A federal stopgap buys the government until December, but the dates that matter most to firms fall on September 30. The U.S. House passed a short-term spending bill on July 21 that would keep the federal government funded through December 4, and the Senate is expected to rewrite it before the August recess. The vote was 220 to 205. Now, the weight sits on September 30, the last day of the current fiscal year. The surface transportation program that funds federal-aid highway and bridge work in every state is authorized only through that date, and the added water-infrastructure money Congress provided in the 2021 infrastructure law runs out at the same point. A stopgap keeps agencies open and paying invoices, but it does not reauthorize a program or restore expiring funding, so a short-term appropriations deal still leaves open what the federal highway and water programs look like in fiscal 2027. The House Appropriations Committee has already advanced a fiscal 2027 transportation and housing bill at roughly ten percent below the current year. Firms carrying heavy federal-aid backlogs in transportation and water should track the September 30 date as closely as the December one, and plan for new authorizations and appropriations to arrive late.
Sources: Roll Call, July 21; U.S. House Appropriations Committee, fiscal 2027 THUD
ENG MnDOT put two new consultant jobs on the street this week, including a Duluth design contract posted today. The department is seeking preliminary and final design for Trunk Highway 61 from the Lester River to Superior Street in Duluth, a job that includes a complex roundabout with vertical and horizontal curves, a continuous T intersection, a nearby railroad crossing, major utilities that cannot be relocated, ADA improvements, shoulder work, and a wayside rest modification, with responses due August 25. Separately, MnDOT wants a contractor to monitor contaminated materials and regulated waste on State Project 2785-462, the I-494 design-build carrying the corridor vision from U.S. 169 to the Minnesota River, with construction anticipated from 2027 to 2030 and responses due August 20. That I-494 work adds E-ZPass lanes, reconstructs ramps and bridges at 82nd Street, I-35W, and Highway 77, and improves drainage, lighting, and bike and pedestrian infrastructure.
Source: MnDOT Professional/Technical Consultant Services notices, July 2026
ENG A Moorhead corridor rebuild shows the Safe System approach doing the work that signs and enforcement often cannot. Construction is underway on a pedestrian-safety project along 40th Avenue South in Moorhead, a 4.2 million dollar job that centers on a single-lane roundabout at 14th Street, paired with rectangular rapid flashing beacons, high-visibility crossings, new sidewalks and shared-use paths, added lighting, removed right-turn lanes, and a 30 mph limit west of 14th Street. The city moved after a nine-year-old boy was killed at the intersection about a year ago. Recorded crash rates on the corridor ran below average, but speeds ran high, with a share of westbound drivers topping 47 mph in a 40 mph zone, and the roundabout is expected to hold traffic to 15 to 20 mph and cut severe crashes sharply. Bolton & Menk is the project’s design engineer. It is a compact case study in geometry-first safety design on a local corridor.
WORKFORCE The EEOC proposed ending the EEO-1 report, a recurring compliance task for larger firms. The Commission published a proposed rule on July 23 to rescind the EEO-1 report and its EEO-2 through EEO-6 companions, along with the recordkeeping behind them, under 29 CFR part 1602. For engineering firms, the EEO-1 is the one that matters: private employers with 100 or more employees, and federal contractors with 50 or more, file it every year to report workforce demographics by job category, sex, and race or ethnicity. The Commission argues the reports impose substantial burdens on employers, are not narrowly tailored, are unnecessary to enforce anti-discrimination law, and are potentially unconstitutional. Comments are due August 24. This is a proposal at the comment stage, so current filing obligations still stand, but firms that compile EEO-1 data each year should track it and weigh whether to comment. If it is finalized, a recurring reporting task goes away.
Source: Federal Register, July 23
BIZ Design billings improved in June but stayed in contraction, and small firms lost cushion. The Architecture Billings Index rose to 47.3 in June from 44.5 in May, staying below the 50 line that separates growth from decline. The index, published July 22 by the American Institute of Architects and Deltek, tracks billings at architecture firms and runs several months ahead of construction spending, so a reading under 50 points to softer nonresidential design and construction activity later in the year. June marked the forty-first month in the current stretch without majority billings growth, one of the longest downturns in the index’s history. Project inquiries ticked up and new design contracts held roughly flat, early hints that demand may be stabilizing, while the Midwest continued to soften. The sharper signal is at small firms: at practices billing under 250,000 dollars a year, backlog fell from 4.9 months to 3.1 months, thinning the buffer that carries a firm through a slow patch.
Source: American Institute of Architects, June 2026 ABI, July 22
Continuing resolution (CR). A temporary funding measure that keeps federal agencies operating at existing levels when Congress has not passed the full-year appropriations bills by the start of the fiscal year. It prevents a shutdown and lets agencies keep paying obligations already on the books, but it generally holds funding flat and does not start new programs or raise program levels. A CR also does nothing to reauthorize a program whose legal authorization is expiring, which is why a stopgap that funds the government does not by itself resolve the September 30 lapses in surface transportation authority and the added water funding.
Build your bench: ACEC Minnesota’s Leadership Development Series for mid-career professionals runs September 2026 through April 2027 in a 24-person cohort, and the four-session Emerging Leaders program for early-career staff runs this October and November.
The (Almost) Daily Brief publishes most weekdays: policy, funding, workforce, and industry news for Minnesota’s engineering firms, in a few minutes of reading.
