Cost Saving? BE&K sponsors community race to boost employee interest in exercise while Skanska subscribes to company-customized wellness publications mailed to employees. Contractors are trying everything to keep health care costs under control, from raising deductibles to educating workers. But with premiums rising up to 25% a year, most have lost hope they can keep cost hikes in line with inflation. The goal is simply to return increases to single digits again. The Minnesota Mechanical Contractors Association and the labor management health care coalition in Minneapolis/St. Paul are pushing cost controls by "creating smarter buyers," says Gary Thaden, association government
Health insurance remains one of the most important benefits for union construction workers, but as costs continue to spiral, more collective bargaining agreements must tilt money to health and welfare benefit funds than to workers’ take-home pay. In some cases, these increases now outstrip–or replace–—wage gains. Labor leaders, management representatives, union business agents and rank-and-file members all agree that the problem is escalating out of control. But among construction crafts, opinions differ on how to fix, or even address, runaway costs. Many are seeking ways to boost their buying power. "It overshadows everything else in collective bargaining," says Stephen F.
Spider 2 navigates by sound waves and has articulated walking gear from alpine forestry machine. (Images courtesy of Norsk Hydro) Building a route for pipelines and service cables down a narrow undersea ravine and over a cliff into a plunging badlands of 60-meter peaks, valleys, boulders, ice water, high seas and strong currents is a challenge for equipment and technique. Norsk Hydro invested three years and $100,000 surveying and planning the route and then called in undersea cable specialist Nexans Norway AS, Oslo, for new equipment to groom the way. Nexans developed and now is operating two electrically powered machines
The lowdown. Concrete bridge piers reach up to 100 meters above the valley floor. floor A half-century after the U.S. put its Interstate highway system in place, China is building its own national road network. Within a decade, central planners expect to have a world class transport system to move goods and people safely between urban centers at speeds of 60 to 100 kilometers per hour. For construction, there are no speed limits. Roadbuilders are putting the pedal to the medal in a rush to pave the way for a rapidly expanding vehicular base. A decade of gross domestic production
The big definitely are getting bigger in the international construction market. As infrastructure needs become more demanding around the globe, many top international contractors have expanded their roles to include developing and financing projects. Increasing demands by public clients have led international contractors to become not just entities that build the project, but ones that will develop, plan and finance it, as well. This trend has aided an expanding market, but it also means that newer or smaller international firms will have to scramble to grow. Overall, the international market continues to grow. ENR’s Top 225 International Contractors had combined
A Norwegian company with a history of big works and a hunger for more is leading the coordinated development of a remotely-controlled deepwater gas field, an innovative landside processing plant and the world’s longest undersea pipeline. It is starting at the bottom, 1,000 meters down,where currents are strong and shifting, the cold water temperature hangs around -1° C and the sea floor is a maze of towering peaks, ravines and boulder-strewn confusion. click here to view map The Ormen Lange Gas Field, with 400 billion Standard Cubic Meters of gas, (an industry term for gas volume at a standard temperature
Easy Does It. For generator rewind, 208-ton, 53-ft-long rotor was shipped back to manufacturer for high-speed balance. The Tennessee Valley Authority and its contractors had a distinct advantage when they set about the $1.8-billion job of restarting Unit 1 at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama–they had already finished that task on the site’s other two units. As a result, TVA’s latest unit overhaul will cost less and require fewer man hours, says Jon Rupert, the federal utility’s Unit 1 restart vice president. The project began in May 2002 and was scheduled for completion in five years. Officials say
Transition. Workers enter airlock to start work in Pickering Unit 1’s reactor building. Nuclear power’s death knell has been sounded continually since the 1979 scare at Three Mile Island and the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl but the operators of nuclear powerplants have stubbornly declined to participate in their own funerals. Instead, they steadily upgraded and uprated their plants and improved their capacity factors. When the last new reactor in the U.S., 1,121-MW Watts Bar 1, entered service in 1996, the country’s nuclear-generation capacity hit its historic high of 100,784 MW. Since then, units totaling 3,348 MW have been retired, but
Tight Spot. 60% of the work was done in radiation suits, often in cramped spaces. Pickering A Nuclear Generating Station Unit 1 went critical at 10:05 p.m., Aug. 2, on schedule and within its $825-million budget. The achievement was the culmination of a struggle with history. As the second unit returned to service since all four of the plant’s units were laid up in 1997, the successful restart eclipsed the owner’s earlier and near-disastrous effort to bring back the plant’s fourth unit and may foretell a rejuvenation of nuclear power generation in energy-starved Ontario. Already, Ontario Power Generation Inc., the
Moving Ahead. Planned extension of New York’s Long Island Rail Road wins federal aid. Mass transit projects are now pegged to receive $52.6 billion through 2009, thanks to long-awaited reauthorization of federal funding for U.S. transportation projects that Congress passed July 29. That is good news, but industry had not been waiting forlornly by the phone for federal aid to come calling. As reauthorization stalled over the past two years, an ongoing nationwide increase in transit ridership spurred local ballot initiatives, innovative financial schemes and closer looks at transit options. The increasing community buy-in has jump-started an evolution in transit
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