Suny, Stony Brook SUNY students on new South�ampton, N.Y., campus with icon of cleaner energy. Both were once considered passé, but if Al Gore and atomic energy can resurge in the U.S., anything is possible. Mounting evidence of global warming’s impact has propelled the study of sustainability, reinvigorated nuclear engineering and made the ex-vice president a campus hero. The concept of sustainability has been an academic discipline since the 1970s, when development of environmentally friendly materials, designs, strategies and nonpolluting technology such as nuclear power began showing up in curricula, educators say. But warnings of greenhouse-gas effects by scientists and
Virginia Tech Virginia Tech Ad hoc tribute to 32 victims made of locally quarried stones will likely become permanent. Doughnuts in the engineering lab each Tuesday help. So do potluck dinner gatherings and gestures from other U.S. campuses. Six months after a deranged student with a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol wreaked havoc on Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s Charles E. Via Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), it and other programs at the Blacksburg campus are slowly returning to the business of education. For a department especially hard hit by Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage, life since April 16 has
Washington Group International Mentoring efforts started early are helping assure industry sustainability. It used to be that long-time employees and those just starting or planning their careers did not connect. But a tightening labor market and fears of losing institutional memory and competitive advantage to escalating retirements are pushing generations closer through organized mentoring. “The war for talent is upon all companies in our industry,” says Andrew Snodgrass, vice president of information technology for Boise-based Washington Group International. “The next generation emerging from college provides new ideas, talents and the base of resources that are critical to sustaining growth in
TAS Commerical Concrete/Nancy Soulliar for ENR For most specialty contractors, the market has been torrid. But now, with the housing market meltdown and the uncertainties of next year’s presidential election, some specialty contractors worry that they are seeing the first signs of a softening market. The scale of the market boom can be measured by the revenue figures from the ENR Top 600 Specialty Contractors. The Top 600 as a group generated $65.47 billion in revenue in 2006, up 14.0% from $57.44 billion reported in 2005. This is more impressive considering that the No. 3 and 4 ranked firms from
+ click to enlarge Southern Nevada Water Authority Las Vegas is not known as a dry town but 20 years of booming growth has left it parched. The drought-wracked desert city has been the nation’s fastest growing for over a decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Las Vegas Valley has added 480,397 new residents since 2000, the population equivalent of Oakland, Calif. Jeff Hardcastle, Nevada’s state demographer, expects another 1,548,010 residents, or 82.5% more people than today, by 2026. Newcomers have local officials scrambling to meet the region’s water needs, which the Southern Nevada Water Authority now estimates
+ click to enlarge Aquifer replenishment system relies on intakes, bank recharge wells to capture water. The High Plains Aquifer is one of the world’s greatest sources of fresh water, sprawling beneath 175,000 sq miles in parts of eight states from South Dakota to Texas and holding 2,980 million acre-ft of water, roughly the volume of Lake Huron. But that resource went largely untapped until the mid-twentieth century when the development of high-power, high-capacity pumps allowed farmers and municipalities to extract large quantities of water, transforming the plains into the world’s feed basket. Success comes with a price and by
Gayle Roberts took over as president and chief operating officer of Muscatine, Iowa-based engineering firm Stanley Consultants Group just a few weeks ago.
The $1.7 billion needed to expand and redevelop the area surrounding the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City isn't going to be nearly enough, says Patrick Foye, Chairman/Downstate for New York State's Empire State Development Corp., the owner of the convention center. The Convention Center plan "was inherited" by the current Elliot Spitzer administration from former governor George Pataki. Phase one entails doubling exhibit and meeting room space to more than approximately 1.3 million sq ft. The plan also includes a hotel and a multi-function, screening, loading and marshalling facility. "The cost of the plan is significantly
CB&I Liquefied-natural-gas terminals are gaining ground as the demand for the fuel increases in many parts of the world. For contractors that build the facilities and infrastructure that feed the world’s voracious appetite for oil and gas, markets never have been so good, yet also so bad. It’s a market of extremes with a severe backlog of demand, yet an equally severe dearth of people to meet it. The monstrous demand for refineries, liquified-natural-gas (LNG) plants, pipelines and underwater facilities is prompting dozens of multibillion-dollar projects to proliferate around the world, but also causing many contractors to feel the monster’s
Black & Veatch Wireless networks are poised for more growth. As customers demand better access and government regulators require increased reliability, companies in the telecommunications market are dishing out billions of dollars in new projects to contractors. Data centers remain a hotbed of activity. Since picking up steam two years ago, demand for larger data centers that support higher-density computing continues to soar. Terence Deneny, vice president of Structure Tone Inc.’s mission-critical office in New York City, says the company has seen revenue in the sector increase by more than 30% in the past year. “The amount of projects under
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