it may be more than a year since Superstorm Sandy pummeled the tristate region, but its powerful punch is still fueling industry activity and is expected to continue contributing to a gradual recovery. While emergency repair work flourished in nearly all sectors immediately after the late-October 2012 storm, rebuilding efforts in some regions have helped boost the 2013 bottom lines of many firms, industry executives say. Sandy-related activity is expected to continue into 2014, both in terms of rebuilding and as the public and private sectors fine-tune longer-term resiliency plans.
"One of the big factors to increased activity has been the response to the hurricane. There's two parts, with the first being the recovery effort," says Kevin Max, a director at KPMG's Energy and Construction Advisory Practice, New York. "The secondary factor, which is spurring optimism, is the plans for resiliency and redundancy."