9781422270875

Introduction

Infrastructure careers provide a variety of good-paying opportunities that often have lower formal educational barriers than other occupations. The word infrastructure might seem exotic to you, but did you know that you use infrastructure every day? Each time you take a drink of water, use your smartphone, turn on the heat or air conditioning, or take a trip on a local street or highway, you are utilizing infrastructure. There are actually two types of infrastructure. Hard infrastructure consists of all of the physical things (transportation, energy, water, telecommunications, and similar systems) that are necessary for the functioning of a safe and productive nation. Soft infrastructure refers to the educational system, law enforcement, emergency services, the health-care system, government agencies, and the financial system. These are needed to maintain the economic, physical, health, cultural, and social standards of a population. This series mainly focuses on hard infrastructure, but you will also see how hard and soft infrastructure work in tandem for the well-being of people. Although infrastructure is very important to the success of any country, a considerable amount of the infrastructure in the United States and other countries is in fair, or even poor, shape. Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers publishes a Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. It assigns letter grades based on the physical condition of US infrastructure and the needed investments for improvement. Its 2021 report awarded a C- to the United States. If you received C- in school, your parents might sigh and tell you to get back to work. And that’s what the US federal government did (at least the work part), passing a whopping $1.2 trillion bill for funding to fix and/or expand roads, bridges, public transit systems, ports, waterways, and passenger and freight rail systems; expand broadband internet access; and help states and cities prepare for

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