North America, and the world, is facing a significant infrastructure problem affecting essential services now, the impacts of which will continue well into the future. Transportation systems, energy grids, water systems and more, that were conceived and built half a century or more ago, are crumbling and endangering the public.

One need not look further than the recent water crisis in Flint, Mich., to see the dire situation that public infrastructure is facing, with the added problem of a lack of resources to properly fix or rebuild failing infrastructure. 

Institutional Real Estate, Inc. will host its 11th annual infrastructure conference in June — IREI: Infrastructure Strategies 2016 — and with the event on the horizon we recently held an initial conference call with our conference advisory board to learn what issues and topics are at the tops of their minds in 2016. These discussions provide insight into what is important to institutional investors such as public pension plans, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds who attend Infrastructure Strategies and what issues impact their portfolios and decision making — all of which helps the board shape the conference agenda. 

Good infrastructure is key to economic growth as well as social and ecological development. Infrastructure investment requirements are huge worldwide, and particularly so in developing economies. Many countries are held back by chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and poor maintenance of existing infrastructure. However, there can also be “overinvestment” of taxpayers’ money in infrastructure. With public sector budgets often stretched, the private sector is asked to play a bigger role in the financing of infrastructure.