The new Envision system, designed to rate infrastructure project sustainability, will incorporate one industry firm's approach to measuring "return on investment" and hopefully become a tool to better predict potential outcomes, said officials at the product's launch in Washington, D.C., on April 3.
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.
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