The “Build” phase challenges innovators to reimagine entire U.S. transportation system end-to-end.

Today the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) announced the launch of the final phase of the Infrastructure Vision 2050 Challenge, an incentivized competition sponsored by the trade association to solicit groundbreaking ideas and solutions that address some of the biggest challenges facing United States infrastructure.

Launched in January, the three-phased incentivized competition challenges a community of innovators to think in aspirational and disruptive ways to reimagine United States infrastructure components and systems. Following the conclusion earlier this year of the competition's first two phases, “Complain” and “Dream”, AEM designed the third phase, referred to as the “Build” phase, to create a system of transportation for the United States that will meet the needs of all users in 2050 and beyond.

“Seven months in, Infrastructure Vision 2050 Challenge innovators have submitted their most pressing complaints about U.S. infrastructure and dreamed up impressive solutions to those complaints,” explained AEM President Dennis Slater. “AEM is going back to this committed and innovative group of thinkers one more time to design and build a U.S. transportation system to dramatically improve upon what we have today – systems all across the country that are congested, crumbling, and inconsistent.”

Five finalists will be selected when submissions close in mid-January 2017 and will be featured at the CONEXPO-CON/AGG 2017 trade show's Tech Experience in March 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the show, the five finalists will pitch their plans to a panel of judges in front of a live audience. The grand prize winner will receive $50,000, the second place winner will receive $35,000, and the third prize winner will receive $15,000.

“These proof-of-concept solutions will start the conversation about what the future of our transportation infrastructure needs to look like,” Slater continued. “Whatever system or combination innovators can conceptualize that adds capacity, improves safety, increases efficiency, and reaches the greatest number of peoples are the ideas that we want to see.”

The Infrastructure Vision 2050 Challenge is part of a larger thought-leadership initiative launched by AEM last year that will develop a long-term, national vision for United States infrastructure.

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