This is the first in a four-part grant management solutions blog series about how the IIJA affects current spending plans, meeting the tracking requirements, and prioritizing your projects to align with available funding.

Federal highway programs are receiving additional funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) continually adds information on how individual states can receive funding through various competitive grant programs. Simply put, as today’s constantly changing infrastructure funding landscape continues to evolve, innovative business processes and technology solutions will be critical in leveraging data to build and maintain transportation infrastructure.

Changing Transportation Funding Landscape

One source of constant change that states and their transportation planning partners will face is how important projects and initiatives will be funded. Any observer of the U.S.’s national news cycle over the past few decades knows that each administration approaches funding the backlog of infrastructure improvements differently.

Further, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), state departments of transportation (DOTs), local governments, Metropolitan and Rural Planning Organizations (MPO/RPOs), local chambers of commerce, redevelopment and industrial boards, private engineering consultants, and beyond continue making tough decisions on how to make the best use of investments when funding is limited.

These agencies must prioritize their work and adjust projects already in motion the best they can based on funding, time constraints, and changing requirements.

Industry professionals have navigated several major federal transportation program changes over the past two decades. I started working in the transportation and economic development industries right as the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Discretionary Grant Program was rolled out in 2009 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The FHWA reports, “Since 2009, the Program has provided funding to 769 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.”

Learn more about BUILD and RAISE, additional FHWA discretionary grant programs.

New IIJA Funding: Opportunities and Challenges

Transportation leaders and their consulting partners were ecstatic in November 2021 when the $1.2 trillion IIJA passed Congress and President Biden signed the final bill. However, this excitement quickly turned into practical questions from day-to-day transportation practitioners.

Much of the IIJA funding, more than $426 billion, will be distributed to states, metropolitan areas, and tribal governments through new and existing competitive grant programs. Throughout this blog series, we will review the grant opportunities available and how DOTs can navigate the competitive landscape to track and capture available funding, comply with program requirements, and measure return on investment for their grant-funded projects.

Gannett Fleming and GeoDecisions can help answer these questions. We have written grant applications, developed systems for DOTs to organize grant administration to local partners, and designed tools to streamline grant project timelines. We use GIS analysis and web-based tools to track the fieldwork required to monitor project compliance throughout the project.

We also know firsthand that the grant process is competitive and takes work. Agencies must invest time and money to compete for these grants before any new or increased funding can flow to resource-strapped agencies. To compete for grants, agencies must position themselves for successful grant applications. To properly strategize, DOT executives need data transparency to understand their project delivery program fully. Also, agencies must plan how they will manage the funds if successful. Funds management becomes increasingly difficult for DOTs that must track different attributes, based on the project type or grant funding type, than they have historically.

As a part of the evaluation and analysis process, DOT executives can conduct a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. The following graphic highlights example considerations to illustrate a SWOT analysis. Working with more than 35 state DOTs, MPOs, and transit agencies, GeoDecisions gets to participate in the excitement of this type of analysis and help educate and respond to some of the challenging questions that come along with news of a major piece of legislation like IIJA.

How Changing Funding Rules Change How DOTs Do Work

GeoDecisions has created and maintained IT and GIS toolsets that help DOTs manage all aspects of the grant project lifecycle. One of the most complex, but also rewarding, ways that a project can receive funding is through grants.

Changing How Projects Get Done

I have seen firsthand how DOTs use these federal grant programs to implement real-world, impactful projects. For example, tools and data developed through GeoDecisions’ ATLAS project at the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) assisted the agency’s U.S. 74 Corridor project, which received funding through an INFRA Grant.

NCDOT did a great job delivering the first project phases in 2021 yet faced challenges when it came to fitting a new project “type” into existing systems designed for traditional project types. The GeoDecisions team, along with NCDOT and North Carolina Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) partners, had to make quick system changes to meet the implementation timeline requirements of the grant funds, while continuing to meet the non-grant-related requirements, such as National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) environmental regulations and document retention rules of the agency. Data and related project information needed to be delivered quickly, including GIS data outputs from the ATLAS application to support the quick creation of the project's Environmental Features Map used for coordination across multiple environmental permitting agencies.

GeoDecisions team members also helped NCDOT navigate documentation and data sharing needs with the NCDIT team to make sure various consultants and agencies could collaborate in a shared space as needed. This work supported NCDOT's successful permit approval with a quicker than average turn-around time.

Changing How States Administer Federal Funds to Local Partners

The West Virginia Department of Transportation (WVDOT) uses a GeoDecisions-designed system to track grant applications for non-traditional project types, such as bicycle/pedestrian and rails-to-trails programs.

This system helps centralize local partners’ grant applications coming into the DOT and align those applications for project funding that WVDOT is responsible for stewarding. GeoDecisions designed an award-winning system that helps track and manage grant projects complete with a reporting engine and data visualization.

Changing How DOTs Use GIS to Communicate with the Public

Communication with the public, legislators, and other critical stakeholders is always challenging in transportation projects. It is also a major component of a project’s successful implementation.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) partnered with GeoDecisions to make transportation project data more accessible via web-based GIS tools. GIS can help stakeholders find the information they are looking for via a geographic/visual search, without the end-user needing to know a specific multi-digit project code or transportation engineering lingo.

Visualizing how resources are distributed and the status of those projects is a powerful communication tool to increase government transparency. VDOT utilizes systems to better manage their projects and administer a variety of grant funding programs while increasing transparency.

These are just a few examples of how challenging grant programs can be for transportation agencies. It is no wonder our transportation clients are looking for innovative partners to help navigate grant funding more easily as they progress into the future.

Email Bryan to learn more about how we can help you with your grant application process.

Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, which will be focused on helping you meet the new tracking system requirements of the IIJA grant programs.

GeoDecisions Blog

What DOTs Need to Know to Navigate $426 Billion in IIJA Grant Opportunities