Technical professionals who seek upward mobility with an MBA degree may please construction industry employers who see more value in their expanded capability. But a broad MBA may not add to industry knowledge and can lure seekers right into a new business. Now, an engineers’ group and a well-known university are joining forces to steer industry professionals into the first grad school business management program that focuses entirely on how to run–or better run–architecture, engineering and construction firms, and even public agencies. Related Links: Industry Demand Pushes Schools To Keep the Numbers Up With Katrina-Hit Schools Set To Open, It
Switch. Dossick (bottom, center) says her dance career supported her new role as engineering teacher. (Photo top by Tom sawyer for ENR; bottom courtesy of Carrie Dossick) While Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Seattle, Wash., are not that far apart in miles, the distance for Carrie (Sturts) Dossick is huge in terms of career path traveled. Still, the dancer-turned-engineering professor sees a link between her two very different passions. By age three, Dossick had already started ballet, tap and modern dance in a dance company in her native Coeur d’Alene, likely thinking that’s what she would do when she grew up.
Future Work Force Gets in Gear. Civil engineering students from Rensselaer University visit a construction site in Albany, N.Y. Is there enough talent in the pipeline to meet industry’s needs? (Photo courtesy of Earth Tech/Carsten H. Floess) At a time when demand for construction industry talent is at record highs, more engineering and construction programs struggle to produce results. The trend bodes well for graduates in job and salary offers but campus uncertainties are not leaving employers very happy about the future. "There is a lot of concern in industry for both civil and construction management firms," says Ken Williamson,
Editor's note: The following story was reported, written and closed three days before Tulane University President Scott Cowen announced on the school's website Dec. 8 that Tulane's civil-environmental engineering department, among other engineering departments at the university. would no longer accept new students and that all current students must be able to graduate by May 2007. The university says this is a budgetary move in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but it has outraged many students, faculty, industry members and parents. ENR will continue to cover this breaking story on line and in its print pages. Coping With Disaster. Flooding
In his 1994 bestseller First Things First, management guru Steven R. Covey exhorts business leaders to "leave a legacy." It looks like more construction industry leaders are taking that kind of advice when it comes to giving big money for named university buildings and programs. Real estate moguls and engineering and construction industry chieftains have been donating millions to relevant academia long before Covey’s exhortations. But this largesse has perhaps never been so critical. Colleges and universities need new facilities as they compete fiercely for top faculty, students and research dollars, just as state schools see their share of public
Two universities–one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast–are looking at construction education in a new, real world way. Integrating disciplines may be a no-brainer on progressive construction projects, but it’s far from industry norm and even farther from what many programs teach. Nontraditional. Wentworth lectures on older construction methods, but doesn’t teach them. (Photo courtesy of Wentworth Institute of Technology) At Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, students from different disciplines began working together last year, and the experiment could be implemented throughout its construction management school next year. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, first
Supersize That. Wisconsin’s 80-ton feedwater heaters are much larger than a subcritical powerplant’s. (Photo courtesy of Black & Veatch) Coal is returning to favor as a powerplant fuel, driven by rising electricity demand and rising costs for competing fuels. As utilities and private-power developers seek to get ahead of the next surge in powerplant construction, they are proposing, in record numbers, plants using technologies that reduce coal’s notoriously dirty emissions. Coal-fueled powerplants that produce near-zero emissions also are coming, thanks to intensive public and private research programs. Renewed interest in coal "is clearly driven by fuel-cost issues," says Gregory A.
Permit litigation, steel price increases, first-of-a-kind materials and a tight labor market are among the challenges facing a Wisconsin utility one year into a supercritical pulverized-coal powerplant project, one of only two in progress in the U.S. So far, the materials and labor challenges have not adversely affected the project’s schedule and budget, but a state court decision could seriously delay it if the utility loses. The Sierra Club contends the permit for Wisconsin Public Service Corp.’s 500-MW Weston powerplant unit 4 does not comply with the Clean Air Act. The dry scrubber allowed in the permit is "not best-available
Clean coal technologies reduce emissions either in the combustion cycle or through gasification of the coal. Circulating fluidized-bed combustion (CFB) and supercritical pulverized-coal systems use temperature and pressure in the combustion cycle. Integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) systems convert coal to a gas before combustion. Until recently, all of them have been less reliable than conventional subcritical pulverized-coal (PC) powerplants, the backbone of the U.S. generation fleet. Some also cost more to construct, operate and maintain. Related Links: Electricity Demand Heats Up Coal Cleans Up Challenges Dog Wisconsin Utility’s Supercritical Project Business Week: The Race Against Climate Change Multimedia: Slideshow Click
+Enlarge Slimmed Down. Smaller profile reduces wind loading. (Photo courtesy of Freyssinet S.A.) By cramming the same amount of stay cable steel into 35% less space, builders of a record-breaking bridge in Vietnam can satisfy higher than planned wind speeds without late structural changes. Developed for the world’s longest centrally supported, concrete cable-stayed Bai Chay Bridge, the "compact duct" system came too late to help designers of the vast Stonecutters crossing in Hong Kong. To straddle Rambler Channel with a 1,018-meter main span, Hong Kong’s $350-million Stonecutters Bridge will be wide open to typhoons. With its stays exerting high wind
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