Question-and-Answer Session
Michael Dunn
Thank you very much, John, Jack, Frank. Just a reminder: to ask a question, there is a small tab marked "Q&A" in the upper left hand area of the screen. You can tap on that and get your questions through us. And, for those that we don't have time for during the webcast, we generally do our best to follow-up subsequently by email.
First question today is an obvious question. Why now? Why we're hearing so much about this topic now? Obviously it's an election year, but it seems to go beyond that with such significant figures, both from the American Society of Civil Engineers, but also more significantly globally. How do you respond to that?
Jack Dzierwa
Mike, if you don't mind, maybe I will attempt to address this issue. It's a very important issue: why now? And not, for example: why not five or ten years ago? And we can look at the answer from different angles:
First of all, in the United States, the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis last year, where lives were lost, showed to both the public as well as politicians that something needs to be done. So, there was a tragedy and it really highlighted the importance of this issue.
However, I need to stress: this is not the problem in the United States only. These problems exist around the world. For example, two years ago, we had just the second anniversary, there was a major tragedy in Poland where, during the trade fair, the roof collapsed and 65 people lost lives. So, this problem is around the world. And the reason why we are having this problem now is that a lot of people are forgetting that nothing lasts forever and, I would say in particular, certainly not infrastructure.
For example, when we were looking at some statistics, an average useful life of an asphalt road is about 26 years. An average useful life of a bridge is about 46 years. So, at some point, there needs to be repairs, there needs to be upgrades, and if nothing was done for 20 or 30 years, indeed (inaudible) if you are in the system. And this is precisely what's happened, that we saw a major underinvestment in the fixed assets around the world, and that's why there is a problem.
To put it in perspective, between the year 1950 and 1977, in Canada, looking very objectively, which has got a very good level of infrastructure, the infrastructure spending was growing at 4.8%. However, between 1978 and 2000, the infrastructure spending was growing around the 0.1%. So, when you see slowdowns such as these, that’s the reason why we are having these problems now.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
