Infrastructure, Construction & Building products

Infrastructure construction and civil engineering companies build large buildings, bridges, dams, pipelines, road networks, ports, railways, and aqueducts. There are a number of segments within the infrastructure and construction industry, ranging from homebuilders to companies who support massive government-funded projects. This overview is focused on the companies involved in the largest projects, which take years to build and can remain in service for decades.

Similar to aerospace and defense (A&D) programs, large infrastructure construction programs often feature a central company that manages the overall project, which includes hundreds or thousands of subcontractors providing different subcomponents and services. In the A&D industry these are called system integrators and include familiar companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. In the infrastructure and construction industry this role is sometimes called the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor and includes companies such as Bechtel, Fluor, Jacobs, and CH2M Hill. In both industries these companies would fill the role of the prime contractor in government contracts.

This distinction is important to understand, as there are thousands of specialties and specialists that must come together in a precisely organized fashion to build something as complex as the Hoover Dam or the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. EPC companies are expert civil engineers, program managers, and builders on a truly massive scale.

Infrastructure takes a long time and a lot of money to design and build. Projects are generally built to support a fixed maximum use or population and have a finite lifespan. This results in a challenge for public and private sector planners to accurately predict population density and infrastructure usage on a forward-looking basis, to ensure that they build systems to support populations 10-30+ years in the future.