Nearly 800 students from 22 high schools across the Greater Bay Area attended the 2011 Bay Area Construction Career Awareness Day, hosted by Skanska USA Civil West. Students had an opportunity to explore construction post-secondary education and career paths and related hands-on activities at over 40 exhibits. New to CCAD this year was an orientation assembly that incorporated information on construction careers, and was presented by students from Chico State’s AGC student chapter, Josh Payne and Sy Harrell. Also new were two Skanska-sponsored demonstrations. The first was a series of safety stations that had students learning about construction safety related
Even though tablets and smart phones are spreading onto construction jobsites at a swift pace, chief financial officers from major A/E/C firms say technology purchases must come with solid returns on investment as part of that adoption. This was one of many technology issues highlighted during the two-day ENR FutureTech conference held by McGraw-Hill Construction in San Francisco this week. Two panel discussions, “Chief Information Officer Roundtable” and “IT from the CFO Perspective,” on Dec. 13 reinforced the industry-wide movement to bring information technology to the job site and free it from a jobsite’s trailer and home office. But how to
Seeking a stronger representation with unions over the next decade, two Northern California-based union contractor trade associations are combining under a new name, United Contractors. The Engineering & Utility Contractors Association (EUCA), San Ramon, and the Association of Engineering Construction Employers (AECE), Sacramento, have worked together on a number of labor issues for more than 20 years, so it makes sense to combine resources to “meet contractor challenges” head on, said EUCA CEO Mark Breslin.“There has been lots of overlap,” he said.At a special membership meeting in San Ramon Wednesday, Breslin laid out the plan for United Contractors, which, he
SnapShot December 5, 2011 Submitted By: Henry Cabala Henry Cabala Photography South Pasadena Cabala, who was assigned to photograph the Kravis Center, ENR California’s Best Regional Project, said, "The approach in photographing the complex from the courtyard was to accentuate the light from the nearly all-glass larger structure and the all-glass ’living room’ by shooting a number of dawn and dusk shots to create the feeling of light emanating from inside the structure outward." Photographer: Henry Cabala
Best Industrial/Manufacturing Project Photo courtesy of LVI Facility Services LVI Facility Services served as general contractor/construction manager. The $11-million project consisted of the decommissioning of El Segundo powerplant units 1 and 2 to facilitate construction of a new state-of-the-art, combined-cycle, rapid-response, natural gas-fueled and air-cooled powerplant.The project scope of work included the initial tasks of collecting oils and residuals; abatement of asbestos of the boilers—which produced 1 million lb per hour of steam—and support building; removing above-ground fuel oil transport lines; removal of intake and discharge structures; and decommissioning and recycling of plant components and electrical generating equipment.The project's preparatory
Award of Merit Specialty Contracting Photo courtesy of Swinerton Builders An innovative racking system was installed by MBL Energy. This project included installing more than 1 megawatt of elevated solar and roof-mounted solar and an elevated steel structure over a parking lot on an occupied Kaiser Permanente medical office building campus in La Mesa.One of the main challenges was to meet the highest energy output possible and satisfy the minimum California Solar Initiative reservations, all without hampering Kaiser's daily operations. To keep parking spaces and drive aisles clear, an elevated steel structure, which can span more than 65 ft, was
Award of Merit Transportation Photo courtesy of Robert A. Bothman The bridge is the centerpiece of a transit village. The Robert I. Schroder Overcrossing provides transit commuters and the users of the 33-mile-long, multi-use Iron Horse Trail safe passage across one of the busiest thoroughfares in the San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa County. The bridge is the centerpiece of a transit village consisting of a commuter railway station and a high-density residential and commercial development. The final steel-arch bridge design comes to life at night with a lighting design using sustainable LED fixtures, says the general contractor, Robert A.
Award of Merit Government/Public Building Photo courtesy of Lydig Construction The project was built near SeaTac Airport. The $49-million SCORE Jail project is the first multi-jurisdictional jail completed in the state of Washington. This 813-bed facility houses inmates for the cities of Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Federal Way, SeaTac, Renton and Tukwila.With jail costs rising nearly 70% over the past seven years, the design of the facility was specifically intended to provide spaces that allow for lower operational costs. Constructed on a 14-acre site south of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the 164,000-sq-ft jail is a plant-cast precast concrete and steel
Award of Merit K-12 Education Photo courtesy of DLR Group WWCOT The new school is a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. South Region Elementary School No. 2 is not only a notable piece of civic architecture in the community of South Los Angeles, but also a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization, according to the project team. The project, with its brightly painted blue, red, green and orange exterior, is an 82,000-sq-ft facility on a 4.2-acre site, housing 42 classrooms and capacity for 1,050 students. The school contains a library, multi-purpose rooms, food service area, lunch shelter, administration offices, playfields and underground parking.The
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