So much is currently talked about the state of infrastructure around the world. Vast amounts of time, effort and money are being put into restoring old and crumbling infrastructure and into creating shiny new assets, fit for 21st century purposes.

This all seems incredibly worthy but what if all that effort was misguided and misdirected? What if we are actually focusing all our energies in the wrong place? As far as Steve Beatty of KPMG Advisory sees it, this is a very real and distinct possibility.

I believe there are bigger, and more important, questions that need asking here; questions which go way beyond where new roads should be built or what new forms of energy generation deserve the closest attention. I believe there is an argument for completely rethinking the fundamentals of infrastructure delivery so that it better reflects the changing face of modern society. 

We need to stop thinking of ourselves as mere consumers of infrastructure and start thinking of ourselves as invested citizens whose actions will determine the shape of infrastructure development. We need to realize that infrastructure does not only represent the physical public assets; it is the unifying theme connecting jobs, competitiveness and our overall quality of life.  It is time to hit the reset button on our relationship with infrastructure.

It's a fascinating debate. In layman's terms, it's a case of no longer simply asking whether traffic congestion issues can be solved by moving to larger highways and smart toll roads – but asking whether the currently favoured methods of human transportation and mass transit are actually the right ones for the next generation.

Before you start thinking that this is pie-in-the-sky science fiction thinking, consider this: how much of our actual day-to-day lifestyle has changed in the past 30-40 years?

A typical worker in 1970 went to work in an office building, got there by car, bus or train and shopped in a supermarket on the way home before sitting down in front of the TV with the kids who had been at school all day. When they got bored of this, they could hop on a plane to go on holiday.

A 2010 worker goes to work in a (larger, nicer) office building and still goes to work in a (larger, nicer) car, bus or train. After work, they shop in a (larger, nicer) supermarket before settling down in front of their (you get the drift) TV with the kids who had been at school (larger and nicer but still teaching the same things in much the same way). When they get bored of this, they can hop on a plane to go to a (nicer, more distant) holiday location.

Where's the innovation in that? I maintain that previous generations, whose innovations we are still benefitting from now, realised that they were mere tenants on this world and did their bit to make life as comfortable as possible for us – the future generations. Compared to what our parents and grandparents achieved during their ‘tenancy', what have we achieved? In comparative terms, we've settled for keeping the sofa warm and restocking the fridge. It appears we lost our ability to innovate.

The one concession I will make on the innovation front is the great strides we have made in terms of IT and communications. Mobile phones, laptops, superfast broadband, mass data transmission and the internet; all of these things have made a significant impact on our life.

Yet here we stand on the threshold of the greatest period of infrastructure spending known to man and – in the main - we appear to be focusing so much of our energy on perpetuating an approach to infrastructure which was fit-for-purpose 30-40 years ago. Money will be used to prop up fading industries or to maintain our addiction to forms of infrastructure whose supporting ideology has not been questioned for decades.

To me, this looks incredibly short-sighted and is indicative of how we have foreshortened our perspectives on the world around us. Where previous generations were visionaries and looked well down the road ahead to see how things could be done differently, we seem to look no further than the tip of our own nose.

There is no doubt that re-aligning our relationship with infrastructure will require a major investment of time, money, and thought from government and society at large. However, too often our approach to this investment has been reactionary; identify a perceived need and throw money at it. It is time to realise that this approach is untenable and has led us down the path of crippling infrastructure deficit. 

It is time to get ahead of demand and think long term about what kind of communities we want in the future and what the infrastructure demands of those communities could look like. To date, the debate regarding infrastructure has been largely unencumbered by fact. Now is the time for a thorough analysis and debate focused on what we want our world to be like in 2050. 

We have buildings which have stood the test of time for centuries, we have water and sewage systems which are over a hundred years old, we have road networks which were put in place nearly fifty years ago – and still they all survive. The innovations of our forefathers remain with us now; yet what are we doing now that will reverberate a hundred years down the line?

