ICYMI: Bechtel CEO Emphasizes Urgent Need for Permitting Reform at Infrastructure Week Event

Here’s what they said:

On the importance of infrastructure:

• Bechtel: “Infrastructure is the backbone of our economy. It is one of the great ‘unlockers’ of American competitiveness. … To enable a renewal of our industrial manufacturing base here in the United States, you need both physical and digital infrastructure to allow manufacturers to produce efficiently. … It’s the basic plumbing of the global economy that we need to continue to invest in if we want to enable the renewal of the industrial manufacturing base.”
• Silverberg: “The groups in this room [including business, labor and local government leaders] were instrumental in pulling together the 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the largest ever investment in infrastructure. We can be incredibly proud of the work we did together getting that done and take great pride in its success. But we’re here today because there’s a lot more to do.”

On why America needs permitting reform:

• Bechtel: “We have today an Administration that’s very bullish on winning the race on artificial intelligence, technology, energy dominance, building again as a nation — all of that gets more accessible and will happen faster and the benefits of that will accrue to the economy, to voters, to taxpayers, to workers, sooner and faster in a more fulsome way if we get some permitting reform done and enable more of these projects to happen sooner.”
• Bechtel: “We’re not talking about shortcuts. We’re not talking about rolling back meaningful environmental and social protections. It’s about having a more predictable, more consistent, more efficient process, nimbler process, better resourced process, so that you can shorten the overall duration of the permit processes, but more than anything else, that it’s consistent, and companies and investors can predict how it’s going to go.”

On working with policymakers to advance permitting reform:

• Silverberg: “[It is] our absolute determination and commitment to press for permitting reform this year. The Trump Administration has taken some admirable steps in that direction, which we support, but our view is that to fully realize the benefits of permitting reform, we need the kind of durable system that [only] bipartisan legislation would produce. … [W]e are persuaded that we can make a strong case to Congress that this is absolutely necessary for a strong and resilient U.S. economy, and so we’re determined to make it happen.”
• Bechtel: “The best way to do permitting reform is in a bipartisan way, because it has to be durable, it has to be long-term.”

On the costs of inaction on permitting reform:

• Bechtel: “The opportunity cost for the nation from a competitiveness perspective, from an employment and workforce development perspective: we will not be successful with the energy dominance agenda. We will fall behind on the race to AI because access to power is a key input to that. So, the opportunity cost of not taking action in the next six months is very high.”

Following the event, Bechtel shared additional insights on the importance of permitting reform here.

To learn more about Business Roundtable’s perspective on permitting reform, click here.