Martin’s positive attitude and endurance are the qualities people talk about most. "One thing anybody who has ever met Gregg Martin remembers about him is the enormous energy he has," says Wallace.
Col. Gregg F. Martin walked onto an airfield at a sprawling U.S. Army base north of Baghdad on Feb. 3 with the headquarters company of his command, the 130th Engineer Brigade.
The business of engineering and construction has always been about risk–pioneering methods under dangerous conditions with no guarantee of being paid on time, or at all. This kind of work has bred generations of risktakers whose zeal to complete a tough job and seek out even tougher challenges has propelled the industry forward for centuries. Such bravado, however, has allowed some executives to let egos get ahead of sound business judgement and out of step with the firm’s interests. The result has been the disappearance of many storied industry names in this unforgiving line of work. But there also are
Nobody saw it coming. After more than a decade of relative price stability, contractors have been blind- sided by the largest price hikes for materials since the early 1970s. Steel products caused the most damage but prices for lumber, plywood, gypsum wallboard, copper, stainless steel, pipe and fuel are all joining in to pummel contractors. In the steel industry, prices have hit crisis proportions, affecting everything from bridge girders to hinges. In the first quarter, construction faced price hikes for steel products ranging from 20 to 60%. Firms with fixed-price contracts were devastated. Many are being pushed toward bankruptcy, with
(Photo coutesy of Steel Dynamics Inc.) The most severe cost crisis in living memory has hit fabricators and contractors that work with anything made of steel. And nobody saw it coming. Structurals, plate, rebar, mesh, studs, ductwork, guardrails, fences——if it was a product made with steel and you had a fixed-price contract to deliver it during the first quarter, you were in trouble. And the contractual ripples are expected to be felt for many months to come. Reinforcing bar prices made the first move last spring while structural steel prices began moving up in the fourth quarter of 2003. But
DOWN THE LINE Fleet owners may see steel’s impact reflected in higher equipment prices. (Photo courtesy of DaimlerChrysler AG.) This year’s sharp escalation in steel prices has manufacturers of work trucks and heavy construction equipment keeping a watchful eye on their futures. "Our product prices are directly affected by the price of steel," says Margaret A. Tue, purchasing manager for Stellar Industries Inc. The Garner, Iowa-based producer of truck-mounted implements reports a 30% increase in raw-steel costs since January, with no signs of price relief in the near-term. The rising cost of steel in the U.S.–some call it the fastest
Along-running jurisdictional dispute between bricklayers and cement masons that was settled in February by a federal arbitration panel may not yet have closed the door on the unions’ conflict. The panel concluded that future disputes between the bricklayers’ union and the operative plasterers and cement masons’ union should be "resolved in favor of the work assignment of the involved employer." Arbitrators ruled solely on work assignment disputes, rejecting the bricklayers’ request to merge the two unions. The panel also ruled that reinstatement of a "map system" that divides up the labor market would not resolve the battle. VIEW MORE ARTICLES
The pricing storm raging through the steel markets is breaking many industry cost indexes free of their moderate moorings, which kept average inflation below 3% for over a decade. But it isn’t just steel products. Lumber, plywood, copper water tubing, stainless steel, wallboard and pipe prices have all contributed their share to higher prices. "Everything is going up. I’ve never seen these types of increases before," says Mary Wallers, president of Sierra West Group, which compiles the two Lee Saylor indexes. She says that projects are coming in higher than anticipated and expects inflation to "probably double" this year. