ADIF High-speed track is proliferating between France and Spain thanks largely to private financing. In an historically fitting coincidence, crews achieved the second of two tunnel breakthroughs last month near a 17th-century French fort built to repel Spanish armies in the Pyrenees. Now the friendly nations are linked by the 8.2-kilometer-long Pertús (Perthus) high-speed rail tunnels. Both countries continue to make major investments in systems that, within a decade, will allow uninterrupted high-speed travel from London’s newly restored St. Pancras terminal to the Mediterranean coast 2,250 km away. Spain is due to open two new lines this month, while trouble
Skanska Ab Walbrook office and retail project in central London will be 60,600 sq m. With a credit crunch and fears of recession in the U.S., mega firms are finding it is a good time to be global. Development throughout much of the Middle East and eastern Asia continues at a relentless pace, while economic strength in many non-U.S. markets keeps a steady flow of projects in the pipeline. St. Louis-based HOK set all-time firm records in fees and contracts in 2007, with more than a year’s worth of backlog. It is a success that CEO Patrick MacLeamy credits in
Michael Moore / ENR The fallout from the growing financial crisis triggered by the nation's sub-prime mortgage debacle will spread into the industry's construction cost indexes in 2008. The lingering recession in housing will undercut lumber and cement prices. Steel prices will slip as a credit crunch dampens enthusiasm in the nonresidential building markets. With prices falling, inflation will take a step back. Related Links: Inflation Bows to Sub-Prime Crisis Inflation Cools in China, West Europe, U.S. EU Membership Brings New Cost Challenges Parity Index Adjusts For Exchange Rate Swings Oil Sands Boom Extracts Toll on Costs Complete Report with
The sub-prime mortgage disaster helped knock the wind out of construction inflation during 2007 by flooring the housing market. Pessimism over a looming financial crisis is deepening with tighter credit starting to squeeze other sectors far beyond housing. As a result, construction inflation in 2008 is expected to be reeled in another notch, according to industry forecasts. ENR predicts that falling material prices will dampen annual escalation measured by its Building Cost Index. But as the main cost driver shifts from the materials to the labor markets, labor-intensive cost indexes such as ENR’s Construction Cost Index will get a boost.
Construction cost escalation across the globe has been cooling in China, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and the U.S. Then there is Eastern Europe, which plays by its own rule book, one that has been rewritten by the integration of several eastern European nations into the European Union. The average building inflation for 23 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and North America slipped to 5.6% from 6.2% for the same group of countries the previous year, according to London-based international project and cost management firm Gardiner & Theobald Inc. in its sixteenth annual survey of international costs
Michael Moore Romania�s new highway is faced with rising costs from right-of-way acquisition. Managing construction costs in the emerging economies of the European Union’s newest member states poses a new set of problems for project managers running large fast-track projects in Romania and Hungary. Construction costs there are being driven by currency fluctuations, lack of skilled workers, outdated transportation infrastructure, unrealistically low bids, over-engineering of structures, lack of familiarity with fast-track procedures and conflicting standards between the EU and the new member states. The skilled workers shortage was cited as the number one problem confronting the managers of large projects
Related Links: Inflation Bows to Sub-Prime Crisis Inflation Cools in China, West Europe, U.S. EU Membership Brings New Cost Challenges Parity Index Adjusts For Exchange Rate Swings Oil Sands Boom Extracts Toll on Costs Complete Report with Data and Analysis The Faithful & Gould Parity Index is designed to clarify the international cost picture, which can be distorted by gyrations in currency exchange rates. The index is based on put-inplace rates for 26 basic items used in the construction of a manufacturing facility. The parity index value in the table shows construction costs at each location relative to Chicago. A
PCL Huge projects have tightened both the materials and labor markets. The modern-day gold rush of oil companies and contractors converging on western Canada’s oil-sands markets is bogging down as high materials costs and outstripped labor resources force project delays and budget overruns. With several large-scale projects being tripped up in mid-stride this winter by the worsening labor and materials crisis, owners and construction firms are attempting to keep work under way on upgrader, mining, pipeline, infrastructure and extraction projects aimed at tapping the oil sands’ potential. “It is an overheated environment in Alberta now,” says Bill Wall, a petroleum
Thornton Tomasetti, Inc. Job cut into discrete design and construction sequences, beginning on right field side, to save six months. With only 23 months to complete all the bases, the team building the 85%-complete D.C. Major League baseball park is getting very close to hitting construction's equivalent of a grand slam off a 100-mph pitch. If it opens April 1 as planned, the $611-million home for the Washington Nationals will break the speed record for major-league ballpark construction. “We’re probably pushing the limits of fast track,” says Rick “Buck” Buckovich, senior project manager for structural steel and precast for Clark/Hunt/Smoot
HOK estimates it takes 600 hours for architectural documentation and administration when it submits an office building design for LEED certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. For the D.C. Major League Ballpark treated as an office building because there is no LEED for sports facilities the estimate is 1,000 hours and that only accounts for HOK’s time. The extra hours are attributed to “unique documentation requirements specific to the project type and complexity,” says Susan Klumpp, ballpark project manager for the local joint venture of HOK/Devrouax & Purnell Architects. Klumpp, also a LEED-certified design professional, led the LEED process,
RSS