America's infrastructure boom has a people problem

The Project Management Institute projects a global shortfall of up to 30 million project professionals by 2035.

It's a number that's easy to read past, until you consider what it means on the ground: infrastructure projects come in over budget, run behind schedule, or never get built at all.

As federal agencies begin finalizing next year’s budget and shaping 2027 and 2028 infrastructure investment plans, the debate will center on funding levels.

But after years leading growth at a global infrastructure consulting firm, I've watched the real constraint on our biggest projects shift toward something an appropriations bill can't fix on its own. It comes down to whether there are enough experienced people and talent to get it done right the first time.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the convergence of the energy and data center markets. The AI boom has triggered a historic surge in mission-critical construction, and on the ground, the shortage of qualified engineers, commissioning agents, and experienced project professionals has become one of the industry's biggest constraints.

Hyperscalers and major developers racing to bring new capacity online have made speed to market the priority, and demand for that specialized talent has outpaced the available supply.

Total data center capacity under development in the U.S. has exploded - growing roughly 4.5 times since 2023. The project professionals and specialized workforce needed to deliver it hasn't kept pace. Firms across the sector are already operating above capacity and turning down work.

The projects and the dollars are there. The harder problem is finding enough experienced people to plan, permit, and deliver these projects, which are often in remote locations far from where talent traditionally sits.

Firms with scale have an advantage here. They can shift environmental, engineering, and planning expertise across geographies and even sectors as work ebbs and flows, deploying teams where they're needed. That kind of flexibility is becoming a competitive necessity.

It’s not uncommon to read attention grabbing headlines that highlight how a high-profile infrastructure project is coming in billions of dollars over budget or see a viral social media post disparaging a program that is taking years longer than planned.

It’s something no owner wants to experience. In most cases, engineering talent and technology were never really in question.

What was missing early on was candor with stakeholders about cost, schedule, and complexity. The kind of clear-eyed counsel that must happen before a shovel goes into the ground. It’s a lesson no leader wants to experience.

On any project measured in the billions, the biggest risks are set on day one, long before construction begins. 

That's really where the talent gap does damage. Picture two lines on a chart. A project's cost climbs steadily from concept to completion, while an organization's ability to influence that cost is highest at the very start and drops sharply once design gives way to construction.

The earliest decisions — where to site a project, how to staff it, whether the supply chain and contractor capacity can support it — determine far more of the outcome than anything that happens later. Get the right talent asking the right questions at that stage, and a project starts on solid footing.

Skip it, and you spend years managing problems that could have been addressed from the beginning. That's why leading firms are investing heavily in advisory services. Preventing a talent gap future-proofs a project by putting experienced professionals at the forefront, before the major decisions are made.

Technology alone won't solve this problem. Look at the hyperscalers driving the data center boom. Some of the best-capitalized companies in the world still rely heavily on outside consultants to deliver these projects because there simply aren't enough experienced teams available.

Handing every project owner a blank check and the latest AI tools would not guarantee projects get delivered on time or without friction.

AI is genuinely useful, as it helps teams evaluate more site alternatives, spot risks earlier, and make better-informed recommendations. But that output is only as good as the judgment applied to it.

Experienced project professionals are what makes that judgment possible. The firms getting this right treat AI as a force multiplier for the expertise their professionals already bring.

There's also a structural fix available in the near term; one built on a closer partnership between the public and private sectors. Government agencies are, by design, slower to hire and slower to reallocate staff than private firms, and once positions are filled, slower still to adjust them.

That mismatch is exactly where the private sector can help, supplying experts, program and construction management capabilities, and capacity to augment staff to smooth out the peaks, so public agencies can staff for steady-state work and lean on private partners when demand spikes.

We're already seeing this play out on a major infrastructure program that is getting underway and on energy supply and power grid projects where firms are redeploying staff and delivering work remotely, to dampen sudden surges in demand.

When a section of I-95 collapsed in Philadelphia in June 2023, the highway was demolished and rebuilt in 12 days, reopening ahead of schedule. This was possible because state, federal, and construction expertise mobilized immediately, with clear decision-making authority from day one; the same coordination this moment requires at scale.

These examples point to the kind of agility this moment requires. 

If the industry does nothing, infrastructure will still get built — just less efficiently, at greater cost, with taxpayers absorbing the difference.

If it does the right things and invests in attracting and developing talent, puts the best leaders at the front end of a project, and treats private-sector capacity as a genuine complement to public agencies, then the next decade of infrastructure investment could be the most productive in a generation.

We've seen this firsthand: employee ownership models that build commitment from day one, a bottoms-up approach to AI investment that puts human expertise first, and senior-level mentorship programs like our Distinguished Project Executive program, where our team learns directly from the people who've already done it.

The talent gap PMI is describing is already shaping which projects get built and how well, years ahead of 2035. The organizations, and the agencies, that treat people as the first investment rather than the last will be the ones still standing when the bill comes due.

Brian Jordan is chief growth officer at GISI Consulting Group, a global infrastructure consulting platform built from operating companies including Hill International, GEI Consultants and Palladium.