The (Almost) Daily Brief

A higher local bar for transit grants

By Megan Dayton · 10/1/2026

Join me Thursday, Oct. 8. I am brushing off my demography skills at the ACEC Minnesota Leadership Breakfast to walk through the demographic and economic forces reshaping the engineering workforce, and what they mean for hiring, retention, and firm strategy. 8am to 10:30am in Edina, $55. Registration is open.

ENG  Inver Grove Heights approved a data center site plan two weeks after it amended its moratorium under threat of a developer lawsuit. The council approved the major site plan Monday for a 54,000-square-foot building on 13.9 acres at 5890 Carmen Avenue, the former Travel Tags site. The facility is designed for 3 megawatts in its first phase and 5 megawatts at full buildout, against 308 megawatts at the Meta campus in Rosemount. The plan carries a closed-loop cooling system and a 23-foot acoustic screening wall around the mechanical equipment. Florida-based QLevr had challenged the city’s yearlong data center moratorium in Dakota County District Court, and its attorneys called the moratorium “arbitrary” and “capricious.” The city amended the moratorium on Sept. 14 and the developer dismissed the case. The suit could have cost the city $20 million, against liability insurance that tops out at $1 million. Council member Mary T’Kach cast the lone vote against the amendment. Mayor Brenda Dietrich had to make the motion to approve the site plan herself.

Source: Pioneer Press, Sept. 30

POLICY  A federal audit puts FEMA’s decision time on resilience grants at seven to nine months. The Government Accountability Office reported that communities applying to the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program wait that long to learn whether a project will be funded, and that 700 local sub-applications remained under review as of March 2025. Congress has appropriated $4.8 billion to the program since 2020 and half of it has gone out across the first three application rounds. FEMA approved and rejected nothing while the program sat canceled from April 2025 until a court order reinstated it in March 2026, and the report says the agency did not clarify which subgrants would be terminated during the gap. Chris Currie, the report’s lead author, said communities were left asking whether to hold or wait. Chad Berginnis of the Association of State Floodplain Managers said states are still waiting on awards from the 2022 and 2023 rounds. FEMA told GAO it will adopt most of the recommendations, which center on transparency and communication. A $1 billion funding round for new applicants closed July 23.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Oct. 1

FUNDING  The Rural Energy for America Program will pay only for projects that are already built. A final rule published Oct. 1 converts the program to a post-completion, performance-validated model. Applicants must finish and operate a renewable energy system or efficiency improvement first, then apply with 12 months of actual production or savings data alongside 12 months of pre-installation data. The technical merit review clearance process is gone, as are the feasibility-study and technical-report appendices. The rule also makes ground-mount solar and wind on certified cropland ineligible, bars solar or wind systems containing any component made in a country named as a foreign adversary, and excludes standalone energy storage, storage retrofits of existing systems, distribution-only projects such as biogas pipelines, electric vehicles, chargers, and flexible fuel pumps. Multilocation projects are out, and the agency proposes replacing state-level competitions with a single national scoring process. The rule takes effect Oct. 16. Comments close Nov. 2.

Source: Federal Register, Oct. 1 (91 FR 62600)

ENG  Federal regulators issued the first U.S. construction permit for a small modular reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted the Tennessee Valley Authority a construction permit Sept. 29 for a 300-megawatt GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 at the Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first permit issued for that design. Jeremy Bowen, who directs the commission’s Office of Advanced Reactors, said the review certifies the design is safe to construct. An operating license is still required before the unit can run. The utility has not committed to build. A spokesperson said nuclear construction has not begun and that the permit triggered no new construction packages, long-lead procurement, or expanded contractor scopes, and the board must still approve a final commitment. The Energy Department has selected the utility for cost-shared funding capped at $400 million. Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, and GE Vernova Hitachi are doing the development and engineering work.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Sept. 30

