Podcast : Bridge market update: Many projects, higher construction costs

In a continuing series of conversations with IMEG’s market leaders, this episode of The Future Built Smarter features Bridge Market Leader Steve Myer. Steve discusses his background, the types of services that IMEG’s bridge engineering team provides, challenges facing the market, and often-heard questions from clients.

“The common questions from our clients include how to extend the life of their bridges,” he says. “They also often ask for rough cost estimates for their bridges and what they can do to make their money go further. We provide quite a few estimates, either for rehabilitation of existing bridges or for replacing bridges.” Steve adds that over the past five years he and other engineers “have been going at a really fast pace and have designed many bridge projects—to the point that now one of the biggest challenges facing clients is there so many projects out there, the competitive bid process is somewhat going away because contractors can just go after the projects they want.”

As for the future, Steve says, “I really don’t see a slowdown coming in the bridge market. Hopefully it stabilizes a little bit and construction prices stop doubling every five years.”  

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