CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Contractors Association of West Virginia CEO Jason Pizatella wants people to remember the importance of roads in an era of exciting artificial intelligence announcements in the Mountain State.
Pizatella recently published an Op-Ed on that very topic. West Virginia has benefitted from several artificial intelligence investments lately, including a multi-billion-dollar pledge by Anthropic in Nscale’s Monarch Compute Campus in development in Mason County.
“What I wanted to do is to try to remind people that while the future infrastructure is awesome and amazing and is going to create thousands of jobs and opportunities throughout communities in West Virginia,” Pizatella said recently on MetroNews “Midday,” “we also can’t take our sights off of the traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges, asphalt pavement, things that the citizens of West Virginia and those who visit here need every single day to get from point A to point B safely.”
Pizatella said more money is needed to keep West Virginia’s roads, bridges, and overall transportation system operating smoothly for years to come. He said that state Transportation Secretary Todd Rumbaugh would likely agree with his assessment.
“If I had a magic wand and could just wave it, we would need several hundred million dollars more per year annually to just keep up with the existing demand to keep our transportation system in a way that everyone can be proud of; that’s safe and will be robust for long times into the future,” Pizatella said.
Pizatella said that the Contractors Association of WV is committed to furthering that mission. He said it’s natural to get swept away by such flashy AI announcements, but people should remember what’s most important at the end of the day.
“My goal was to say, look, ‘all of this is really exciting, but let’s not forget the traditional bread and butter, so to speak, in the infrastructure world,'” Pizatella said. “At least we as contractors like to think about it. That is the stuff that people rely on every day, like roads and bridges, that they may not necessarily think about until it’s missing, or until it’s damaged or until there’s something else wrong with it.”
Pizatella’s Op-Ed reported that more than 1,000 bridges statewide have at least one component rated in ‘poor condition.’ He said that between the Roads to Prosperity and the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act efforts, there has been significant progress, but there’s still work to do.
“West Virginia has one of the most aggressive bridge inspection programs in the United States that we’re extremely proud of,” Pizatella said. “Doesn’t mean they’re unsafe, but it does mean that there may be something about it that is just either uncomfortable for the driver or uncomfortable for the people who have to maintain it.”
Pizatella said that state and federal policymakers have their attention on dealing with the future of such work with the expiration of the Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act in at the end of September.
Artificial intelligence can serve an important role in the contractors’ realm, Pizatella said, and it already has.
“While AI can’t build a bridge or pave a road or install a water line, what AI is doing for us is it’s trying to make the industry smarter and more efficient,” Pizatella explained. “Everything from taking a thousand-page document that’s a set of plans about how the state wants the bridge to be built; it would take several people, sometimes hours, days, maybe a week, to go through those plans. Now AI is helping us work smarter and can do something within a couple hours.”
Pizatella said it’s increasing the contractors’ efficiency and ultimately improving the value for taxpayers.
A major project is moving forward in the Capital City, with crossover work underway on the Carter Bridge. The $74 million rehabilitation project, which will follow the crossover work, is set to take up the majority of 2027. Pizatella expressed enthusiasm about how that project will turn out.
“I know the short-term inconvenience of the Eugene Carter Bridge construction will be just that for some people, inconvenient,” Pizatella said. “But it’s going to be a really an amazing facility when it’s done and it’s going to last for the next 50 years. People will be really proud of that, I’m sure.”