David Bellerive

Let’s Talk About What We Build

June 12, 2025 · 2 min read

Sometimes, there are questions that keep your mind going. They linger in the background, shape how you think, what you notice, and the choices you make. For a while, I’ve had one of my own:

What can I do to ensure more infrastructure gets built in a responsible, sustainable, and human-oriented way?

It sounds like a simple question (just get involved!), but the path to answering it isn’t. I’m not an engineer, nor a politician. My professional journey has often seemed to head in the opposite direction, one shaped by institutional complexities, policy frameworks, and behind-the-scenes systems.

Surround me with people in hard hats and hi-vis vests, and you’ll instantly spot the one who came from an office job, not a job site!

Then it hit me.

What makes any project successful isn’t just technical skill or political will.
It’s trust. Coordination. Credibility. Care.

It’s a coalition: a variety of people with complementary, but valuable, perspectives all aligned to a common goal: creating the best outcome and delivering for everyone.

That’s the space where I can truly contribute: the in-between.
Where ambition meets accountability. Where systems meet stories. Where delivery meets meaning.

To help bring those ideas together, I’ve launched my own website: dbellerive.ca. It’s a central hub for the projects I’m working on, the questions I’m asking, and the ideas I’m exploring. While most of my writing will live here on Substack, the website ties it all together.

A little about me

My love story with infrastructure has been one for the ages.

As far back as I can remember, there has always been something fascinating about how hidden it is, and yet how transformative and human-centered it can be.

And it’s not just about trains or massive capital projects.

There’s beauty in all of it, even when it’s not always obvious at first glance.

Unconsciously, those interests have shaped most of my academic path. I’m currently pursuing an MBA here in Ottawa: not to start my own business or become the next Steve Jobs, but to use the skills I have developed for years, and continue to refine every day, in order to build and help support a better world.

What to expect here

This Substack is meant to be a melting pot of reflections, ideas, and questions about infrastructure, passenger rail, the built environment, and the policies that link them all together.

From editorials to essays, I want to share a genuine approach to these topics, sometimes through humor, deep dives, or on-site observations.

Regardless of how, the goal will always be the same: to approach these topics with honesty, curiosity, and a belief that how we build, and how we talk about what we build, matters.

This is just the beginning.

I’ll be using this space to go deeper on the themes I care about: transit, infrastructure, urban systems, and public trust.

I plan to post regularly-ish (enough to stay sharp, but not enough to clog your inbox), and I hope you’ll join me for the ride.

Whether you’re deep in the world of infrastructure or just infra-curious, I hope you’ll find something here that sparks the same curiosity that’s guided my work so far.

Thanks for being here. I can’t wait to share more thoughts and ideas with you all.

— David