Building America Stronger: How the Infrastructure Law Creates Opportunity and Who's Getting Left Out

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act committed $1.2 trillion to roads, bridges, broadband, water systems, and public transit across the United States (Source: U.S. Congress, 2021; White House Infrastructure Implementation, 2024). That is an enormous opportunity. Our Building America Stronger report examines who is capturing the contracts, and the answer is troubling: Hispanic-owned firms, despite employing 35.2% of all construction labor, are capturing a disproportionately small share of federal infrastructure spending, a pattern documented across federal contracting data (Source: USASpending.gov Federal Contract Awards, 2024).

The law is working. The money is moving. But it is not reaching the firms and workers who represent the backbone of the construction workforce.

I have watched this pattern play out in state after state. My team has attended pre-bid meetings, SAM registration workshops, and federal procurement briefings alongside our member firms. What I see consistently is a pipeline designed for organizations that already have federal contract history. The firms that most need the work are the ones the process screens out first, not because of capability but because of paperwork and pre-qualification requirements they were never helped to meet.

Why the Money Is Not Reaching Hispanic Firms

Three structural barriers explain most of the gap between Hispanic firms' workforce share and their contract capture rate.

The first is bonding. Federal construction contracts above certain thresholds require performance and payment bonds. Bonding underwriters evaluate a firm's financial history, capitalization, and track record on similar-scale projects. Hispanic-owned firms, which are disproportionately smaller and younger, have thinner financial records to present to bonding companies. A firm that has successfully completed $800,000 in subcontracts over five years cannot simply request a $4 million bond for a federal project. The underwriting math does not support it.

The second is SBA size standards. The Small Business Administration defines size standards for federal contracting set-asides. In construction, those standards are based on average annual revenue. Many Hispanic-owned specialty contractors are too large to qualify for small business set-asides but too small to compete effectively against major contractors on full-size bids. They fall into a gap that the procurement system was not designed to address.

The third is DBE certification complexity. The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, which is the primary federal mechanism for directing infrastructure contracts to minority-owned firms, requires an extensive certification process. Nationally, minority-owned firms receive approximately 8% of federal construction contracts despite representing nearly 30% of all construction businesses (Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, DBE Program Data, 2024). I have heard horror stories directly from HCC member contractors who spent 8 to 14 months in the DBE certification process, paying consultants, gathering documents, and attending hearings. One contractor in Dallas told me he spent $22,000 in staff time and consultant fees getting DBE certified, only to find that the local DBE goal on the projects he wanted was 3%, meaning his certification gave him access to a very small slice of a very large contract.

What Bonding Readiness Actually Looks Like

Bonding capacity is the most practical barrier I encounter, and it is also the most solvable with targeted intervention.

Bonding underwriters need to see three things: financial stability (positive net worth and cash reserves), project history (successful completion of projects at or near the requested bond size), and management continuity (stable ownership and management team). Most Hispanic specialty contractors have the project history and management continuity. The gap is financial stability as measured by formal balance sheets and banking relationships.

The firms that have successfully scaled to bond-eligible status tend to share a specific trajectory: they maintained banking relationships throughout their growth, they worked with construction-focused accountants who prepared financial statements in the format bonding underwriters prefer, and they deliberately took on progressively larger subcontracts to build a documented project history at increasing scale.

A Success Story: What Works

Not every Hispanic-owned firm is locked out. Some have found pathways through, and their experience points to what works.

A mechanical contractor based in San Antonio with 85 employees has successfully captured three federal subcontracts under the Infrastructure Act, totaling $14.7 million. The firm's owner told me the key was a mentor-protege relationship with a large general contractor who needed a bilingual Spanish-speaking mechanical crew for a federal facility project in a predominantly Spanish-speaking community. The general contractor needed linguistic capacity. The small firm needed the contract history and bond backing.

Mentor-protege relationships work because they address the bonding gap directly. The large firm co-signs or backs the bond. The small firm delivers the work. Both benefit. The program exists at the federal level through SBA but is dramatically underutilized.

I sat in a pre-bid meeting in Albuquerque two years ago. The project was a $14 million highway intersection rebuild under IIJA funding. There were 22 firms in the room. Three were Hispanic-owned. Two of those three had driven more than three hours to attend. I asked the project coordinator afterward how many of the non-Hispanic firms had been pre-qualified by state DOT before the meeting. Fourteen. How many of the Hispanic firms? One. That gap is not about capability. It is about the pre-qualification pipeline, and it is exactly what HCC's federal contracting program is designed to close.

What DBE Reform Would Actually Look Like

The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program needs structural reform, not just process streamlining. The current certification process screens out many of the firms it was designed to help, because the documentation requirements assume a level of administrative infrastructure that small firms often lack.

Three reforms would have an outsized impact: a self-certification pathway for firms under $1.5 million in annual revenue with a simplified review process, state reciprocity so that a DBE certification in Texas is recognized in any state, and a goal structure that separates specialty trade work from general construction so that Hispanic specialty contractors are competing for appropriate contract segments rather than being counted against an overall percentage on a project where they might not participate at all.

What Contractors Can Do Right Now

If you are a Hispanic-owned construction firm and you want to access infrastructure spending, the path is not short, but it is clear.

Start building your banking relationship today, not when you are ready to apply for a bond. Talk to a commercial banker who works with construction firms and ask them specifically what your balance sheet needs to look like to support a $2 million bond in three years. That conversation will tell you exactly what to target.

Get DBE certified even if you do not have an immediate federal project in mind. Certification cycles are long and reciprocity is expanding. Being certified positions you for opportunities before they arrive.

Look for mentor-protege opportunities. Large general contractors who are active on federal projects have incentives to bring qualifying firms into their teaming arrangements. The firms that benefit most are specialty contractors with a clear, documented track record.

The $1.2 trillion is there. The work is there. The system was built for larger firms, but it was not built to be impenetrable. We are working to make it more accessible, one contract at a time. The Congressional Budget Office projects that infrastructure spending will support over 650,000 direct construction jobs by 2028 (Source: Congressional Budget Office, IIJA Analysis, 2023).

The infrastructure dollars are real and they are moving. The access gap is real and it is closing, but not fast enough. HCC is at the table in every conversation where procurement access is being designed. The firms that are paying attention and preparing now will be the ones positioned when the contracts land in their state.

I have seen this play out directly. A framing contractor I have worked with in New Mexico spent 18 months attending every HCC federal readiness workshop we offered. He registered on SAM. He attended pre-bid meetings. He built a relationship with a large GC through our mentor-protege program. Last year he completed his first federal subcontract: $2.3 million on a Veterans Affairs facility renovation. My satisfaction with that outcome is not just organizational. It is personal. That is what I built HCC to make possible.