We need to put the “Dream” back in the “American Dream”!

I am often impressed by the amount of effort put in by the state legislators and our congressional delegation into understanding some of the engineering issues facing the country. Although I applaud their hard work, when legislators begin to discard ideas based upon their knowledge of technical impediments, then creativity and innovation will ultimately suffer when good ideas are discarded too early in the process. Without vision, goals, and dreams, infrastructure investment becomes another line item within the budget, often one without the political will to move forward or fully fund. Using our current world as a model, we try to construct a future for ourselves, but unfortunately the past is not an adequate model for our future, we need to envision an infrastructure best suited to future generations. That is where vision, goals, and dreams must take over.

What we need from our leaders is a dream of what can be, not just an underfunded budget to sustain what once was. Listening to a presentation given by Andy Herrmann, ASCE-National President elect, he spoke about the leadership of Roosevelt and the Civil Conservation Corps, Eisenhower and the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and Kennedy and the race to the moon. We need to again find our spirit to dream of great things. Leaders need to provide the framework and let engineers clarify the details. We need our leaders to dream and be more demanding. Challenging engineers to do the impossible is the best way to achieve amazing results.

A simple example has been the development of accelerated construction techniques. Projects such as the I-93 Exit 14 Bridge project in Concord, NH and the Fast 14 project on I-93 in Medford, MA. Suddenly replacing bridge decks over the course of a single weekend is possible. There really hasn’t been new technology invented to implement these changes. Some details have evolved and some procedures have been modified, but the greatest change has been our willingness to reject the lengthy construction periods allowed in the past. It has taken talented engineers and contractors, but these individuals and their companies have been here all the time.

We need to re-examine our goals and visions for the country, independent of budgets and practicality. There will be plenty of time to define budgets and what we can accomplish later in the process. In today’s political environment this kind of statement is viewed as irreverent and simple-minded, but few ideas of merit take wings when an obsession on the budget and how things have been done in the past are present. We allow children to dream about traveling the world in a blink of an eye or going to medical school without once chastising them about the costs of tuition or airfare, but somewhere along the line we stop allowing the discussion needed to fully develop our dreams as adults.

When we set low expectations for ourselves, ultimately we can expect our services to be worth less. This will ultimately lower our competitiveness in the world market.  If we are going to sustain our rightful place as leaders of creativity and innovation in the world, we need to dream big and demand more from our engineers. We also need to invest in those dreams and the businesses needed to make them a reality.

Our leaders must be more irrational at times. This can be in their visions in planning for the future or demanding more for the products they ultimately receive. There is no country that rivals the United States in creativity and innovation. To get our country back on its feet economically, we need to put the “Dream” back into the "American Dream" and that needs to start with our leadership.