William Rocha is vice president and head of Texas for Chicago-based national infrastructure builder F.H. Paschen. Opinions are the author’s own.
Texas is growing at a pace few states can match. Since 2020, the state has added more than 2.5 million new residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with large cities like Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston adding almost 100,000 new residents in each of the past five years.
With that population surge, elected officials are now driving one of the largest infrastructure expansions in the nation to meet the demand with more than $200 billion in planned and ongoing transportation and utility infrastructure improvements.
But as these project pipelines accelerate across Texas, a less visible challenge is emerging: the risk that in the need for speed, the temptation emerges to overlook quality.
All across the Lone Star State, local and regional governments are asking builders to deliver increasingly complex construction projects including airport terminals and runways, new and expanded hospitals and modern mass-transit systems on expedited timelines.
At the same time, labor shortages and the ongoing supply chain uncertainty are colliding with this reality forcing everyone to make tough decisions that are beginning to strain coordination, oversight and importantly, quality control.
Pressure points
The pressure points are becoming clearer.
First, the skilled labor crunch. Nationally, some estimates are calling for more than one-hundred thousand new construction workers across all the trades. But, here in Texas, the shortage is even more acute. Look no further than any large jobsite today and you’ll see less experienced crews, overextended supervisors and the increased potential for safety incidents and missed details.
Second, project timelines are compressing. Project owners including municipal governments and airport authorities are increasingly turning to design-build and other accelerated delivery methods to keep pace with the needs created by this boom in usage that arises from the recent population growth.
While effective in many cases, these approaches reduce the margin for error. When schedules compress, so do opportunities for thorough inspection, coordination and even problem-solving.
Lastly, the sheer scale of this infrastructure investment is testing existing systems.
This $200 billion of spending over the next decade is being driven by a mix of local, state and previously allocated federal infrastructure funding to fulfill plans in the next decade. But, delivering these projects at that type of scale requires more than just capacity. It requires consistency in execution.
Taken together, the growing tension is clear. How can we build Texas faster without compromising the long-term quality of these critical projects?
Consistent quality checks
How we address that challenge requires a shift in how these transportation and utility projects are planned and completed.
Quality assurance is something that builders and owners can no longer view as a ‘final’ gate to get through before wrapping up the work. Rather, we’re seeing positive results when it begins to be embedded throughout the lifecycle of a project, from procurement to final completion. Owners are already starting to reconsider how contracts are structured in order to ensure that speed does not come at the expense of this needed oversight.
Building the right workforce requires new ideas like training and exposure to ongoing education so we can close the experience gap on Texas’ jobsites.
But, just as important is aligning expectations. Delivering the next generation of Texas’ complex infrastructure in as rapid of a pace as possible requires clear prioritization and balancing of what must be done fast and when time can not be compressed without risk.
Texas has a long legacy of going “bigger” on everything. That includes the infrastructure plan. However, sustaining this growth will depend on whether the construction industry can match that scale with discipline. Because in infrastructure, the cost of “good enough” is rarely immediate, but it always shows up in the long-run
