The next P3 wave runs through Washington

The P3 market's center of gravity is moving from the state procurement office to the Capitol, and P3 Bulletin's latest issue makes the case with three Washington moves: an industry body arguing Congress holds the key to a new federal P3 plan, senators introducing legislation to expand infrastructure financing tools, and a Squires P3 veteran taking up a Washington leadership post. The personnel move suggests the industry is positioning for a federal push as much as lobbying for one, and for all the issue's diplomatic framing, the message is blunt: the next wave of US P3s runs through Washington.

The shift lands as road deals stall, and, as this publication has argued, road deals cede the P3 center to water, rail and federal tools. Tennessee has picked a Choice Lanes winner, but Charlotte's I-77 remains stuck, and sponsors have been gravitating to assets with fewer veto points. The same issue that carries the Washington news also carries John Laing's first US water investment and USDOT's plan to mirror Penn Station at Union Station, both quiet assets a long way from another highway fight.

Even as the US ledger tilts toward study, the Latin American pipeline is still producing: Peru continues to drive the regional market as other pipelines wane, and the same issue logs a green light for a $290 million Colombia highway P3 and a winner for a major Brazil highways concession. The US side, in those same pages, is heavy on feasibility studies and engagement sessions — a Tennessee DOT eyeing a 'transformational' deal, a Texas rail link progressing after a study, Ontario planning transit-oriented outreach.

The Squires hire is the tell, because a P3 veteran moving into a Washington leadership post is the kind of move an industry makes when it expects a federal program to require a permanent presence rather than a periodic lobbying visit. That expectation, if correct, would make the federal government a dealmaker instead of a backstop, and if Congress delivers, the next generation of P3 leadership will be split between project shops and Washington offices.

The trade is right: state-by-state procurement has proven slow and politically fragile, and a federal program with clear financing tools would let sponsors price political risk differently than they do in county-by-county fights. The underlying case is the same: sponsors are not short of capital; they are short of consent, and a federal financing toolkit cannot manufacture consent but can reprice political risk enough to make consent easier to buy. The Senate bill is worth watching on one specific — whether it pairs tools with money, because authorization without appropriation would turn the key in an empty lock.