Megaprojects Not a One Trick Pony

Much of my work-related conversation over the past year-plus has concerned the preponderance of mega-sized construction projects being green-lighted in the United States. A megaproject is defined as a project carrying an estimated value of a billion dollars or more.

Spurred on by government incentive measures, a desire to bring jobs back to America from overseas, and target dates for drastically reducing carbon emissions, there has been an explosion of activity in construction starts on industrial/manufacturing projects, as is captured in Graph 1 below.

2022’s megaproject starts are laid out in Table 1 and Q1 2023’s, in Table 2. A perusal of the lists in both tables reveals the wealth of groundbreaking activity that has been taking place in new electric vehicle production plants, related battery plants, chipmaking facilities, and in the petrochemical area. Energy projects including LNG exporting sites, ammonia extraction, and carbon capture and storage are, in data terms, placed in the industrial type-of-structure category.

The story of the upsurge in manufacturing capital spending has finally caught the eye of the mainstream media. Just one example of the attention now being given to the subject is the piece titled U.S. Manufacturing Boom has a Real Estate Problem that appears in a Reuter’s feed.

The purpose of my article today, however, is to point out that, despite what my opening paragraphs may suggest, the new era of megaprojects that we are currently seeing isn’t just confined to the one type-of-structure category. It is considerably more diverse. 

Table 3 sets out an array of mega-sized and somewhat smaller, but still huge, projects discovered when I accessed ConstructConnect’s project database on stadiums that are in the works, to one degree or another. I hesitate to use the word "upcoming" because Table 3 includes projects that are speculative and contemplated, as well as ones that are proceeding with working drawings, but also probably a few that may fall by the wayside, for a while at least.

Table 4 does the same for transit projects. Furthermore, Table 4 leaves out several of the all-time largest projects that are under consideration. Heading such a catalog would be a ribbon cutting for a hoped-for commercially viable (and not just pilot project) hyperloop. The estimated dollars associated with hyperloop construction are immense and will have a profound impact on the starts statistics when one is finally initiated.

The megaproject story in Canada has, so far, not been comparably upbeat. There’s been a new EV battery plant commitment in Windsor and Ottawa has wooed Volkswagen, with a ton of subsidy money, to build a plant in St. Thomas, Ontario. But Canadian megaprojects are more likely to arise in the resource sector (e.g., more potash mining in Saskatchewan), during the next round of commodity price spikes.

By the way, there’s an aspect to megaproject construction that should not be brushed aside. Historically, as a class, they haven’t had the best track record for smooth progression from twinkle-in-the-eye to completion. There are multiple examples (e.g., California’s bullet train) of stretched out opening dates and anxiety-inducing cost overruns.

The logistic problems of acquiring materials, manpower, and regulatory approvals are magnified exponentially when the dollars climb into the stratosphere.

Graph 1

Table 1

Table 2

Table 3

Table 4