Take the space travel example. Previous generations landed a man on the moon. How have we built on that legacy to deliver something which will have a lasting impact on society in the 22nd century? Leaving the IT and comms breakthroughs aside, what have we done which stands fair comparison with earlier periods of innovation? Realistically, we have merely fiddled at the fringe.

Like the spoilt, rich kid who has grown up lazy on the back of its parents' efforts, we have done little to enhance their legacy. Our horizons have been foreshortened, leaving us focused on the splattered bug on the windscreen, rather than keeping an eye on the road ahead. If we had looked further ahead, we might have realised that the bug was the least of our problems.

The financial crisis and the emerging debate on the roles of government, business and the citizen give us an opportunity to right some of those wrongs. Rethinking some of the fundamental tenets of infrastructure delivery might give us the opportunity to make amends for the thirty year consumption binge which many of our most industrialised nations have been on.

Consider where our biggest challenges lie. How we travel, how we engage with our workplace and the impact that this has on our cities. How we deal with waste and the scarcity of water. How we power our homes and offices. How we educate our children. How we assure our personal security. How we manage the impact of long distance mass transit vehicles. Whether economic migration and mobility throughout our lifetime is still a realistic option. How we expect to be cared for in our old age, considering how massively we have under-saved in our pensions.

Then ask yourself whether these problems can only be addressed by simply taking the current thinking and injecting it with a liberal cash boost, meaning that we end up with the same old solutions but that they look nicer and run more smoothly. Then ask yourself whether we could actually challenge some of the fundamental assertions which underpin current thinking; the reliance on the motor car, the acceptance that long distance travel must go hand in hand with single, high capacity vehicles, our dependence on electricity – to name but a few.

This demands some pretty clear-headed, long-term thinking. And this is where I find myself most concerned by the foreshortening of our time perspectives.

For example, faced with the prospect of exhausting of fossil fuels pretty soon, the popular clamour has been for renewable energy to start to fill the gap. Realistically, it won't but, by allowing us to feel that we've addressed the problem, it provides a short-term feel-good factor; akin to scraping that bug off the windscreen. It fails to ask the bigger question of how society engages with energy production or the manner in which we use energy. Ask yourself if you know just how much energy your fancy new flat-screen television uses.

There's a similar conundrum with transport. We are rightly concerned by the environmental impact of air travel. However, it appears that no-one dare challenge the assumption that transporting hundreds of people at a time in a single, high capacity, energy guzzling vehicle is the right thing to do.

Instead we fiddle with that bug on the screen by worrying ourselves with carbon footprints, jet technology and extra airport runways. Yet is there arguably more long-term value to be had from trying to solve the strange paradox of how it's relatively easy to jump from one continent to the next while millions of people every day struggle with a 10 or 20 mile commute to work?

Standing in a high rise US office block during the Northeast black-out of 2003, watching the lights go out all around me, the extent of our energy dependency could not have been made any clearer. People wanting to get home quickly rushed to gas stations only to realise that the pumps were powered by electricity. Like me, people holed up in darkened houses and apartments may have feared for our chances of a decent hot shower in the morning. I needn't have worried as age-old insulation ensured that water was still warm in the morning, despite the loss of our trusted electricity supply.

My point here is – do we obsess with how we avoid a repeat incident, focusing on reserve supplies, transmission grid capacity and efficiency or do we take some time to rethink our relationship with electricity, our dependence on it and our attitudes towards its availability?

If we go down the latter route, then innovation is key but I mean real, ground-breaking innovation - the likes of which brought us jet planes and the internet. Innovation nowadays is more likely to take the shape of a new subsidy structure or new taxes designed to alter consumer behaviour. 

When trying to ration a commodity in times of scarcity – as we find ourselves doing now with certain forms of energy – price, and its volatility, is no longer the prime determinant of consumer behaviour. The thinking behind pricing during scarcity is very different to the thinking behind pricing in a time of abundance.

