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ASCE just released its 2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, which judges the state of existing infrastructure in the United States based on 18 categories. The overall grade for 2025 is a C, a limited improvement from the previous 2021 grade of a C-. ASCE began assessing the nation’s infrastructure in 1998, which generally featured grades of D or D+. The next Report Card will be released in 2029.
Improved infrastructure should be advocated for by all civil engineers, even those like me who do very little infrastructure work in our careers. Part of the purpose of the Report Card is to provide a clear and simple metric that the ASCE membership can use to advocate for infrastructure issues at all levels of government from the local level to the federal level. Following the release of the 2025 Report Card, several members from Orange County joined other civil engineers from the nation for the annual ASCE Legislative Fly-In in Washington, D.C., to meet with elected officials on Capitol Hill to advocate for infrastructure.
Part of the improvement in grades is due to the recent investment in federal infrastructure spending from passing the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Job Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. While, in my opinion, these bills should have been significantly more extensive in scope and amount, they were a good starting point for addressing Society’s infrastructure needs. Infrastructure spending will take time to trickle through to complete new construction or need maintenance and repair projects.
Significant gaps persist in addressing infrastructure needs, and the Report Card estimated that trillions of dollars in investment are required to bring infrastructure up to a state of good repair. So much of the nation’s infrastructure is aging and in critical need of replacement or repair, while specific sectors, such as public transportation and rail, are in need of significant investment to catch up to the rest of the world. The Report Card recommended three steps to continue forward: sustain investment, prioritize resilience, and advance forward-thinking policies and innovation.
ASCE does not just produce report cards for the national level but also for the state and sometimes the local levels. The last California Report Card was released in 2019, and our state received a grade of C-. A team of ASCE members like you is working on the next iteration. Remember that infrastructure advocacy is not done by those at the highest levels of the profession; it can be done by all members, from those in school to those leading the Society.
About the Author:
Nestor Godinez is a Senior Engineer at SLR International Corporation. He is currently the ASCE OC Branch President. Nestor can be contacted via email at ngodinez@slrconsulting.com.