Photo by Daniel Azoulay. Courtesy Bouygues Civil Works Florida On May 6, the PortMiami tunnel project's 380-ft-long tunnel-boring machine completed the final bore of two 4,200-ft-long tunnels. The $1-billion project is targeting an August 2014 completion. Related Links: Port Of Miami Tunnel Project Features Big Challenges A Gigantic Turnaround for a Giant Tunneling Machine Tunnel crews with Bouygues Civil Works Florida completed the last leg of mining for the second of two 4,200-ft-long tunnels for the $1-billion PortMiami tunnel project. On May 6, the project's 380-ft-long tunnel-boring machine—nicknamed Harriet—broke through for the last time, landing back on Watson Island, where
Related Links: Mott MacDonald official website Macalloy official website The steel-rod hangers on the Czech capital's new Vltava River crossing—one of Europe's most slender, bow-string arch bridges—are crisscrossed, not vertical. This design saved up to 40% in materials, the designers claim.Prague’s Troja Bridge, which stood on its own once crews decommissioned temporary river piers in March, is slated to open next spring.With a steelwork arch rising only 20 meters over its 200.4-m-long deck, the bridge’s height-to-span ratio is about half what is typical. That results in shorter hangers, reduced wind resistance, less steelwork and lighter foundations, claims the bridge's lead
Related Links: Blog: To Recover Costs, Florida Nuclear Projects Will Need to be 'Reasonable' Nuclear Foes Hail NRC Move to Freeze Construction, Licenses Duke Energy Opts to Shutter Broken Crystal River Nuclear Plant In the span of a single week, the nuclear power industry's hoped-for U.S. resurgence took a few steps backward as several projects and existing plants from across the country either were shut down or began to face increased scrutiny from regulators due to ongoing problems and financial issues.The setbacks raised the specter of a long-term decrease in domestic nuclear power-generation capacity, claimed Peter Bradford, a former member
G-Gans Project, Tokyo, Japan Tokyo's cavernous G-Cans Project is one of several flood-management projects included in the AIANY report, "Post-Sandy Initiative." Related Links: New York City's Proposed Zoning Changes for Flood Zones Intended To Align With Other Rules Seven months after miles of New York and New Jersey waterfront were slammed by Superstorm Sandy’s surge, the area's design and planning groups are calling for the creation of a pan-regional entity to organize and lead the effort to deal with flood-resilience and climate change. They also are trumpeting the need for other reforms to eliminate myriad obstacles to climate adaptation, including
Related Links: Maine Approves Offshore Projects, But Cost Concerns Persist Maine Surges Forward With Offshore Turbine Plans In early June, the University of Maine will launch a small-scale offshore demonstrator of a floating wind turbine, fabricated in its lab with a lightweight concrete foundation and composite tower. If successfully connected to the grid from off the coast of Castine, Maine, it will be the first of its kind in North America.The approximately 65-ft-tall turbine prototype is built to one-eighth the scale of a 6-MW turbine with a 423-ft-dia rotor. “Each blade [of the full-scale design] is larger than the wingspan of
Related Links: Planned Coal Export Terminals Spur Opposition in Northwest Coal Facilities Face Challenges Three of six Washington and Oregon coal-port proposals are dead. Three plans remain: two along the Columbia River—one in Oregon, the other in Washington——and another near Canada, north of Bellingham, Wash.Proposals in Grays Harbor, Wash., Coos Bay, Ore., and, most recently, St. Helens, Ore., have all been killed.Houston-based energy giant Kinder Morgan is the latest to drop out, suspending coal-terminal plans at the Port Westward Industrial Park at the Port of St. Helens. The $200-million project—still in a due-diligence phase prior to permitting—was yanked because site
Photo Courtesy of TBPOC Crews will bypass broken bolt rods (above) by installing custom-made steel saddles containing hundreds of concrete-encased post-tensioned wires that will cover the shear keys attached to the rods (rendered below). Rendering Courtesy of TBPOC Related Links: Repairs on Broken Bay Bridge Rods Could Prove Tricky Caltrans Responds to Alleged Testing Flaws on New Bay Bridge The Toll Bridge Program Oversight Committee, or TBPOC, says it has a plan in place to fix broken bolts on the $6.4-billion San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge project. It was revealed in March that 32 of the 96 anchor bolt rods on
Related Links: Sarah Long Bridge Replacement Cost Estimate Drops $12 Million The Sarah Mildred Long Bridge Replacement (Maine DOT) Engineers are expediting repairs on the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, which sustained $2.5 million in damages in April when an oil tanker broke loose from a state pier and smashed into the structure's center lift span.Covered by insurance, this temporary repair will last until work on a $160-million bridge replacement begins in 2015, says Bill Boynton, New Hampshire Dept. of Transportation spokesman.The 2,000-ft-long, lift-span structure, co-owned by the New Hampshire and Maine DOTs, crosses the Piscataqua River on U.S. Route 1.
Related Links: Green Building Booms in India India Moves Forward on $90-Billion Industrial Development Plan A recent study by the Indian Green Building Council predicts that, in the next 10 to 15 years, India will need at least 70 new cities with populations of 500,000 each to handle the rural-to-urban migration and avoid overpopulation in its existing metropolitan areas. In addition, as India's population is expected to exceed China’s by 2020, the federal government has begun pumping undisclosed sums of money into infrastructure and manufacturing.The government has been planning ecologically healthy cities to deal with its projected status as the
Installing a perimeter diaphragm wall to waterproof a shared deep basement of three 50-story office towers has been, so far, the biggest challenge for crews working on part of a nearly $6.1-billion waterfront redevelopment in Sydney. Laying the foundation for the ambitious Barangaroo South project, sited on 7.5 hectares of public land, is part of a scheme to create a replicable model for cradle-to-grave, grand-scale carbon-neutral development, starting from the moment construction begins to the end of the useful life of the buildings.Barangaroo South, on the site of a former container wharf, aims to be carbon-neutral in operation, including energy,
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