Related Links: Obama Directs Federal Contractors To List Labor Violations Text of President Obama's Executive Order The Obama administration's second-term frustrations are getting the better of common sense. On July 31, President Obama issued an executive order to "crack down on federal contractors who put workers' safety and hard-earned pay at risk," requiring them to self-report recent violations. The goal is to make federal construction contractors safer and more law-abiding, but it may simply overwhelm contracting officers with a surge of new data and saddle federal contractors with burdensome requirements. The Associated Builders and Contractors is already talking lawsuit, earning
Related Links: Aviation Board Scraps Proposals for New Orleans Terminal Board Hits Reset Button on New Orleans Airport Contract Bid protests remind us of video reviews by the referees at a football game: The review slows down the action to provide a clearer picture of what occurred, even if the interpretation isn't always as definitive as hoped. So, when a review committee scoring the construction manager-at-risk competition for a new terminal at New Orleans airport flubbed its first try, the losing team protested and later prevailed.The full New Orleans Aviation Board now must make a final decision, hopefully with some
Related Links: AECOM's $6B Offer for URS Keeps the Company Whole AECOM’s $6-billion acquisition of URS, creating the second largest construction services company, continues the trend of consolidation among construction services players. The 10 largest design and engineering firms have tripled in size since 2003—largely through mergers and acquisitions.The transaction creates a new global player with nearly $20 billion in revenue and nearly 100,000 employees across 150 countries.At the same time, this transaction highlights the challenges of pursuing profitable growth in the sector, given the struggles over the past few years at URS, itself the product of serial acquisitions. DANNIn the
Related Links: States Laws Related to Immigration and Immigrants The U.S. badly needs a comprehensive reform of its federal immigration policies, instead of leaving each state to cope with recent crises on its own, which is what's been happening lately. Since comprehensive reform is dead for 2014, the Obama administration may make a limited gesture toward reform via executive order or regulation that grants undocumented immigrants more leeway to remain in the U.S. and improves border security. If that happens, some Republican opponents may throw up their hands in exasperation with the president, although each side's basic position on these
Related Links: Plan to Refill Highway Fund Stokes Conflict in Congress If Congress ever progresses beyond its current partisan dysfunction, perhaps we will look back on June 18 as a turning point. That was the day Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) proposed raising the federal gasoline tax 12¢ a gallon over two years as a way to end the impending deficit of the Highway Trust Fund, the key source of highway and mass transit construction funds shared with the states. The tax hasnot been raised since 1993, when Congress upped it from 14¢ to 18.4¢; fuel-efficient cars
Images Courtesy of BIG Related Links: Manhattan's Storm-Protection Plan Intended as Global Urban Model No need for intrusive barriers and floodgates in the middle of New York Harbor. If a $335-million pilot project, funded by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, is successful, instead of massive hard infrastructure to defend Lower Manhattan against the next Superstorm Sandy, the Big Apple eventually will have a 10-mile surge defense camouflaged as parkland, landscape and public art.One of the architects for the project called BIG U—the most ambitious of six schemes that recently won HUD's "Rebuild by Design" competition—is so excited
Related Links: Project Delivery Spat Puts Hospital Job on Critical List Emerging Senate VA Bill to Have Panel on Construction Issues Orlando Sentinel on Delayed Completion of VA Hospital In addition to improving its responsiveness to veterans' medical problems, the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs needs to revamp its construction strategies and practices on big hospital projects and possibly hand off construction to public-private partnership concessionaires. Two hospital projects, in Aurora, Colo., and Orlando, Fla., show how the VA comes up short on large, complex new hospitals.The Orlando project, on which the prime contractor is Brasfield & Gorrie, is over
Related Links: More Trouble, Less Support for Energy Dept's MOX Project MOX Reactor Fuel Said to Stir New Interest The Obama administration has taken the correct approach to the U.S. Dept. of Energy's $7.7-billion Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., which is to freeze the project at its current stage. The delays are endless, the dollars are flying out the window at an alarming rate, and there's no reliable way of knowing whether the end goal can be achieved. That could be said of other federal public works, but none isas potentially costly
Related Links: Safety Week Construction Deaths, Fatality Rate Climbed in 2012 Leaders of 31 major construction firms agree that safety should not be proprietary. They are offering their ideas about how to make the industry a safer place to work by launching the first annual "Safety Week" on May 4-10, and they encourage large and small contractors across the country to join them in elevating and celebrating safety.These firms belong to either the Construction Industry Safety Initiative or the Incident and Injury Free Executive Forum. The companies in the groups can be fierce competitors, but they also meet regularly and
Related Links: Sewer Job Battle is a Question of Arithmetic (subcription required) Miami Dade Procurement Webpage Description of the Cone of Silence The Miami-Dade County website makes a big deal about its procurement "cone of silence"—a term popularized by the old TV comedy "Get Smart"—which is meant to describe the county's system for preventing forbidden communications in response to requests for qualifications. When, this past summer, the county sought to hire a construction manager for a $1.5-billion sewer-repair program, a lack of specific language about communication while the so-called cone was in force engendered confusion more appropriate to a comically