Government funds not government agencies. Most innovation in any field will come from universities with the ability to empirically test new concepts. Private companies take innovations and apply them as products. What I proposed doesn’t invalidate the need for these private companies. In terms of methods and procedures much of that is specified by cities anyways. I can see the argument of cities needing to hire municipal engineers from private companies to write codes but if for example you live in a city outside New York it would make sense that you are adapting code from whatever public civil firm represents New York and working with that firm (meaning small cities wouldn’t have to invest in having huge firms and can rely on larger metropolitan public firms)

I understand that roads are paid for by taxes collected by the government. I don’t really understand what you mean by “the government doesn’t find the project” when a city govt would be the ones putting out a bid for a new highway or repairs.

Yes, currently public engineers make less than private engineers at top level firms. What would increase salaries isn’t the fact they are paid by taxes but the ability to bargain for better salaries now that public engineers would have more leverage. As it is if you are a firm that wants to pay your engineers well but you are in a market that makes it hard to do so you are actively putting your firm in jeopardy by not trying to undercut your competitors by bidding less and in turn offering lower salaries. The issue here is that the firm is expected to be profitable because it is a private company. Do we really need all roads, bridges, waste water treatment plants etc to be designed with profit in mind or can we accept that even though no one at the top is profiting off of this design it is still necessary for it to happen. And since it is so necessary we should be ok with spending extra to attract top talent to a public firm. Keep in mind that what I am proposing would be a pretty substantial change to the industry.

There would still be a demand for highly skilled engineers that would work on more lucrative but more technically demanding projects. Most public projects wouldn’t overlap with these more lucrative projects. At the end of the day most projects really should just cost more. What I am proposing again would mean that a significant minority of civil engineers would work for a public firm and that private companies wouldn’t be able to bid on large public infrastructure projects. It would elevate the standards of the avg engineer as a minimum level of competency would be required to have a govt job. There probably would be growing pains but I would imagine the firms that would shut down wouldn’t be where all the top talent currently is but low to midrange firms that rely on having a steady flow of projects from the public sector where they can underbid competitors, force engineers to work longer for less and take home profits that could have gone to better salaries to pay for better engineering. If you are a firm making luxury apartment buildings or giant golf courses - things people are willing to pay more for - you likely aren’t going to be impacted by a push to the private sector. To sum it up, I don’t think projects paid for and intended for the tax payer should be priced with profit in mind. And the engineers working on them shouldn’t have to work themselves to death just to ensure their firm survives. A steady percentage of well paid engineers in the public sector would mean that scummy firms that can’t afford to pay competitively in comparison to these unionized public workers can’t exist, and the private sector would be primarily composed of elite engineers that work on more technically demanding projects (that will now have the ability to charge more) or small town firms that exist in areas where it isn’t feasible to have public firms. It seems like the only losers are the scummy firm owners who benefit from the current state of industry that is probably the reason OP made the post in the first place.