A team of 66 employees of McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. teamed up with Clark Construction and three subcontractor partners recently to raise over $5,000 for military members and their families in the annual 10-K World Famous Mud Run at the Camp Pendleton Base north of Oceanside. The Clark/McCarthy team captured fourth place out of 293 in the Mixed Division, placed number 14 out of 70 in the Female Division, and ran away with three of the top five spots in the Corporate Division, including a fourth place overall. The Clark/McCarthy team also had the highest number of participants of any
A key green element to the just-opened 13-floor, $190-million San Francisco Public Utilities Commission headquarters is its water management system, called the Living Machine. According to the project’s designers, KMD Architects & Stevens Architects, the building will consume 60% less water than similarly sized buildings. The advanced gray-water and black-water system was developed by Worrell Water Technologies, Charlottesville, Va. The SFPUC headquarters at 525 Golden Gate is one of the first urban office buildings to use the system, satisfying 100% of the water demand for the building’s low-flow toilets and urinals. The Living Machine system, along with faucet sensors, on-demand
Crews from the Southland Tutor Perini JV met underground recently at the completion of one of four tunnel headings that comprise the New Irvington Tunnel project, a 3.5-mi component of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s $4.6 billion Water System Improvement Program (WSIP) to repair, replace, and seismically upgrade the Hetch Hetchy Water System’s aging pipelines, reservoirs and dams. Related Links: View the 'Hole Through' YouTube Video WSIP includes more than 80 projects spanning seven counties from the Called a “hole-through” in tunneling terminology, the road header teams from the Irvington Portal in Fremont and the Vargas Shaft 4,500 ft away
On the same day the California Department of Transportation used a live public Webinar to defend its safety testing of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge tower foundation, the newspaper that started a safety controversy, The Sacramento Bee, refused Caltrans’ request to retract its most recent story. Related Links: Questions Arise About Builder's Work on Bay Bridge Foundation Caltrans Calls on Newspaper To Retract Critical Bay Bridge Story Caltrans’ acting director Malcolm Dougherty sent a letter June 7 to Joyce Terhaar, executive editor of the Bee, requesting an immediate retraction of a May 27 story (“Records Raise Doubts on Bay
Question: What is “mechanics lien law,” what is it based on and where is it found? Answer: Mechanics lien law is intended to protect those unpaid for improvements to real property against the owner’s unjust enrichment and consists of a series of statutes that provide remedies with regard to payment for improvements to real property. These remedies include lien rights, a right to attach construction funds, a bond remedy and remedies relating to prompt payment. In California, the mechanics lien is a constitutional right, but the statutory right existed even before the constitutional right. Most recently, it was contained in
A new pilot program system designed to target an increase in water savings and crop output has captured the interest of several agencies and regional water districts. The system serves a portion of the South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID) in California’s Central Valley near Ripon. Local growers using the system utilize a combination of mobile technology and “airline-ticketing-style” online tools to schedule individualized water deliveries, according to Danny Craig, a spokesman for Stantec, the project’s consulting engineer and construction manager. Stantec provided mechanical, civil, structural, electrical, the Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA)
Facing allegations in a recent Sacramento Bee story that there were serious flaws in foundation testing that threatened the safety and integrity of the new east span of the Bay Bridge, Caltrans director Malcolm Dougherty called on the newspaper to retract the story. Related Links: Records Raise Doubts on Bay Bridge Concrete Caltrans Open to Outside Experts Reviewing New Bay Bridge In a letter to Sacramento Bee executive editor Joyce Terhaar on Friday, June 8, Dougherty outlines the “major flaws” in the May 27 story by reporter Charles Piller and calls on the paper to “set the record straight.” Caltrans
The city of San Diego's controversial Proposition A – a measure to ban the use of project labor agreements (PLAs) in public works projects not linked to federal or state funding – passed easily in Tuesday's election. Related Links: Project Labor Agreements Are At Issue Again in California For the next six months, “nothing will change except city-funded projects will not be subjected to forced PLAs and city contracts will start to be posted online,” says Jim Ryan, executive vice president of Associated General Contractors of San Diego.But on Jan. 1, 2013, state Senate Bill 829, approved by the legislature
Nearly 20 months before the December 2010 groundbreaking for the massive University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, members of the design and construction team gathered at the project's site in the Mission Bay neighborhood to map out a plan of attack. Their goal: to win a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold rating—a rare achievement for a hospital—for the 878,000-sq-ft complex. Related Links: Engineering News Record Architectural Record The team brought together about 100 key players, including the project's general contractor, architects, engineers, construction-management advisers and 13 subcontractors, to produce a plan to integrate lean construction methods, implement
A California seismic-retrofit mandate for hospitals has produced a wave of major projects over the past several years, giving a welcome lift to the state's architectural and engineering firms. But as the program's first major deadline draws near, the wave of hospital work has receded. To cope with the decline in the health care sector, many A/E firms are branching out to new regions or offering a wider range of services to potential clients. Related Links: Top Design Firms 2011 Architectural Record Combined revenue for this year's top 10 design firms rose a modest 2.6% over the total for last
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