Construction Week: CM Selected for St. Louis Football Stadium; New Offshore Drilling Rules
Hunt Construction Named CM for New St. Louis Football Stadium
The St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority has chosen the joint venture of Hunt Construction Group and Clayco to be the construction manager for a new football stadium in downtown St. Louis. The joint venture, known as HCKL, also includes KAI Design and Build and the Legacy Building Group. In addition, the Kwame Building Group will provide project management support services. Construction of the new stadium will provide 5,000 construction jobs over the next four years.
North Carolina Passes $3-Billion Bond for Highways and Schools
North Carolina voters will go to the polls in November to consider issuing a total of $3 billion in bonds to finance the construction of roads, government and educational facilities, and technology infrastructure. The proposed highway bond would provide the North Carolina Dept. of Transportation (NCDOT) with $1.5 billion to fund nearly 30 "permit-ready" road projects that have completed environmental documents.
The $300-million eastern segment of the I-74 Northern Beltway in Winston-Salem tops the list of candidate projects. Other leading projects include the I-40/I-77 interchange improvements in Statesville ($173 million) and completion of the widening of U.S. Route 401 to four lanes between Raleigh and Louisburg ($60 million).
The $1.5-billion infrastructure-bond proposal includes higher-education projects: a science, technology and mathematics facility at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee ($115 million); a new College of Engineering building at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro ($99.1 million); and a new facility for the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at Appalachian State University in Boone ($70.8 million).
New Rules for Offshore Drilling
The U.S. Dept. of the Interior has released proposed regulations that would strengthen design requirements and operational procedures for well-control equipment used in offshore oil and gas operations. The proposal, published in the April 15 Federal Register, comes in the wake of various investigations and reports that were undertaken following the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April 2010, according to the Interior Dept. The proposal would implement many of the recommendations from these analyses, including a 2012 National Academy of Engineering report and the 2011 National Oil Spill Commission's conclusions.
The rule proposes both prescriptive and performance-based standards to improve equipment reliability and build upon enhanced industry standards for blowout preventers and blowout-prevention technologies. Some of the requirements include reforms in well design, well control, casing, cementing, real-time well monitoring and subsea containment. In addition to more stringent design requirements, the proposed rule requires improved controls of all repair and maintenance activities through the life cycle of the blowout preventer and other well-control equipment, DOI officials say.
