With a theme of “The Challenges Ahead,” this year’s conference will speak to the most pressing issues facing the industry, according to RSH’s Joe Debs, co-chair of the conference liaison committee. FDOT’s Terry Cappellini is his counterpart from the state.
“The objective of this conference is for the leadership of consulting firms and FDOT to get together to discuss agenda issues of importance between FDOT and FICE. Every year the agenda is different. One common element is that the agenda is always related to topics of particular pertinence at that point in time,” he said. “There is a lot of uncertainty in the industry right now. These uncertainties present real challenges to consultants and FDOT and we wanted to have a meaningful discussion on some of these topics,” he added.
Debs said four areas have dominated the industry in recent years. Negotiations; disadvantaged, minority and small business considerations; supply of talent and alternative contracting methods.
“There is not one major challenge but they all relate together. More and more people continue to move to our state, at the same time we face the challenge of funding shortfalls. We certainly want to be environmental stewards as we are looking at new corridors. Then there is the issue of the talent to produce projects, our production talent is getting scarcer and scarcer. The university systems are not putting out as many engineers relative to the need that is out there. At same time, our major client, FDOT, faces the challenge of keeping people, so supply of talent is an issue for them as well. We have a lot of themes woven together here,” he said.
Debs said the issues facing the industry are related to growth and are signs of a prosperous state.
“We always set the stage with the caveat that we are fortunate to be facing the issues we are facing. There are many states that don’t have the opportunity to sit down and address the issues we are addressing because those states are facing problems of decreasing population and shrinking revenues. We continue to be a growth state and have a very strong DOT and in turn have a very strong consultant work program. It’s a very positive environment that presents many opportunities and each of those opportunities has challenges related to them,” he said.
Debs assessed the state of the industry in the four dominant issue areas.
“About three years ago the DOT and FICE developed a concept called ‘mutual gains’, a concept that assumes partnership and trust between FDOT and consultants in negotiating a contract. That model has worked very effectively but like the case with any model it requires some refinement. We have a task team that is dealing with escalation of salaries, operating margins and reimbursement of expenses. We will get an update during this conference,” he said.
Debs said the industry is migrating away from minority and disadvantaged programs and toward more emphasis on small businesses being involved in state contracts. “We will hear from some current MBE and DBE firms to get their insights into this issue,” he said.
On the subject of supply of talent, Debs said FICE and FDOT are working on mentoring programs at both the K-12 and college levels. “We need to create an interest about engineering in our schools. We also need to work more closely with college students to get them engaged and motivated to pursuing engineering degrees,” he added. Debs said one of the conference speakers, Karl Ahlrichs, is a nationally recognized expert on recruitment and retention.
As for alternate contracts, Debs said the industry is learning rapidly that private investment dollars will change the way business is conducted.
“Consulting engineering firms, as well as contractors, have a new model for doing business. Both have to realize that their client may no longer be directly DOT or other agencies,” said Debs. “Their clients are likely to be other multi-national contracting concession companies. Consultants and contractors have to rethink how they are approaching their business. Traditionally, a large DOT work program would have been put on the street. Many of those projects are now being bundled as a single project and are being discussed as P3s going potentially to a single concession company. Therefore, the engineering firms who may have been waiting for a DOT procurement are now looking to concession companies from around the world as their potential client,” he added.
Included on the program, scheduled for the