Our editors are everywhere — at all the industry events that matter most. When they're not speaking on panels, they're busy taking notes — and snapping photos — so they can inform their readers about what was said and who was there.
After three years of declines, the construction market may be eyeing a rebound in 2010 thanks to a much improved residential sector, but for designers and contractors in other building sectors, it could be too soon to celebrate. McGraw-Hill Construction is forecasting that total construction starts will climb 11% to $466.2 billion in 2010, following an estimated 25% decline in 2009. Photo: Bruce Buckley Robert Murray, vice president of economic affairs for McGraw-Hill Construction, recently delivered the 2010 Outlook. Slide Show Source: McGraw-Hill Construction. This chart shows the percentage increases, and decreases, in the value of new construction starts on
In response to slow domestic sales, Sweden-based Volvo Group’s construction equipment division is winding down its 400,000 sq-ft factory in Asheville, N.C. and shifting production to other plants around the world. Production of wheel loaders will move to Arvika, Sweden; excavators will move to Changwon, South Korea. The plant is scheduled to close on March 31, and the company will lay off 228 employees. Some will be offered relocation to its Shippensburg, Pa., plant, which will also produce motor grader cabs, formerly made in Asheville. The current U.S. market “didn’t justify” having two equipment plants, says Beatrice Cardon, vice president
Miami-Dade County public health officials are investigating whether an activated carbon filtration system at in Miami led to an outbreak of Legionnaires� Disease that killed one man in October and made two people ill in recent weeks. The county health department issued a health advisory on Dec. 11 to residents, guests and employees at the Epic Hotel & Residences, stating that water samples collected from the property’s plumbing system indicated levels of chlorine were insufficient to rid drinking water of bacteria. Samir Elmir, director of the county health department’s environmental health and engineering division, says the activated carbon filter system
Nationwide research is firming up the case for “intelligent” compaction, a construction method three decades in the making that could save billions of dollars a year in potholed roads, cracked bridges, broken dams and blown-out tires. But as it represents a huge cultural shift in project delivery, the industry is struggling to find a standard way to roll it out. IC in its simplest form is an onboard measuring device that shows roller operators whether they are overcompacting, undercompacting or right on target in soil, aggregate and asphalt. Photo courtesy Iowa State University. David White, a professor at Iowa State
In the movie “Any Given Sunday,” Al Pacino plays a football coach who is wise but worn down by life. In a pregame speech he talks about football being a game of inches. Take a few minutes and look at your job site. Can you see where you’re losing money? The “inches” are all around you. “The inches we need are everywhere around us,” goes Pacino’s speech. “They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch.” Your “inches” are dollars. The Pacino monologue is dramatic, but the point is
Despite all the buzz around building information modeling, it is really a reintroduction of traditional practices, with technology added. Throughout the history of architecture, scale models have been valuable tools. Before beginning construction, great architects such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Wright all built mock-ups to uncover potential design issues and check constructability. That’s what BIM is all about. Our company began using BIM architecturally in 2003 and started using BIM for our MEP work in 2006. By 2007, we made the commitment to produce all of our major projects using BIM. To date, we’ve invested in excess of
Many contracting companies across the nation are watching with dismay as their accounts receivable climb out of the normal comfort zone. For any business, every penny counts whether times are good or bad. Probably nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than in the construction industry, where low profit margins require contractors to protect working capital any way they can. Their success, however, often depends on whether they have an effective billing and collection system. Without one, a contractor’s cash flow can quickly turn sporadic and unpredictable. That almost always leads to a siphoning of cash reserves, which in turn leaves
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