We are too focused on what is directly in front of us and not on the horizon. The failure to appreciate this difference is indicative of an all-consuming focus on short term issues. If we price people out of the market for a diminishing commodity – let's use oil as an example – then we may feel we have slowed down the rate of consumption and that we have therefore triumphed. This buys us a few years but then the problem returns and we realise that, by now, we could have innovated our way to a solution which bought us a few more decades of time – if only we'd been bolder.

It's a bit like getting chest pains when you're aged 50 and finding an easy solution which will get you through to 52 or 53, instead of looking for the more difficult solution which will get you through to 80 or 90.

If we are to innovate our way out of our infrastructure difficulties, then we must look to the private sector as I'm afraid I just don't see the answers coming from government. Recent KPMG survey work  has highlighted how many people – public and private sector employees alike – believe that government effectiveness (or lack thereof) is one of the key barriers to implementing the required infrastructure improvements. 

It simply isn't an area of core competence as far as they're concerned. If we're looking for innovation and risk taking, it will likely come from the private sector.

There are grounds for optimism though. The way that the environmental movement – one of the great societal successes of the past 25 years in my view – has established itself and reminded people of the importance of conscious decision-making reassures me that we haven't all been sleepwalking our way through recent history.

The way in which the US government has pushed through healthcare reforms the likes of which we may never have thought possible is similarly encouraging. And across the Atlantic, a new British government is in place which promises sweeping reform at a time when the electorate is proving itself ever more willing to engage in the big policy debates.

All of this suggests to me that people are willing to embrace an era of bold conceptual thinking which sees us take greater responsibility for the world around us. It suggests that we may be in a position to challenge long-held vested interests or the assumption that great wealth implies even greater intelligence.

It may see us challenge the self-delusion which disfigures much of our infrastructure thinking. Are we in the state we're in because our roads were inefficient or our power transmission grid didn't work as it should? Or is it because we gorged our way through 30 years of natural resources with an outdated infrastructure framework and with no thought for where it might leave us?

There comes a time when you have to tell the lazy teenager that he really is lazy and should do something about it, rather than placating him with excuses about his genetic make-up and another token low calorie drink. My belief is that's where we're at in terms of our infrastructure thinking.

I think the next generation is already starting to look at things differently.  Part of the problem with our behaviour is that too many of our choices are based on habit and not on our actual needs. A younger colleague of mine was discussing the transportation options she considers when getting around her city. Depending on her purpose, and her weighing the trade-off between convenience and cost, she will either take her own car, public transportation, taxi, short term car rental or regional transit. This is a long way removed from many of us who simply jump into our cars without a second thought. By thinking first about utility and the impact of the value of time, we can make informed and fully conscious decisions about transportation, instead of just acting habitually.

I believe that now might be the time for someone to be truly bold; to aim cash, funding and resources at coming up with something truly revolutionary and to take our infrastructure down a completely new path.

I'm not suggesting that forging this new path will be easy, but the consequences of getting it wrong are too big to ignore. Consider the recent crises in the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.  Hopefully these tragedies can open the door to a new way of thinking about our relationship with oil, energy, transportation, infrastructure and risk. The real tragedy of this situation would be if we simply repair the damages and then go back to business as usual. We need to view events like this as opportunities to learn.

Our generation needs to leave behind a legacy of something other than an almighty mess to clear up. We need to make significant investments now, in terms of money and thought, to get us to where we need to be in the future. A revolutionary new ideology to support our future infrastructure development and delivery might just be the way. 

Steve Beatty is Head of Infrastructure Advisory for KPMG's Global Infrastructure practice in the Americas and a partner in KPMG in Canada.

The views and opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of KPMG International Cooperative or its member firms. All information provided is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity.

¹ The Changing Face of Infrastructure, KPMG International 2009-10 -

www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Pages/Changing-face-of-infrastructure-frontline-views1.aspx

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