Delays dog 'shovel ready' projects in Trump's infrastructure plan

New York

US President Donald Trump reassured manufacturers gathered in the White House Roosevelt room on March 31 that a massive infrastructure programme was coming soon.

"We're going to make it happen" this year, he said, according to Drew Greenblatt, the president of Marlin Steel in Baltimore, who was present. "That was actually the first thing that he talked about behind closed doors with us," Mr Greenblatt added.

But putting a trillion-dollar infrastructure programme to work could be easier said than done, as some of the projects suggested to the administration underscore.

Project lists submitted by the North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU) and by an outside developer who helped with the transition both contain projects that infrastructure builders call "shovel ready". But, for a range of reasons, shovel ready does not always mean ready for shovels to break ground. That means any effort to jump-start projects, put people…