The North American Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum will Feature over $400 billion worth of Projects.

Building competitiveness in North America is a long-term challenge. This week's graph shows the critical obstacles that we face. Spending in US$ terms has not changed since 1980, while the percentage of GDP invested in infrastructure has declined from 3% to 1.3% of GDP. The projects that will be featured at the North American Strategic Infrastructure Leadership Forum trace a path forward - while offering specific business opportunities to participants in the next 3-12 months.

But where will the funding come from? Our approach is to identify the projects required to make North America competitive, and then to figure-out how to achieve that level of investment. Currently in the US infrastructure budgets continue to decline; offsetting the stimulus, and a secondary infusion from Build America Bonds, is the fact that the states are cutting infrastructure budgets by 15-20%. Note: the states contribute roughly 70% to infrastructure spending, so this is significant.

There are success stories - we are proud that two great ones, one intermodal, and another urban mass transit, emerged from last year's Leadership Forum. But we are going to need: (a) new funding, (b) a new infrastructure investment model, and (c) much greater efficiency in project development if we are to achieve the same kind of infrastructure build that the Greatest Generation - as Senator Menendez told us last year at the North American Forum - left for us.

All of these issues will be discussed in deep dive workshops at the Forum: (a) funding, through a national infrastructure bank; (b) a new infrastructure model, by sharing experiences across sectors and from other countries; and (c) the efficiency issue through, among other things, a White Paper from one of our sponsors, Arcadis.... And we have a surprise this year, in the form of a whole new, cutting-edge, private meeting system!

Join us, and help us lay the groundwork for the Next Generation's prosperity - getting our infrastructure spend back to the 3% of GDP level. And at the same time BUILD YOUR BUSINESS - each one of the 100 projects has been assessed, scored, and ranked from a list of more than 400 projects - and all offer business opportunities in the next 3-12 months.