With construction for London’s 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games approaching 90% completion, Brazil is taking the construction baton. Officials there have begun procuring a master planner for the next games, set for Rio de Janeiro in 2016. Courtesy Olympic Development Authoority Handball arena, completed this month, is in East London's Olympic Park. London’s Olympic Development Authority, responsible for games-related construction, this month completed the handball arena. ODA had already handed over the main stadium and velodrome, also sited in East London’s Olympic Park.ODA Chief Executive Dennis Hone said that 83% of work at the 200-hectare park had been completed by
Transportation and other markets in the emirate countries of the Middle East continue to offer lucrative opportunities for U.S. engineering firms. Qatar leaders on April 6 signed contracts with these firms worth billions of dollars during a Manhattan conference that drew top government and business officials. Parsons Transportation Group will provide design work for two new highways that together are projected to cost more than $1 billion, and is teamed with AECOM on construction management for a $3.5-billion, 30-km light rail network. Jeffrey Squires, Parsons executive vice president, says Qatar's 2022 hosting of the FIFA World Cup is spurring infrastructure
After 50-plus years in the making, the Alaska state Legislature recently gave the Alaska Energy Authority approval to build and own a new dam on the Sustina River in the Watana area. The 600-MW hydroelectric dam will be the first of its kind built in the United States in more than two decades. Photo By Google Courtesy Of Alaska Energy Authority The Sustina River dam site was first proposed in the 1950s, but the project was stalled by cost estimates. Gov. Parnell supports its revival as a component of renewable-energy goals. Preliminary work on the $4.5-billion Sustina Hydroelectric Power Project,
Although there may be a rush to take advantage of federal production tax credits for wind power before they expire in 2012, Peter Kelley, vice president of the American Wind Energy Association, says the end of the wind-power building boom is nowhere in site. “There are good prospects for the tax credit being renewed,” Kelley says. Wind power is creating manufacturing jobs throughout the country, which politicians like, and wind farms are creating an economic boom in the communities where they are built, he adds. AWEA is getting ready for its annual conference on May 22-25 in Anaheim, Calif. Four
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is using a variety of measures, including opening three massive river diversion features—the Bonnet Carré, Birds Point-New Madrid and Morganza floodways—to relieve pressure on the Mississippi River watershed. Graphic: Courtesy USACE Water spewed skyward at the rate of 10,000 cu ft per second on May 14 as the first vertical-lift gate was opened on the Morganza Floodway. It was the Corps’ third big control measure in the flood fight and marked the first time that three main control structures on the lower Mississippi were opened at the same time. The Corps’ first move was
With work finished in April on a major support facility, the $12.2-billion waste vitrification complex at the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington state is nearly 60% complete and on track to meet its mandated 2019 operating deadline, officials say. Photo: Courtesy Of Bechtel Group Equipment is lifted into a vitrification plant at a DOE nuclear waste site. The Hanford Waste Treatment Plant is intended to turn the site’s 56 million gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical wastes left from past decades of nuclear weapon production into vitrified glass logs. The wastes now are stored in aging
“Engineers should become more involved in research and fundamental knowledge,” says Ian Robertson, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In April, he was on the first of seven teams sent by the American Society of Civil Engineers to Japan to analyze the March 11 quake and tsunami. “There is a tendency to just do what’s in the code,” says Robertson, “but in this case the code has been idling. It’s time to bring it up to speed.” Photo by Tom Sawyer The row of bent flagpoles in Sendai (above) and pressure-shattered walls of a
A general contractor is installing two 550-ton sector-gate leaves in a $1.3-billion barrier designed to reduce the risk of a hurricane’s storm surge on New Orleans’ exposed eastern side. The leaves will plug a big hole in the city’s armor for the 2011 hurricane season. Photo: Courtesy of USACE Ring wall shields two 550-ton sector-gate leaves when open and braces them against storm loads when closed. Massman Construction Co., Kansas City, Mo., is installing the two 75-ft-wide, 42-ft-tall sector-gate leaves to form an armored door for a 150-ft-wide navigable passage through the 1.8-mile-long, 26-ft-plus-elevation barrier, known as the Inner Harbor
Engineers and emergency planners from northern California to British Columbia say the massive undersea quake and tsunami that recently assaulted Japan gives clear warning about the danger that lurks just off the Pacific coast like a mad dog sleeping by the bed: A 630-mile-long geologic feature that was identified in 1984 is believed to be very similar to the one that broke with such violence off the coast of Japan in March. Evidence of violent breaks in the feature—called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, or CSZ—has been found in sediment layers left by prehistoric tsunami. On April 25, 1992, a 7.2-Mw
A presidential panel has recommended the U.S. “expeditiously” establish a permanent repository for nuclear waste similar to the now-abandoned site at Yucca Mountain. The waste-disposal subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future said on May 13 that the underground site is “the most promising and technically [acceptable] option available” for safely isolating high-level nuclear waste. The panel also suggests creation of a new federal agency dedicated to implementing a program to transport, store and dispose of U.S. nuclear waste. The subcommittee will make interim recommendations in July, with a final report set for January.
RSS
