From Foxnews.com on Senator Obama's Saturday morning radio address: "President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he wants to revive the economy through a job-creating public works plan on a scale unseen since the building program of the interstate highway system in the 1950s." The article went on to say that the future President wants to have the bill passed by Congress and on his desk ready to sign when he takes office on January 20. If this comes to pass the program will provided a much needed stimulus for new jobs and economic recovery. But we are investors looking for good investment ideas, so I wanted to put out some infrastructure plays that a forward thinking investor would want to research.

In the ETF world, pure infrastructure plays are surprisingly tough to come by. A couple that claim to be infrastructure funds are closer to utility funds with up to 80% of their holdings in utility stocks. Others are more globally focused from the historical times of 8 months ago when global infrastructure was a hot investment topic. I found three ETF's that the interested investor can use to participate in the infrastructure sector:

--The iShares S&P Global Infrastructure Index Fund NYSE:IGF, has been in existence since December 2007 and has $125 million in assets. 40% of the fund are in utilities and 28% of the assets are U.S. based companies.

--PowerShares Dynamic Building & Construction Portfolio NYSE:PKB, has been around since October 2005 but has only $14 million in assets. The portfolio is 100% U.S. based companies and the top sectors are construction engineering (35%), machinery (23%) and building materials (14%).

--First Trust ISE Global Engineering and Construction Index Fund NYSE:FLM, first traded on 10/13/2008 and has less than $3 million in assets. The fund has no utilities and is 95% industrial companies and 5% energy stocks. At the date of inception 24.5% of the assets were U.S. based companies.

If you prefer individual stocks, here is a list of companies that are considered most likely to benefit from increased infrastructure spending.

--Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE:CAT), Market cap: $23 billion, P/E: 6.3, Dividend yield: 4.4%.

--Chicago Bridge & Iron Company (NYSE:CBI), Market cap: $900 million, P/E: N/A, Dividend yield: N/A.

--Fluor Corporation (NYSE:FLR), Market cap: $8.2 billion, P/E: 10.4, Dividend yield: 1.1%.

--Granite Construction Inc. (NYSE:GVA), Market cap: $1.75 billion, P/E: 16.5, Dividend yield: 1.1%

--Jacobs Engineering Group (NYSE:JEC), Market cap: $5.1 billion, P/E: 12.5, Dividend yield: N/A.

--McDermott International Inc. (NYSE:MDR), Market cap: $1.8 billion, P/E: 3.4, Dividend yield: N/A.

--URS Corp. (NYSE:URS), Market cap: $3.0 billion, P/E: 14.3, Dividend yield: N/A.

The bulk of these companies are in the construction engineering field and provide services to multiple industries. I would dig into their businesses and determine what percentage of revenues come from the road, bridges and other stateside projects that the President-elect is talking about.  The news article I read stated that state and local governments have over 5,000 highway projects that just need to be funded. That reads like a lot of opportunity to me.