It may be too much of a good thing.

With all the focus in Sacramento on infrastructure funding and the prospect of billions of dollars pouring into the L.A. region to fix highways and speed the movement of goods, an extended boom period appears in the offing for local engineering and construction firms.

But while these companies are ogling the opportunities with anticipation and already are staffing up, there is some concern that the industry is already stretched too thin and that companies may have to pass up what, at other times, would be lucrative projects. This, in turn, could affect the ability of local and state public agencies to deliver projects on time and within budget.

“We just see more and more work coming into an industry that’s got reduced capacity as we speak. We now see this for years to come,” said Ron Tutor, president and chief executive of Sylmar-based Tutor-Saliba Corp., one of the region’s major engineering and construction firms, which recently won a contract to move and widen the south runway at Los Angeles International Airport.

Tutor said his company is in the midst of increasing its salaried and engineering staff 25 percent and that’s just to meet the backlog of work it already has.

Tutor and other local engineering and construction executives say qualified engineers are now hard to find, causing a bidding war for top talent. And with states across the nation already pouring in millions of surplus dollars into infrastructure projects not to mention the billions of dollars that will be spent in Gulf Coast recovery efforts materials costs are going through the roof.

All this points to significant challenges for public works agencies in the months and years ahead, just as the public will be looking to them to deliver the promises made by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other elected officials to rebuild California’s long-neglected infrastructure.

In his State of the State speech earlier this month, Schwarzenegger laid out a bold plan for $68 billion in state bonds and another $150 billion in federal, state and local funds over the next 10 years for repairing the infrastructure.

“We need more roads, more bridges, more schools, more hospitals, more, more, more,” Schwarzenegger said.

Details, details


The governor and legislative leaders are now hammering out details of what will be in the first bond measure slated for either the June or November ballot. Schwarzenegger has said he’d like the bond to be $12 billion and to make the June ballot.

But last week, L.A. City Councilman Alex Padilla, who is also president of the California League of Cities, told the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum that there are so many details to be hammered out that it’s unlikely the March deadline for the June ballot will be met.

“The consensus seems to be to aim for a solid, well-crafted bond measure on the November ballot,” Padilla said.

Even if voters do approve the ballot measure, monies won’t begin flowing to transit and other public agencies for at least another year after passage.

More immediately, Schwarzenegger in his 2006-07 budget promised to earmark $1.5 billion in Proposition 42 gas tax dollars to congestion relief projects, primarily in urban areas like Los Angeles. He also pledged to restore some $800 million in Prop 42 dollars that in previous years had been diverted to help plug the state’s multibillion-dollar general fund deficit.

These moves come after Congress last summer approved a $286 billion, five-year transportation bill. According to a report issued last week by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, California’s share in this bill comes to about $23.4 billion over five years, a 40 percent increase over previous federal funding levels. Of that amount, $18 billon will go to highways, $5 billion to mass transit and $450 million for safety-related improvements.

Among the major local projects set to receive some of these federal funds: the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension ($406 million), the Alameda Corridor East rail improvement project in the San Gabriel Valley ($125 million) and carpool lanes on the San Diego (405) Freeway ($130 million).

Two weeks ago, Schwarzenegger signed a bill to fast-track construction of those carpool lanes on the 405.

With all this money already set to flow into the region, local engineering and construction firms have been boosting staff.

“We’ve added about 100 people in the last year to handle our current workload and in anticipation of more funds from the federal and state governments,” said Blake Murillo, chief executive of Los Angeles-based Psomas, an engineering firm that now has a total staff of about 700.

Meanwhile, at DMJM Harris, a subsidiary of L.A.-based AECOM Technology Corp., senior vice president Bruce Toro said the company is looking to add about a dozen people this year to its current staff of 300.

“We expect the level of requests for proposals to start increasing this summer,” Toro said.

Also, Denver-based CH2M Hill Corp. added about 20 people to its L.A. office last year, with plans to double its current staff of 50 over the next few years. “There’s so much work here now and much, much more on the way,” said Jack Baylis, senior vice president.

But that’s not going to be easy. For years, a nationwide shortage of engineers has been building as fewer students pursue the field.

“My staffing people are telling me they simply can’t find people with five to six years engineering experience. There’s a real war on out there for qualified engineering talent,” Baylis said.

Nationwide scope


The problem is not limited to Southern California. “Every firm and public agency in the state is looking for engineers,” said Paul Meyers, executive director of Consulting Engineers and Surveyors of California, a trade group.

Local engineering executives say they are hoping that all the projects don’t come up for bid at once. That’s not likely, since most of the major projects have phases and will stretch out over several years.

However, the consensus is that the overall level of transportation and infrastructure funds will increase each year for at least the next five years and possibly much longer.

What seems like an embarrassment of riches for engineering firms poses substantial challenges for public agencies that must now confront the double-whammy of an overstretched engineering industry and high costs for materials.

Already, the difficulties are surfacing. In the Bay Area, the consortium of state and local agencies overseeing construction of the multibillion dollar Bay Bridge project are considering extending the bid process for a $1.5 billion suspension segment beyond the Feb. 1 deadline because only one firm has bid on the project.

Locally, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in the midst of reviewing its project list to account for rapidly rising materials and construction costs. According to regional programming director David Yale, these escalating costs mean fewer projects will likely come off the back burner even as more federal, state and local funds come in.

Nonetheless, Yale said the overall picture remains positive.

“Yes, these projects may end up costing more and we may not be able to do each and every one as fast as we would like. But in the last six months, there’s been a dramatic upward change in the view of how much money we will get from the state, and that’s very good for both local commuters and the local economy,” he said.