Austin News

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act today, which aims to authorize the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to investigate and help prevent future critical structure failures, such as bridge collapses.

“Texas is home to a host of critical structures that facilitate smooth transportation and commerce while also safeguarding our cities and towns,” said Sen. Cornyn. “By authorizing the federal government’s premier physical science laboratory to investigate a broader range of structure failures, this legislation would help make bridges, levees, and dams across Texas and the nation safer.”

“America’s buildings are safer today thanks to the National Institute of Standards and Technology,” said Sen. Klobuchar. “By expanding their oversight authority to other critical structures like dams, levees, and dikes, this bipartisan legislation will prevent catastrophic infrastructure failures and save lives.”

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Chairman Frank Lucas (OK-03) and Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (CA-18) introduced the legislation in the House last month where it passed overwhelmingly.

As part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST is one of the nation’s oldest physical science laboratories. Following the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings during the September 11th terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush signed a law directing NIST to establish teams to investigate major building failures and issue reports on how to prevent similar incidents in the future. Currently, NIST is only authorized to conduct investigations into building structure failures but not bridge collapses or levee and dam failures.

The National Construction Safety Team Enhancement Act proposes replacing "buildings" with broader language throughout NIST’s authorization to enable it to investigate other critical infrastructure failures such as recent incidents involving bridges in Baltimore in March 2024 and Galveston, Texas in May 2024. These investigations are highly technical, conducted with state and local authorities' permission, ensuring efficiency by only initiating when engineering failures are present.