Shovel ready

In politics, a shovel ready construction project (usually larger-scale infrastructure) is where planning and engineering is advanced enough that—with sufficient funding—construction can begin within a very short time. The term was popularized by then-U.S. president-elect Obama in 2008.

In 2010, then-U.S. president Obama declared he had come to realize that there is "no such thing as shovel-ready projects."^[1][2]

The term was first used in print in 1995.^[3]

Writing for The Washington Post, writer Manuel Roig-Franzia sardonically suggested that the phrase did not exist and had never before been used until President-Elect Barack Obama used it during an interview with Meet the Press on 6 December 2008.^[4][5] Obama used the phrase to describe infrastructure projects that were ready to immediately receive stimulus funding of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.^[6]

Later, other commentators suggested the phrase denoted projects which were able to begin construction within a specific time-frame of three or four months^[7] on a use it or lose it basis.

Having originated in the United States, the term is now used generally in reference to projects which are candidates for economic stimulus spending: money put into a shovel ready project will have a more immediate impact on the economy than money spent on a project on which a great deal of time must elapse for architecture, zoning, legal considerations or other such factors before labor can be deployed on it.^{[citation needed]}

In Iowa, the Seven County Corridor Alliance (Benton County, Cedar County, Iowa County, Johnson County, Jones County, Linn County and Washington County) established a Shovel Ready Certification Program to certify projects as shovel ready that will be added to a local, regional and statewide inventory of sites with similar qualifications and will be strongly marketed.^[8]

The Georgia Department of Transportation has established specific criteria projects must meet to be considered shovel ready including National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) clearances and relevant property acquisition requirements.^[9]

In Australia, the term is also used in relation to stimulus funding, specifically funding programs like the Building the Education Revolution (BER) program.^[10] In 2009, the term shovel-ready won the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year award.^[11]

In the United Kingdom, the phrase has been used on a number of occasions by Vincent De Rivaz, the Chief Executive of EDF Energy, in the context of a proposed new nuclear power station in Somerset.^[12][13][14]

As in the rest of the United Kingdom, in Scotland, the phrase is used in a similar context. For example, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment, Alex Neil, used the term in March 2012 to describe the status of 36 infrastructure projects on a list handed to the government of the United Kingdom for potential funding.^[15]