Offshore Legal Relief Costly and Unlikely Missing from your otherwise clear reporting in “Chinese Drywall Cases Mount” is the fact that getting a legal judgment against a foreign corporation and/or manufacturer is far different from actually collecting the judgment against them. ENR should cover this issue to help homeowners manage unrealistic expectations as well as help plaintiffs judge how much money they should spend in court to get a potentially hollow judgment. When the pockets empty out at the top (in this case, Taishan Gypsum), the trickle-down liability, finger-pointing and collateral lawsuits could be endless. William a. Tolbert Chairman and

Disney Concert Hall Redux As president of the owner/operator of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, I read with interest the article on Frank Gehry’s Beekman Tower. While it was generally informative, I wish to correct serious errors in the first paragraph. Walt Disney Concert Hall is a complex structure perfectly designed and suited to its purpose. As such, the design and construction team were, indeed, confronted with challenges that far exceed those of Beekman Tower. To say that Disney Hall was “tortuous” to build is like saying a Wagner opera is “tortuous” to perform. Such profoundly important and

Graphics Are Misleading In Stimulus Story I would like to point out that the circular graphics used on pages 26-29 in the cover story “As Federal Dollars Pour Out, A Second Stimulus Plan Grows” are inappropriately used. These charts compare obligated funds to ARRA Total Allocations by using the ration of the diameters, not the ration of the areas. As such, they visually mislead the viewer into believing more funds remain to be spent. The chart on page 29 is the most egregious example. Values below the chart indicate that $2.1 billion of the total $5.5 billion in this category

Cultivate Safety Culture, Not Personal Records For more than 10 years, the injury, illness and fatality rates for construction workers have declined dramatically. According to the latest federal data, construction’s injury and illness rate has been cut by more than half in 2008 from what it was 10 years earlier. The fatality rate was down 47% over the same period and hit an all-time low in 2008. Ask any contractor: The plan is to bring the rate down to zero. Credit for improved jobsite safety can be attributed to construction contractors that have committed to ensuring their workers go home

Bankruptcy Rebuttals I am writing to express my disappointment in the reporting offered concerning Schwing America and our Chapter 11 proceedings. As a longtime ENR reader and advertiser, I had respected your publication for getting facts correct and telling the whole story. This was not up to your standards. Wells Fargo presented objections to our motion for the continued use of cash collateral in the Nov. 27 filing, which you reference in your article. This motion was to be reviewed in Federal Bankruptcy Court on Dec. 2. Schwing America strongly disputed the logic used by Wells Fargo in its objections

This year, for the first time, ENR will not be mailing out printed copies of the ENR Top 100/400/500 survey forms. The surveys will be online and can be completed through our interactive online form. Survey participants already on our mailing list will receive a letter containing the company ID and password needed to complete the online form. Others also can file online or download and print out the survey from ENR.com in .pdf format or as a zipped set of .doc files. If you need a company ID and password or have other questions about the survey process, please

Too Early To Jump On Obama for Econ Woes I was greatly surprised by the recent editorial “Conflicting Obama Political Priorities Lead to Paralysis”. The writer of this contradictory editorial is obviously caught up in media-stoked emotion of partisan politics. Unfortunately, the several issues mentioned in this editorial are directly inter-related and linked to the economy. Any engineer worth his salt understands that our current economic problems cannot be adequately addressed without a comprehensive solution dealing with each of those issues. The previous and current administrations had no option but to prop up the large financial services companies, after seeing

When ENR's Technology Senior Editor Tom Sawyer picks up his video camera, something interesting is bound to happen. Browsers on ENR.com will not be disappointed by what he captured at the recent conference in Las Vegas of FIATECH, a group that concentrates on technology solutions to construction problems, including interoperability. Sawyer wondered if technology would take a lower profile in the middle of a recession. That is not the case, from what we see here. Golden-i, a verbally controlled Bluetooth computer interface, wowed the crowd at the FIATECH meeting. See how the device works on ENR.com this week. How does

Multidisciplinary Teams Provide Success My compliments to ENR for recognizing Bernard Amadei’s contribution to engineering pedagogy by plugging one hole in the education of the next generation of engineers with the creation of Engineers Without Borders-USA. The juxtaposition of EWB-USA’s story with Pat Galloway’s dialogue on the broad definition of what the 21st century will demand from the engineer-as-leader supports your selection of Bernard Amadei as this year’s Award of Excellence winner. However, one important contribution of EWB-USA that addresses both Bernard’s and Pat’s messages was not covered. Engineers in the Tufts University EWB program learned in their first assignment

Local Rules Will Help Curb Crane Mishaps The article “New York City Official Blasts Federal Standards for Cranes” was interesting. One of the first crane accidents I remember was a crane “tip-over” in New York City in the early 1980s. A contractor was unloading materials from a delivery truck during the noon hour. The sidewalk was not blocked off, and the public was able to walk between the crane that was unloading the materials and the construction project on the other side of the sidewalk. The person operating the crane tipped the crane over, pinning a woman both under the