Jason Scott New Life. Scott is first recipient of scholarship from program established by Nilsson (right). Amputees from the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., for the past year have been watching the progress of a new structure as it emerged from what used to be the hospital’s deeply sloped backyard. They are excited, anticipating the opening of the 31,000-sq-ft Military Advanced Training Center, which will help them resume productive lives. What began as a shelved project three years ago quickly became a top priority for the government after
VIDEO:NASA Video Summer has ended without a major electricity failure. But memories of the Aug. 14, 2003, blackout in the northeastern U.S. and Canada are still fresh. Concerns about the deterioration of the U.S. infrastructure were revived by the Aug. 1 collapse of an Interstate bridge in Minnesota with the loss of 13 lives and the earlier explosion of a utility steam line in Midtown Manhattan. The 2003 blackout was not an infrastructure failure. + click to enlarge Nancy Soulliard Advanced sensors, using RFID technology, are in development and soon will be demonstrated in the field. Operating like an E-Z
Atlas Copco Construction Tools LLC Just about every construction worker who spends most of the day breaking, grinding, drilling or sawing knows that it is not easy on the hands. The risk of long-term injury that results from hand-arm vibration is well known and has been heavily documented over the last century. Many scientists believe that hard work can be accomplished without the hand, arm and shoulder pain associated with power tools, and large employers looking to reduce risk and claims don’t mind paying a small premium to make workers more comfortable. That is why regulations across the Atlantic are
Metabo Corp. Within the competitive world of ergonomic tool design, sometimes is pays to play around. That's evidently what happened when Germany–based Metabo Corp. and Porsche Design Group teamed up to produce the P'7911 sporty multihammer that went on sale earlier this summer. About three years ago, a Metabo design engineer took the main handle off one of the manufacturer's hammer drills and stuck it upside–down on top of the drive body. The company had just installed a new chief executive officer, who noticed the tool while he was taking a tour of the office. Seeing the odd–looking implement laying
Enriched by booming domestic orders, Spanish construction groups now are flexing their muscles globally. As well as moving into high-value-added sectors, contractors are increasingly exploiting their toll road know-how to pry open new markets. The U.S. is among prime destinations. Ferrovial Cintra has over 50% of Canadian concession for Toronto 470 ETR highway. “We see the Spanish contractors now in the U.S. [where] they were not a few years ago,” says Stuart Graham, president and chief executive officer of Stockholm-based Skanska A.B. “They know the [toll road] business quite well. They’ve been at it for a long time.” The company
Victims of the I-35W bridge collapse have not all been recovered and causes of the disaster remain under investigation, but issues surrounding liability and legal consequences are starting to emerge for local participants and nationwide observers. “There is a hotline established by the state for claims,” says David C. Semerad, CEO of Associated General Contractors of Minnesota. “Lawyers are already advertising for claims. I’m repulsed.” With the National Transportation Safety Board just beginning its probe, it is too early to speculate on whether criminal charges will be filed. But trial attorneys familiar with construction cases say that expected civil suits
It seems that only disasters have the ability to awaken the American public, and the cataclysmic collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis has people stirring. It should. Failures like this can happen anywhere. It is the latest in a string of explosions, power outages, water shortages and rail and aviation misadventures that show that almost all infrastructure programs are out of step with the nation’s needs. Success takes money, organization and planning and government officials are in charge because this is how they serve the public. Money is the usual excuse for not getting things done in a
Collpase of Silver Bridge in West Virginia spurred initial federal inspection program. Just as West Virginia's Silver Bridge collapse in 1967 marked a new era for bridge inspections and awareness of U.S. infrastructure issues, so will Minnesota's Interstate 35W bridge collapse be another ante-upping chapter. The chapter is still being written. U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters has vowed a “top-to-bottom review” of federal bridge inspection guidelines. The specific structural issues that may be reshaped depend largely on what the National Transportation Safety Board will determine from its investigation. Fatigue cracks, lack of redundancy, bearings corrosion, welding codes—a variety
OSMOS OSMOS OSMOS used four strategically placed fiber-optic strands to monitor stress on a massive truss barged by ocean transit from Alabama to New York. A question begged by the Minneapolis bridge collapse is whether current inspection practices are adequate or whether unused or underutilized monitoring technology could improve them. Predictably, vendors of such tools think so, although researchers and engineers are more reserved. Except during load tests, monitoring devices were not installed on the I-35W bridge because “monitoring would have been very difficult given all of the critical locations,” says Daniel L. Dorgan, Minnesota’s chief bridge engineer. He also
VIDEO:Surveillance Video of Collapse Forensic officials who arrived on the scene of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis soon ruled out terrorism and seismic activity as causes. Nothing else is being ruled out as the cause of the Aug. 1 failure. "Anything is possible," says Mark V. Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. "What we begin to do is rule things in." Investigators are drawing information from a wealth of documents prepared over the past 10 years that detailed the aging steel truss bridge's physical condition and recommended possible fixes. But review of the structure's collapsed members had
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