Construction Bills: Recent Changes to Construction Laws

• Pages: 56-58
• Date: 01 April 2025
• Published date: 01 April 2025
• Author: Brandon R. Clark,Daniel D. Rounds
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

Published in The Construction Lawyer Volume 44, Number 2, ©2025 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with

permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any

means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association.

Forum on Construction Law The Construction Lawyer Spring 2025

56

CONSTRUCTION BILLS: RECENT

CHANGES TO CONSTRUCTION LAWS

By Brandon R. Clark and Daniel D. Rounds

Brandon R. Clark is counsel in the Chicago, Illinois, office of Saul Ewing LLP and Daniel D. Rounds is

counsel in the Tysons Corner, Virginia, office of Haynes and Boone, LLP.

Out With The Old, In With the New: A Flurry of Recent Executive Orders May Greatly

Affect the Construction Industry

New presidential administrations inevitably bring change. But the scale of change brought about by the

urry of Executive Orders issued by the Trump administration in its rst days is unprecedented in recent

memory. While not law, Executive Orders have signicant inuence on how the federal government

operates as they express the policy of the president.1 Many of the recently issued Executive Orders express

a desire by the new administration to break from past practices in signicant ways, many of which could

affect government contracting and funding practices.2 How long these changes will last and the form they

will ultimately take are uncertain, but the immediate reality is that they represent a rapidly developing

environment for the construction industry, particularly for those performing federally funded construction

contracts. The following is a summary of several Executive Orders issued in the rst days of the new

Trump administration in January 2025 and how they might affect the construction industry.

• Executive Order 14153: Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential.3 Citing Alaska’s

“abundant and largely untapped supply of natural resources,” this Order establishes a policy aimed

at “efciently and effectively maximiz[ing] the development and production of the natural resources

located on both Federal and State lands within Alaska.” This policy includes, among other things,

expediting permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska and prioritizing

the development of Alaska’s liquied natural gas (LNG) potential. To do so, the Order directs,

among other things, the recission of regulations inconsistent with this policy and the prioritization

of permitting for LNG pipelines and infrastructure projects. The Order emphasizes the importance

of Alaskan development to national security and directs the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil

Works, under the direction of the Secretary of the Army, to “immediately review, revise, or rescind

any agency action that may in any way hinder, slow or otherwise delay any critical project in the

State of Alaska.”

This Order indicates a significant shift in policy regarding Alaskan development and may present

opportunities for the construction industry in developing LNG infrastructure and other public works

projects in Alaska.

• Executive Order 14154: Unleashing American Energy.4 This Executive Order is focused on pro-

moting domestic energy production and development of available natural resources throughout the

country. Several sections of this Executive Order could impact the construction industry signicantly:

»Section 4 provides that any contract awarded under any of 12 specically enumerated climate

change initiatives from the Biden administration “shall be terminated for convenience, or

otherwise, as quickly as permissible under the law.”