After the devastation of Sept. 11, I know this might be a difficult time to ask people to consider additional bad news. But this might be a good time for our industry to unite in pursuit of a common goal: Make construction a safer industry. For the past nine years, we have averaged more than 1,000 fatalities per year. First, a personal disclosure: Construction accidents are a big part of how I make a living. I have been accused of profiting from other's misery. But after spending 26 years in the industry and the past 15 as a crisis-management consultant,
Gloria, a black female plumbing apprentice in Cleveland, didn't complain to anyone in command after her supervising journeyman pushed her down concrete stairs. "They didn't care," she explained to me later. That sentiment helps explain the lack of women in the trades. Today, more than two decades after federal affirmative action opened the industry to the fastest-growing segment of the labor force, women hold just 2% of roughly four million construction jobs in the U.S. Amazingly, contractors let this situation fester despite the industry's worsening difficulties in attracting and retaining craftworkers. Too many contractors still reach past more capable women
How can the power sector deliver one new powerplant per week for the next 20 years, when its major contractors are falling like flies? Consider the recent fates of former, once-reputable firms such as Stone & We BSTE, Morrison Knudsen and Raytheon Engineers & Constructors. For industry survivors to meet the Bush administration's ambitious energy goals, powerplant contractors need a robust industry. They need collaborative agreements with project owners instead of today's adversarial, risk-shifting, lump-sum, engineer-procure-construct, EPC contracts. Fortunately, an excellent model of collaboration exists--outside the powerplant sector. ALLIANCES. In the oil-and-gas sector, pre-merger British Petroleum Co. PLC turned around
President Bush's energy plan is a shortsighted one. Audacious in its sweep, it calls for constructing a new powerplant each week for the next 20 years, and drilling for oil and and gas in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But the plan gives short shrift to a more environmentally and politically benign option. Barely noticed by the Bush administration, evidence is mounting that large-scale development of wind energy is becoming much more feasible and economical. Once dismissed as the darling fringe technology of environmentalists, wind is becoming a commercially viable, middle-of-the-road power source that could be a significant building block
Furious over an incident at work eight years ago, I walked out of my engineering job and marched to an artist's supply store. Without any previous experience or training, I began painting monumental-size oil canvases, including a self-portrait–Gone Mad. But instead of going mad, I returned to work and redoubled my efforts to prove two things: the importance of value engineering and the importance of women in the profession. Reinvigorated by my art, I fought and made dramatic presentations at work, while overlooking the sniping of colleagues. "You're acting just like my wife," someone snipped at me once at a
Sour grapes? As a frequent participant in bridge design competitions worldwide, I do not expect my firm to win them every time. But I do see lessons to be learned from the recent contest to design the world's longest cable-stayed structure: Hong Kong's $384-million Stonecutters Bridge. This type of competition is intended to attract the world's best bridge designers, who often spend many months preparing their entries at great expense. Usually, clients make the process extremely competitive to find the best solutions aesthetically and technically. But are clients doing enough to keep the process fair for all participants? PRIDE. My
Last year, I watched an audience back Eric Horn into a corner. A project director at Webcor Builders, he was speaking in Chicago on e-construction and contracting. At first, his audience listened receptively as he described Web-enabled tools that let constructors collaborate and bid online. But then several attendees asked "to see the money." Stumped, Horn conceded that he could not document the savings. I am not criticizing him. I believe that someone of Horn's caliber to be quite capable of the exercise. My assertion is this: He could not document the savings because there aren't any significant savings yet
As a civil engineer, I get infuriated whenever I see a newspaper story about the proposed tax cut. Why are President Bush and Congress focused on saving taxpayers $1.25 trillion when the impact on the average citizen would be minimal? As a nation, we would gain more if we spent that on our deteriorating infrastructure. Our nation's infrastructure rates a grade of D+, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. ASCE figures we should spend at least $1.3 trillion over the next five years to improve and expand our infrastructure, just to meet our current needs. As commuters, many
The worsening violence in Israel all but guarantees its continued dependence on imported construction labor. The awful consequences provide a lesson for U.S. contractors who employ a low-paid, poorly trained work force. Unlike the US, Israel lacks unionized crafts. History dictated otherwise; Israel formed suddenly in 1948 when the British pulled out of Palestine. The task of building the new country fell to fewer than 1 million inhabitants, including concentration camp survivors, most of whom had never before picked up a hammer or shovel. By trial and error, they acquired construction skills. But after the 1967 Six-Day War and the
Thinking of redecorating your jobsite trailer? How about putting up some wallpaper, like a CPM schedule that no one will notice except as background "stuff?" In this era of lawsuits by contractors with claims for delays and unabsorbed overhead, many facilities owners insist on getting a detailed schedule for critical path management before permitting any construction work to start. But do they demand enough documentation? Oftentimes, a contractor will spend thousands of dollars preparing a baseline CPM schedule, to plan the project before the first shovel hits the ground. And frequently, the contractor will update the schedule monthly to show
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