuring process, empower a federal oversight board to supervise the territory’s fiscal affairs and create a redevelopment authority —with no taxpayer dollars used for a bailout— that will help rebuild Puerto Rico’s infrastructure. As it stands, many Puerto Rican government entities are unable to pay contractors for work completed on government construction projects and the public and private construction markets there remain on life support.</p>

<p>With Senate action already finished, the House Appropriations Committee this week approved the FY 2017 transportation appropriations bill. Both versions of the legislation maintain the funding levels set in the 2015 FAST Act, with highway funding set at $43.266 billion (up 2 percent from last year) and transit formula funding set at $9.734 billion (up 4.3 percent). Both bills include a key, AGC-backed provision that sets restrictions on the use of a U.S. DOT pilot program that enables state or local grant recipients to utilize local or geographical, economic-based, and veterans hiring preferences on federal-aid highway and federal transit projects. While there is still work to be done, inclusion of this provision puts us in a great position to continue the certification requirements in 2017. Both bills also include the truck driver hours of service provision that would retain use of the truck driver 34-hour “restart” without setting specific times when drivers must rest. There was an attempt in the House Committee to strip the restart language from the bill, but AGC was successful in defeating that amendment.</p>

This week, the House and Senate both made progress in moving their respective transportation funding bill for fiscal year 2017. Both bills include a key, AGC-backed provision that sets restrictions on the use of a U.S. DOT pilot program that enables state or local grant recipients to utilize local or geographical, economic-based, and veterans hiring preferences on federal-aid highway and federal transit projects.

This week, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bipartisan bill reauthorizing the Diesel Emission Reduction Act (DERA) program through 2021 at $100 million per year. This bill is identical to a provision that legislators included in the recently passed Senate Energy Modernization Act. AGC and our coalition partners will continue to push for a DERA reauthorization prior to the expiration of the current program on Sept. 30, 2016. Further updates on DERA status and grant availability can be found here.