Challenges and Opportunities for Innovation in the Public Works ...

The BRB's work is intended to produce new policy initiatives and functioning programs to address issues
of physical infrastructure. The work andorecommendations that motivate such action are embodied in reports
issued by the National Research Council. The target audience for reports prepared under this program includes
federal agencies and the Congress, state and local governments and their representative institutions such as the
National Governors' Association, the American Public Works Association, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors,
academic and research communities. These reports are prepared and issued according to the NRC's stringent
report review procedures intended to assure balance and objective analysis of the issues at hand. Dissemination
of the information developed in these activities will be supported by public events and media presentations as
well as broad distribution of reports.
DEFINING THE FEDERAL ROLE
While such activities under the BRB's strategic program in infrastructure are addressing a variety of
specific obstacles to innovation, these activities and other BRB studies of technological innovation in the building
industry are making clear the need for some overarching central force for infrastructure innovation. This implies
a possible federal government role. However, defining this role is a complex problem.
In contrast to many other countries, there is no U. S. government agency with explicit responsibility for
representing or encouraging enhancement of either public works or the nation's construction industry as a whole.
The Department of Commerce and the Office of Science and Technology Policy share executive branch concern
for the nation's technology and industrial competitiveness, but seldom address issues of construction and public
facilities. 4 There is an effective gap between the interests of the agencies that undertake construction or
manage facilities as accessories to their primary missions---e. g. the Corps of Engineers or the Public Health
Service-and the policy-oriented agencies that may include construction, building products and equipment, or
facilities themselves (i. e., housing or highways) within their broader purview.
Analogies have from time to time been drawn between the U. S. farm and construction industries, both
characterized by many small producers spread across the country, and proposals have been made that there
should be a construction equivalent to the Department of Agriculture or a U. S. government equivalent of other
nations' ministries of construction. In an historic example, the national crisis of the Great Depression of the
1930s (during which the total annual rate of construction in the United States dropped to one third of its average
in the late 1920s) fostered creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA). However, the diversity of
interests among federal construction agencies and the many organizations active in the private sector have been
generally unresponsive or antagonistic to such proposals. Although the PWA survived for some years, its role
as builder was largely relinquished to local government or supplanted by special purpose agencies. (Craig, 1984)
Other centralized building programs of the era, such as the WPA (Works Projects--originally Progress-
Administration) were dismantled as the nation went to war in the 1940s.
Despite such past reluctance, there are sound reasons why the federal government should play a
significant role in the search for infrastructure innovation:
0 Infrastructure innovation will help government agencies to achieve better cost, quality, and
performance in their own facilities.
* Infrastructure innovation will enhance quality of life in the United States.
4A major exception is the focus on the construction industries of Japan and the United States in trade
negotiations of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
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