ENG  Massachusetts opened design-build bidding on a $2.5 billion replacement for the Sagamore Bridge. The state transportation department released the request for proposals for the first phase of its Cape Cod Bridges Program, which will eventually replace the Bourne Bridge as well. The Army Corps of Engineers built both canal crossings in the early 1930s and still owns them, and they are the only highway links to the peninsula. The Corps rates the 91-year-old Sagamore in fair condition and the Bourne in poor condition. The plan calls for separate eastbound and westbound steel arch spans replacing the existing 1,400-foot structure, with 12-foot lanes, 10-foot and 4-foot shoulders, and a 14-foot shared-use path on the westbound span. Main spans are to be built off site, floated in on the canal, and lifted into place. Construction is targeted for winter 2027, with the eastbound span open in 2033. Proposals are due in May 2027 and bids open that July. The contract will require a project labor agreement. The announcement came with $1 billion in federal Bridge Improvement Program money, and another $371 million from the Federal Highway Administration is expected in October.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Sept. 30

WORKFORCE  Minnesota’s new ten-year projections put the fastest construction growth in utility systems and heavy civil engineering. DEED’s Labor Market Information office published 2024-2034 employment projections showing total state employment rising from 3,348,166 jobs to 3,449,454, an increase of 101,288 or 3 percent, against 3.1 percent projected nationally. Construction adds 8,500 jobs at 6.1 percent, and its two fastest subsectors are Utility System Construction at 9.9 percent and Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction at 7.9 percent. Professional and Technical Services adds 5,150 jobs at 3.1 percent, ranking fourth largest and fifth fastest of the twenty sectors, and the report names Architectural and Engineering Services among its rapid-growth components. Utilities grows 5.2 percent, third fastest of any sector, which the report attributes to transmission, storage and grid modernization tied to wind and solar. Health Care and Social Assistance adds 58,000 jobs at 11.1 percent, more than half the state’s total growth. Self-employment adds 8,300. Of 3,684,719 projected hires over the decade, 101,300, or 2.7 percent, come from new jobs, 1.6 million, or 43.8 percent, from workers leaving the labor force, and 1.97 million, or 53.4 percent, from workers switching jobs. Electricians grow 13.2 percent, and construction laborers and plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters each grow 7.4 percent. Jobs requiring postsecondary education grow 5.3 percent against 1.4 percent for those that do not, but two-thirds of all openings remain in jobs that require no postsecondary education.

Source: Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, Minnesota Economic Trends, September 2026

WORKFORCE  Construction layoffs fell to the lowest level the federal job-openings series has recorded. Contractors laid off 99,000 workers in August, a 46 percent drop from a year earlier and the lowest figure since federal job-openings reporting began in December 2000, according to Anirban Basu, chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors, reading the August job openings and labor turnover report released Sept. 29. Construction carried 251,000 open jobs on the last day of August, down 48,000 on the month and up 38,000 on the year, with 2.9 percent of all construction jobs unfilled. Basu attributed the pattern to weakness in residential work alongside data center demand that is absorbing specific trades, and said labor costs will keep rising for electricians and HVAC workers. Macrina Wilkins of the Associated General Contractors of America said the combination of a record-low layoff rate and a rising openings rate shows firms are trying to hold or grow headcount.

Source: Construction Dive, Sept. 30

BIZ  Arcadis expanded its Autodesk partnership to put AI assistants inside its design workflows. The firms announced the arrangement Sept. 28. Arcadis architects and engineers will widen their use of Autodesk Assistant, a tool built to work with geometry, engineering intent, and project history, inside Revit, Civil 3D, and the Forma cloud platform. Arcadis is also connecting its own Model Context Protocol capabilities to the assistant so its data sets can feed AI workflows while the firm keeps ownership of what it builds. Chief executive Heather Polinsky said designers remain in charge of project decisions. The two companies will co-develop AI assistants for architectural and engineering design.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Sept. 30

The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading. 

Browse past editions or subscribe →