Business View Magazine | December 2019

128 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2019 opportunity to get better performance and higher quality and also, maybe, reduced cost. So, they rescinded that rule, which opened things up. And it leaves decisions up to engineers to decide whether something is going to be used to perform the functions that it’s laid out to do. So, everybody wins with this.” By all appearances, AIT’s lobbying was extremely effective. Not only were laws changed, but Svoboda picked up some heavy hitters along the way. Gregory Nadeau, head of the Federal Highway Administration in the Obama administration joined the company’s Board of Directors; and the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Victor Mendez, as well as several secretaries of U.S. states, have joined its advisory board, “because they realized this is a great idea,” Svoboda avers. “We’ve all come to the same conclusion: we can’t keep building bridges that rust out and corrode and take a lot of maintenance. We can’t keep doing things over and over and expect different results. There’s got to be a better way. The country has been calling for building things that last longer. We can build a bridge that lasts 100-150 years and we can’t build anything less than that.” Thus, according to Svoboda’s reckoning, the company has finally hit an “inflection point.” “We’re raising capital and we’re about to hire somewhere between 40 and 50 salespeople over the next two or three years, and then 20-25 engineers and, of course, operational people as we build our bridges. We have a strategic partner building with us in Buffalo, NY to handle the Midwest, and we’re in negotiations with groups in the south and groups in the west to also come up with additional strategic partners that will be able to build our technology on a more regional basis.” So, it’s all systems go at AIT Bridges. “The company is finally at a point, with enough market awareness, acceptance, and approvals for utilization of this innovative technology, that we now need all those salespeople and