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Angelle Bergeron/ENR Construction license applications have doubled, but crews still work without them. The hurricane-shattered Gulf Coast is a petri dish for construction’s national work force crisis. The issues are not new, but their concentration is unprecedented. Ever since Katrina and Rita cut through the area, industry firms have struggled to find enough labor and resources to perform demolition and emergency work in the region, while maintaining schedules for ongoing capital and infrastructure projects throughout the nation. Insiders now fear that once residential construction kicks in to replace some or all of an estimated 200,000-plus homes lost, capital projects already

You hear grumbling about workforce issues everywhere in the Gulf region these days, but the effects are certainly not limited there, industry insiders say. "A lot of the labor either got out of the business or went south," says Tony Stehling, southeast regional manager for Austin Bridge & Road LP, Dallas. Austin Bridge and Road is struggling to find skilled labor‹specifically pile drivers and construction carpenters--for a $25 million contract to rehabilitate the westbound bridge over the Red River in Bossier City, La., about 350 miles north of New Orleans. He also says he has a similar problem with a

Leading the optimists in this year’s group of forecasters is FMI Corp. The Denver-based industry management consultant predicts that total construction will increase 2.2% in 2007 to $1.18 trillion, following an estimated increase of 3.4% this year. “We tend to be a bit optimistic but, if anything, I think our estimates for 2006 may be on the low side, given recent reports on construction put-in-place from the U.S. Commerce Dept.,” says Heather Jones, a construction economist with FMI. In the short term, she thinks the lodging market will be one of the fastest growing, but in the long term, she

ODA Six years to go before the Summer Olympics in London, and the approach used this August to pick a management team for more than $4.5 billion of its planned construction is already record-setting. That selection was the U.K.’s first use of “competitive dialogue,” a new style of negotiated procurement that is aimed at delivering one of Europe’s most ambitious building programs on time and on budget.  The new approach was tailored for complicated projects. Few qualify as well as construction of venues, facilities and infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic Games, as well as the Paralympic Games for physically challenged

McShane-Fleming Chicago's Blackstone Hotel is undergoing a $112-million renovation. One large midwestern building contractor has found that working with a modified delivery system it calls “design-build lite” is professionally challenging but economically beneficial to all parties. The system can increase speed, coordination and value while reducing risk and problems.  James McHugh Construction Co., Chicago, has worked on a significant number of full design-build projects. Along the way, it discovered that doing mechanical-electrical-plumbing (MEP),  fire protection or structural work in a design-build format also is a winner. After 12 such projects, McHugh says about 75% of its annual $500-million construction volume

Quality Planning Solutions Inc. New firm schedules complex jobs, like this Virginia medical campus. photos courtesy of Quality Planning Solutions, Inc. In a market where owners increasingly invest in fast-tracked projects of unprecedented scope and complexity, many contractors’ project-scheduling resources are being pushed to the limit. But for one national firm, today’s tough scheduling demands represent an emerging market to be tapped. Many factors go into successfully delivering a project, “but at the end of the day it’s the schedule that matters,” says Dave Ambrose, president of Turner Construction Co.’s newly formed subsidiary, Quality Planning Solutions Inc., which claims to

The Greenville, S.C., school board struggled for 10 years to find a means to pay for a much-needed construction program that would build or expand 70 different school buildings. Realizing its effort was going nowhere, the board advertised for a construction manager that could offer a creative solution. It found one, locally, when a group of business executives formed their own firm to attack the financial problem and partnered with New York City-based construction manager Faithful + Gould for construction expertise. Institutional Resources, Greenville,  found a way to finance a $1-billion deal, avoid the state’s debt restrictions and provide comprehensive

Gates To test how far the water and wastewater market has evolved in accepting different project delivery methods, my firm conducted a comprehensive survey of water and wastewater utility executives across the country. The goal  of the independent study is to understand what owners really want when it comes to completing water/wastewater capital projects. The obvious conclusion of the R. W. Beck survey is that the use of progressive project delivery methods for water and wastewater utility capital projects is here to stay. The study shows that more than 54% of the nation’s major water/wastewater utilities have now tried alternatives