Few construction professionals are more familiar with today's infrastructure crisis than the staffers of the country's various departments of public works-and few are more misunderstood. Unlike larger public owners that shepherd attention-grabbing mega-projects, DPW officials are routinely labeled as wrench-turning, snow-removing, garbage-collecting civic servants charged with small-potatoes projects not worthy of national interest.
DPWs are frequently stereotyped as managers of the nation's "roads and commodes, with the big yellow trucks for pushing snow," says Kurt Blomquist, public-works director for Keene, N.H., and a member of the American Public Works Association.