All About Access. Suspended metal decking (above) and a "stairway to heaven" made of steel channels (left) help contractors easily reach work areas. (Photos by Michael Goodman for ENR) Contractors are almost complete with the second phase of a planned decade-long, $392-million effort to keep San Francisco’s storied Golden Gate Bridge in place for future generations of span users and lovers. The complex seismic retrofit of the link to Marin County, Calif., is "a little like brain surgery," says Ewa Bauer, deputy district engineer for the Golden Gate Highway and Transportation District, the public agency that built the bridge in
The moderate inflation rates experienced by the construction industry for much of the 1990s through 2003 may go down in economic text books as a fluke made possible by the rare combination of cheap imports, energy and money combined with a relatively weak global economy. Those conditions now are changing. Strong demand overseas and the weak dollar are preventing imports from stepping in to cap domestic price increases. Oil prices have flirted with record highs for much of the year and the Federal Reserve Board is finally starting to nudge interest rates higher. In addition, the emergence of China as
An unexpected surge in material prices took ENR’s cost indexes on a wild ride this year. Steel prices started rising early in the year and quickly reached record highs. This was followed by steep increases in lumber prices during the first half of the year. Even the long docile cement prices started to succumb to regional shortages during the summer, leading to the largest price hikes for cement in over a decade. By December, these higher prices had pushed the materials component of ENR’s indexes 20% higher than a year ago. ENR’s Building Cost Index was affected the most by
Like a discarded antique discovered in your grandfather’s attic, scrap steel in old buildings and industrial sites has become so valuable that some contractors say they have been able to bid at or below the cost of their services and still make a profit. Some contractors have reaped windfalls, or tried to, by bidding at normal levels. In a few instances alert owners have approached contractors and offered to split the scrap steel proceeds while taking advantage of the opportunity to clean up and clear properties. But such arrangements remain rare, contractors say, and complicating factors such as asbestos and
No matter how large or small, construction equipment fleets are feeling a one-two-three punch for machinery, fuel and support costs this year. Continually rising insurance premiums, rental rates and employee wages will keep estimators on guard in 2005. "It is really kind of scary," says Thad Pirtle, vice president of Traylor Bros. Inc., Evansville, Ind. He runs the contractor’s $175-million equipment fleet and says he is "very, very concerned about inflation" going into next year. Equipment prices shot up over the past several months and are likely to hold steady in 2005. A cooling residential sector could bring some price
A prolonged soft market has taken its toll on many design firms. This has left the salary and compensation explosion for design firm staff a distant memory. There are some signs of life in the employment market for top people but those expecting a big holiday bonus may have disappointments in store. Among design firm managers, the only positions that saw any increases in median salaries over the past two years were for project managers and market-ing directors, according to a recent sal-ary and compensation survey published by ZweigWhite, a Natick, Mass.-based management consulting firm. "We still aren’t seeing the
After years of hype, the reality of the huge Chinese economy could not be denied in 2004. For perhaps the first time, China became the main driver of international construction cost trends, replacing a role previously played by the U.S. and Western Europe. China’s economic engine helped reverse years of deflation for construction costs in neighboring Asian markets and its voracious appetite for raw materials sparked worldwide inflation for a broad range of construction materials. The U.S. market, where construction costs rose at a double-digit pace, was the hardest hit but inflation also posted large gains in many other countries,
When plans call for tens of thousands of pieces of custom-fabricated pipe, hangers, valves and connectors, and the construction sequence requires a lay-down yard bigger than a football stadium, pressure mounts as a manager tries to account, sort and make the pieces available for work crews. Even if all you are trying to do is keep up with small tools or boxes of materials on a construction job, it still comes down to the same problem: keeping track of your stuff. Now, it appears that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags may be the answer. The little tags use radio signals
Civil engineers have long been called on to fix what’s physically broken in the world or to design elegant new solutions for unmet global needs. But now they are tackling a bigger challenge–how to reinvent themselves and prepare future generations of engineers for more complex demands. The mission now is to figure out how to begin implementing the so-called "body of knowledge" (BOK) that the American Society of Civil Engineers has deemed critical for future engineers to demonstrate in order to obtain licenses and practice professionally. Much of the impetus comes from The Engineer of 2020, a report issued in
Yew Choe (Joe) Wong was lucky. The Malaysian civil engineering student’s months-long wait for a visa in 2002 only cost him his first semester at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. But the long wait and deep silence from U.S. authorities about his visa status was harrowing enough. Even with help from local politicians and nonprofit groups, Wong got nowhere. "They never told me exactly what was going on," he says. "I just sat there waiting frustratingly." RELATED LINKS Curriculum: How much to Know People: Staff Extension Mentoring Pays Off Financial Aid: Covering Costs An Educator's View With little to bank on,
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