Related Links: NRELs Research Support Facility: An Energy Performance Update For its first year of full occupancy, the nation's biggest energy miser—the nearly two-year-old 220,000-sq-ft Research Support Facility of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—met its modeled annual energy-use targets, reports the Golden, Colo.-based NREL.But a market-rate, low-energy-use office building doesn't happen by accident. "It's not going to work unless the owner takes responsibility both in planning and operating the building," says Jeffrey M. Baker, director of NREL operations for the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.For the 12 months beginning in February 2011, the building's
Photo Courtesy of In-Press With the last few sections of structural steel recently erected, the U.K.'s tallest building, London's Shard, stands at its 310-meter height. With the last few sections of structural steel recently erected, the U.K.'s tallest building, London's Shard, stands at its 310-meter height. Some 500 tonnes of steel in some 800 pieces went into forming the spire, which will receive over 500 panes of glass cladding.Steel subcontractor Severfield-Reeve Structures Ltd. began erecting the skyscraper's 12,500-tonne main frame around two years ago. Columns and composite floors form the lower 40 levels; concrete columns and post-tensioned slabs complete the
Seeking to achieve the dual goals of ensuring a reliable water supply for the state while protecting the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem, California agencies have worked at cross-purposes at times, according to a new report from the National Research Council.
Photo Courtesy Florida Dept. of Transportation A $1.4-million project will knit 70 miles of managed lanes, toll facilities and turnpikes in Florida into a regional network to improve traffic flow. The Florida Dept. of Transportation is preparing to knit 70 miles of managed lanes, toll facilities and turnpikes in multiple jurisdictions into a regional network to improve traffic flow. In February, HNTB Corp., Kansas City, began a $1.4-million, 15-month project to develop a "regional concept of transportation operations," or RCTO, for South Florida.In use for a decade, managed lanes open to different types of traffic at varying toll rates, depending
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) hopes to pass a two-year highway-funding bill which includes provisions to increase domestic oil and gas drilling. Just two days before a threatened March 31 shutdown of highway programs, Congress approved yet another stopgap that will keep surface-transportation funds moving, but only through June 30. While construction and state transportation officials were relieved that the bill, which President Obama signed on March 30, averted a funding cutoff, they were unhappy that Congress still couldn't approve a long-term highway-transit measure.The 90-day stopgap is the ninth since Sept. 30, 2009, when the
Two energy-industry heavyweights are teaming to expand the Seaway Pipeline to more than double its capacity to transmit crude oil from Canada and the northern U.S. to the Gulf Coast.
Nevada state engineer Jason King cleared the Southern Nevada Water Authority to draw 83,988 acre-ft of water annually from four valleys in rural White Pine and Lincoln counties in northeast Nevada, advancing toward the adoption of a proposed groundwater pipeline network that is designed to slake Las Vegas' growing thirst.
The International Code Council's 2012 International Green Construction Code, or IgCC, released on March 28, seeks to provide the building community with more flexibility in the design of high-performance buildings than did earlier versions, its developers say.The culmination of a three-year effort by the ICC, the code was developed with significant input from construction industry leaders, policymakers and environmental groups. Formally approved in November 2011, it is the first model code to include sustainability measures for an entire construction project and its site for the entire life cycle of the project.The 2012 code incorporates the 2011 version of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES/USGBC Standard
Standards Engineers To Develop Guidance On Disproportionate Collapse The Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers is seeking volunteers to join a two-year project to develop a standard for the mitigation of disproportionate collapse in buildings. Among its many provisions, the standard likely will address the risk assessment necessary to determine the need for extra collapse resistance against extraordinary damaging events. In another standards action, SEI/ASCE plans to release for public comment an updated standard on seismic rehabilitation for existing buildings; that standard is expected in May. ASCE/SEI 41-13 is scheduled for completion in September; it will
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