Related Links: Reducing Engineering Project Complexity Sometimes the images from ENR's annual photo contest take you to completely different worlds in construction. You only need to reflect on a single week of work in any corner of the industry to appreciate that construction people come from many walks of life and carry out vastly different activities—and one activity can influence or affect another, even though there is apparently no direct connection between them. Similarly, there are fewstraight lines any more in getting a project or a program or a company or a career from one place to another. We must
Related Links: Editorial: Don't Allow Lawsuits Far From Projects Narcotic Painkiller Costs' Weigh Heavily on Workers' Compensation A palpable confidence has returned to the domestic U.S. construction market. Robust financial markets, rising home values and less-constrained spending by tightfisted American consumers all injected energy into what had been a languorous pace of recovery. Infrastructure megaprojects rolled forward in Denver and New York City. Budget pacts steadied a wobbly federal government. More construction workers walked through project gates than any of the past five years.Yes, there was trouble. The federal government sputtered as if it were an old gasoline lawn mower,
Related Links: New York Commuter Derailment Highlights Lack of Positive Train Control Investment L.A. Commuter Rail Line to Roll Out First Positive Control System Following the derailment that killed four commuters in New York City on Dec. 1, there are good reasons for reviewing the delays to the deployment of positive train control to our national rail system. There are also good reasons to refuse any rail operator further time extensions in implementing these safety upgrades. And then let's start discussing other safety weak points of therail system, such as grade crossings. They are an important part of the safety
Related Links: New Forged Bonds Discovered, with Mounting Losses How Tennessee Contractors Caught Forged Surety Bonds The forged Chubb bonds discovered this year provide evidence that the laws allowing individual sureties help criminals steal from the very companies individual surety is supposed to benefit: small and minority-owned contractors. More than 20 contractors have been defrauded of about $3 million by these bonds over an 18-month period, according to a new report on ENR.com.The alleged forgers didn't bother to show up in federal court in Florida, where Chubb Group has won a civil judgment against them. The two defendants represented themselves
No less a tribunal than the U.S. Supreme Court will try to clarify construction-industry conflict about where lawsuits between primes and subs are tried. Lower courts have disagreed about what to do, but the prevailing industry wisdom is that it is best to try prime-sub disputes near the project location. Yet some primes insist subs sign "forum selection" clauses, which require trials in the prime's home state—and subs continue to cave in and sign them. Neither action speaks well for the state of risk-management in the construction industry. Despite the forum-selection clauses, many subs will sue locally for money they
Related Links: The National Association of Insurance Commissioners Surety Fraud Probe Raises Question: Who is Melde Rutledge? State-level public works face different challenges than do larger federal public works when it comes to performing due diligence against surety-bond fraud. For federal contracts, prime contractors can require subcontractor bonds from Treasury-listed or A.M. Best-rated sureties and check the surety in a federal public database, which helps. State and local public works don't require the federal level of scrutiny,and contracts between primes and subs are private, so due diligence mostly involves meetings and financial record reviews.If a concerned contractor wants to search
Related Links: Immigration Bill Focus Shifts to House After Senate Vote Target vs. Walmart -- Which One Is a Better Place to Work? With worker pay and benefits under pressure—according to one analysis, the average earnings of a construction worker relative to other occupations has slipped significantly since 1990—it's understandable that the building trades unions would drive a hard bargain before giving their blessing to an immigration reform bill. The process is far from over, but Senate Democrats almost certainly consulted this important constituency while drafting the version of the immigration reform bill the Senate adopted. The House of Representatives
Related Links: Birdsall Furloughs 300; Eyes Possible Sale Secret Recording Behind the Criminal Case A big break in the state of New Jersey's case against Birdsall Services Group, the Eatontown-based engineering consultant, came when the ex-wife of the company's former marketing director wore a wire during a discussion about money. According to state police, Philip Angarone told his ex that his compensation seemed larger than it was because part of it had to be used for campaign donations to state elected officials.Angarone and one other marketing-department employee have pleaded guilty to breaking state ethics and campaign-donation laws in exchange for
ASCE Improving from a GPA of D to D+ seems like little to brag about, but against the vast scale of the nation's infrastructure, it is significant. Related Links: ASCE 2013 Report Card ASCE Report Card Shows Slight Improvement in Nation's Infrastructure Health Engineers are known for meticulous, methodical problem-solving, and this approach is paying off for the American Society of Civil Engineers. Launching its first report card on U.S. infrastructure in 1998, the society continues to issue new ratings in 16 infrastructure categories every four years, and it has been making significant improvements in the process. The newest report