Photo:� Greg Pickens - FOTOLIA Keeping construction projects staffed in fast-growing southeastern states has never been easy. But that is proving tough now, and could be a lot tougher later, with still unmet building needs from recent hurricanes and demand for craft labor to meet industrial growth plans in the region, particularly in power. That is translating into higher labor costs for crafts and other skills. Owners already affiliated with Cincinnati-based Construction Users Roundtable began to realize their looming labor shortage situation in 2005, based on research by Birmingham-based utility Southern Co. It hosted a forum last October, initiated by
Photo:� Jose Antonio Lavado - FOTOLIA Contractors who have been battling a resurgence in inflation, starting with a doubling of steel prices during the spring of 2004 through the doubling of copper prices last quarter, finally got a break. During the third quarter, the decline in housing starts gained enough momentum to begin pulling down prices for some materials such as lumber, plywood and oriented strand board. Even commodity prices appear to have behaved themselves during the third quarter. “The good news is that we have seen a significant drop in the price of oil, which has fallen below $70
Photo: Underground Solutions Inc. Robust demand and high energy costs have seen polyvinyl chloride prices rise for three consecutive years, culminating in a 20% increase between August 2005 and 2006, reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index. Hurricane Katrina last year helped spike prices. Spot shortages followed because PVC and other vinyl products use ethylene resins produced from oil via naphtha or natural gas via ethane. Hurricane-related shutdowns sent resin prices soaring to 72¢ per lb as standing inventories were quickly absorbed, says Frantz R. Price, of Global Insight Inc., a Waltham, Mass.-based research firm. Prices have
Hard Slog. Labor demand for U.S. nuclear construction will peak in 2013. (Photo: Areva NP) When environmentalists advocate constructing new nuclear powerplants, you know the climate has changed for an energy source that many once thought was on its way to extinction. A subtle shift to green is occurring in the public’s view of nuclear energy, and the electricity industry is responding like a lane of traffic to a changing signal. Generating companies have announced plans for as many as 29 new nuclear units, and possibly more, at about 20 U.S. sites, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, with capacity
CAESAR II pipe-stress tool plots effects of heat on pipe geometry. (Photo: Black & Veatch) Project collaboration is an area where a lot of technology for nuclear powerplant development has emerged since the last wave of U.S. plant construction. The use of unified databases for projects and the development of tools to share data across software systems will change the picture drastically in the future. “Anything that has to do with collaboration is really key,” says Mark Harmon, chief technology engineer for energy business at Black & Veatch, Overland Park, Kan. He says the rise of standard data formats for
Safety issues nearly killed the nuclear-energy industry, and the industry got the memo. New orders dried up and old ones were canceled after the 1979 near-meltdown at Three Mile Island. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster was the industry’s death-knell for a generation in the West. New reactor designs, dubbed Generation III and Generation III+, are evolutions of the Gen II reactors built in the 1960s and ’70s, drawing upon the nuclear power industry’s years of operating experience and data. Safety—“passive” safety—is their chief selling point. Passive systems use natural forces such as gravity for cooling-water flow and convection for air flow,
...projects trail the hub in development. The interdependencies make it difficult to change any element without creating consequences almost everywhere else, says Calatrava, who is DDP’s design architect-structural engineer. + Enlarge this image Fuzzy Fences. Hub interfaces with other WTC projects, which complicates design. Organization of DDP’s full-service team is almost as convoluted as the hub’s space plan. There are 180 full-time employees, including 120 from 40 subconsultants. Most work out of a job office just blocks from Ground Zero. DDP’s contract began Aug. 3, 2003. Dominick M. Servedio, DDP’s principal, thinks the partners’ experience with FTA procedures was a
Considering he is both an architect and a structural engineer, it is not surprising that Santiago Calatrava considers the professions inextricably intertwined. "There is a symbiosis between architecture and engineering," says Calatrava. "Looking at architects and engineers as separate disciplines is a convention and a new thing," says the designer for the $2.2-billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub in lower Manhattan. Calatrava considers the separation unnaturala consequence of the evolution of the profession, related to the recent development of specialty consultants. With that outlook, it is also not surprising that the architecture is the structure and vice versa in most
Calatrava Santiago Calatrava, design architect and a structural engineer, has been working on the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, along with the Downtown Design Partnership, for three years. Nadine M. Post, ENR’s editor at large, interviewed Calatrava on the project and on his feelings about design as well as working in the U.S. ENR: How do you feel about living in New York City and working on the World Trade Center Transportation Hub for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey? Santiago Calatrava: I came to the U.S. because I liked the country and for the experience of
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