Concrete-makers, doctors, utility companies and engineers will be among the winners, locally and nationally, when the $789 billion congressional stimulus package begins dumping capital into the declining American economy.

Experts say we shouldn't expect an instant turnaround from the industries that have been hit hardest by the yearlong recession -- home building, manufacturing, commercial construction and automaking. Some of those jobs will be gone for good, and the ones that return won't return for some time, because of the lag between spending and job creation.

But for all the grousing about how the bill doesn't go far enough (Democrats), or goes too far (Republicans), there will be plenty of companies eager to cash in on what is one of the single largest spending packages in American history, outside of the annual federal budget.

Some of the local companies that stand to benefit:

Michael Baker Corp. The Moon engineering outfit has been monitoring the stimulus plan, watching the dollar amounts fluctuate and advising clients on their construction wish lists.

"Infrastructure is our business," and water ($6 billion) and transportation ($46 billion) infrastructure are two areas that are clearly carved into the stimulus package, said Michael Baker spokesman David Higie.

"Bottom line, is this something that will benefit Baker? Yes? [But] more importantly, it's going to benefit the country. We need better infrastructure," he said.

Michael Baker also deals in the homeland security sector, which will get $2.8 billion.

U.S. Steel Corp. Highways, bridges, schools and power plants all need steel. The stimulus bill's "Buy American" clause -- the one that says most of the steel purchased with federal stimulus funds will be made in America -- is certainly controversial, having been panned by business groups and economists as protectionist. But just as certainly, it's a clause that was favored by U.S. Steel, as well as its unionized work force.

UPMC, West Penn Allegheny, and the physicians in their networks. One of the biggest bonuses to survive the stimulus bill's final cut is a payment that will go to doctors who can show that they've computerized their medical-records systems. Many experts in the field say there are lives to be saved -- as well as time and money -- if doctors and hospitals can go to an electronic record-keeping system. Physicians could get federal bonuses of up to $64,000 for e-records system, something that will help defray the sometimes prohibitive cost of making the change.

"Moving toward electronic health records is a mechanism that will help ensure better quality" of care, said Michael Strazzella, vice president of federal relations for the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

But he said hospitals were concerned about stimulus language that would impose a Medicare reimbursement penalty on physicians and hospitals that aren't using e-records in the next five years.

Of the $87 billion that will be spent to help states with Medicaid, $4 billion of that will go to Pennsylvania, and that money eventually will trickle down to hospitals in the form of reimbursements. Teaching hospitals -- UPMC's among them -- also will get a break, as the bill contains a provision blocking a Medicare payment reduction that was to take effect this year.

dck worldwide. From roads to airports to schools to prisons to any other public works project you can think of, dck worldwide (you might remember them as Dick Corp.) builds it. The company's business development team is expecting a frenzied competition for the procurement requests that will be hitting the marketplace in coming months.

"There is clearly more money" in the system, said Paul Spence, dck's vice president of commercial business development. "The flip side of that is, a lot of the commercial construction entities are going to be looking into the public sector to do that work," since commercial work is so slow now.

Mr. Spence was recently at a federal pre-bid conference out West (a pre-bid conference is where firms go to learn more about the projects they might be bidding on) and noticed that the room was more crowded than usual. "There were plenty of people of the room who clearly had not done work in the public sector before," he said.

Mr. Spence also said dck would be "bird-dogging" the stimulus bill's $800 million corrections earmark, and the extra billion dollars slated for airport security and runway extensions.

Howard Hanna. Housing experts say that the market won't rebound nationally for some time. But in Pittsburgh, the housing market has been stable and foreclosures limited, meaning Realtors here are more worried about pumping up listings, not sales price. The stimulus bill should help there, as first-time home buyers are poised to receive a tax credit of $7,500, and it doesn't require repayment over time.

That was well short of the $15,000 credit that home sellers were hoping for, but in a low-cost market like Pittsburgh, it might be enough to boost sales.

"The nice part about the $7,500 number is that it encourages the entry-level buyer," said Helen Hanna Casey, president of Howard Hanna. "If they buy a house, the next level up is able to buy their houses," rippling through the market.

More important to the housing market than the first-time buyer's credit, she said, is the overall job creation the stimulus hopes to effect. Job security means people are more likely to bid on houses. An improved economy will help allay the "fear factor" -- people who are afraid to put their homes on the market because of the tumbling sales prices nationally. That fear factor has led to a listing decline of 20 percent, she said.

Small telecom companies. The final version of the stimulus bill included $7.2 billion in grants to increase broadband Internet access in rural and under-served urban markets. Utilities have been promising for years to deploy high-speed Internet across America, and they've been pushed to do so by consumer advocates, who say that high-speed Internet is not a luxury, but a necessity for education and commerce.

It's unclear exactly how or when those grants will be deployed, though. Some of it will be steered through the U.S. Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the rest through the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service arm.

What is clear is that the latest version of the stimulus bill provides grant money to local governments that want to build their own wireless and broadband networks. That doesn't lock giants such as Verizon and AT&T out of the bidding, but it throws the competition open to smaller, local telecoms.

Verizon had stood to gain much more in an earlier version of the stimulus bill, but a $1.6 billion tax credit for broadband deployment in low-income areas was removed from the final draft.

"Yes, we think credits are good policy, too, and [two labor groups] predicted the credits in the Senate-passed bill would have created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and increased our global competitiveness," said David Fish, Verizon's national public policy director.

But in a big-picture sense, "Congress is focusing on the power of broadband to stimulate the economy. ... That's very important."