Where Federal AEC Dollars Are Flowing

Virginia's position at the top of the rankings ($36.0B) reflects its status as the home of the largest concentration of defense contractors in the United States, not a surge in civilian road or bridge construction. The Electric Boat Columbia-class submarine program alone — a $24.3 billion engineering contract — puts Connecticut at $16.1 billion. Maryland's $21.5 billion total is similarly driven by the proximity of defense agencies to Washington, DC. Hawaii ($9.5 billion) and Alaska rank far above their populations would predict, because military base construction in INDOPACOM theater dwarfs any civilian equivalent.

California ($28.2 billion) and Texas ($17.5 billion) reflect a more genuine mix — both states have massive defense installations alongside large civilian populations driving IIJA highway, transit, and water spending. Arizona's $9.6 billion ranking is dominated by border barrier construction contracts, not traditional IIJA infrastructure. Firms evaluating where civilian construction opportunities are concentrated should weight Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Mountain West states more heavily than the raw state rankings suggest.

Engineering Services (NAICS 541330) accounts for $157.3 billion — roughly 45% of all tracked federal AEC spending. That number demands context: a substantial portion of this category consists of defense engineering contracts — submarine design, ICBM systems, space operations, missile defense — that are classified under engineering NAICS codes because that is the primary work performed, even though they bear little resemblance to a civil engineering firm winning a bridge contract. The category as reported by USAspending.gov conflates F-35 avionics engineering with a highway bridge engineering study.

Commercial and Institutional Building Construction (NAICS 236220) at $100.7 billion is the largest pure construction category and tells a cleaner civilian story. Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction (NAICS 237990) at $30.2 billion captures the broadest range of IIJA-driven work — levees, tunnels, marine construction, and infrastructure that does not fit neatly into highway or utility subcategories.

Examining the largest individual contract awards in the dataset confirms the defense skew. The top three awards alone — Electric Boat's $24.3B submarine design contract, Northrop Grumman's $10.0B ICBM services contract, and Raytheon's $5.7B engineering contract — total $40 billion, representing over 11% of all tracked AEC spending. All three are classified as engineering services and all three are defense programs with no direct relationship to civilian infrastructure.

The largest civilian construction award in the dataset is Southwest Valley Constructors' $1.86 billion border barrier contract in Tucson, Arizona. Fisher Sand & Gravel appears three times in the top awards — contracts in Arizona (two) and California totaling $4.43 billion — making border barrier work the single largest identifiable civilian construction program in the dataset by recipient concentration. Notably absent from the top awards list: traditional highway or bridge megaprojects, which tend to be funded through state DOTs via formula grants rather than direct federal contracts.