Key industry relationships and initiatives highlighted
at CIRI Fall Dinner Meeting.
RIDOT Director Alviti delivered keynote address at November 20 event.
CIRI President D’Ambra
The semi-annual CIRI dinner meetings are a valuable opportunity to review recent industry progress and discuss current issues on the local, regional and national levels. At the 2024 Fall Dinner Meeting at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, President Mike D’Ambra began his opening welcome with a summary of CIRI’s overall mission, while citing the diverse ways CIRI helps members to grow, to improve our state’s infrastructure, and to advance the industry at large.
Peter Alviti, Jr. P.E.
Director of RIDOT
RIDOT Director Alviti
Director Alviti provided a big-picture recap of the achievements of the state’s RhodeWorks program to date — and spoke to the enabling spirit of partnership between RIDOT and CIRI — while looking ahead to imminent challenges on the horizon.
“When we started RhodeWorks 10 years ago, we made some deliberate decisions to not only reform RIDOT in the way we did business,” Alviti said. “But also to reform the way we view the contracting industry, the consulting engineering professions and the labor force with organized labor. (While looking at) how the four of us could all come together to create a new program with new funding, and new delivery methods to get projects done that had been lingering for decades.”
While commending CIRI’s leaders and member companies for their partnering spirit and perseverance, Alviti paralleled the groundbreaking RhodeWorks program with the subsequent federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
“If you think about it, RhodeWorks was really the four-year predecessor,” he explained. “We actually implemented a mini IIJA here in Rhode Island,” Alviti said. “Without your support, and without your membership’s support, we absolutely would not have been here today talking about this.”
A key component of the program’s success, Alviti said, was the initial creation of a 10-year plan. In addition to providing a solid rationale to garner support among RI legislators, our congressional delegation and even the Washington administrations, the plan enabled RIDOT to begin using IIJA funding within two months after it was announced and began to be released.
RWU team member Sal Cicale recaps the
Heavy Civil competition experience.
Now in the final year of the 10-year plan, Alviti then offered perspectives on what needs to take place going forward to ensure continued and reliable funding as the IIJA program enters its final two years. The overarching goal: to avoid the pre-RhodeWorks scenario of cyclical funding and project availability that was prevalent in Rhode Island in previous years.
“Our transportation system is the foundation of economic development,” Alviti concluded. “It’s the foundation of safe travel … and it’s the foundation of creating jobs and wealth for people who live and work in our state. I promise my team at RIDOT will continue to foster the same partnership we’ve had, and to continue to develop the strategies that have made us all successful.”
RWU Student Competition Team Presentation
The Fall Dinner Meeting event also featured a presentation by the first place award-winning Heavy Civil student competition team from Roger Williams University. Read more about the details of the team’s success in this article — which is also featured on Page 10 of our Spring 2025 Rhodework Review news publication.
RWU Heavy Civil team members and faculty advisors who attended the CIRI Fall Dinne
