For much of the third quarter, watching the U.S. economy has felt like some strange version of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle—the more you look at where the economic indicators are, the less sure you are about the direction the economy is heading.

The CHIPS and Science Act aims to bolster U.S. leadership in innovation and technology. For some Top 100 sustainable design firms like Flad Architects, it’s an opportunity to expand into science and technology markets.

The sustainable design and contracting market is fertile ground for innovation now more than ever, Top 100 firms share. With decarbonization incentives baked into recent federal spending packages such as the CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, many owners across industrial and infrastructure sectors now have the wherewithal to think green.

Over the past few years, the second quarter has been a time of reckoning for ENR’s Construction Industry Confidence Index.

As supply chain disruptions threaten to shelve some projects completely, more owners are using professional services firms to help reconfigure limited staff resources and keep schedules moving forward.

With projects facing rising material costs, crunched schedules and labor shortages, project delivery firms say owners are finding themselves at a fork in the road when it comes to design-bid-build versus alternative delivery models.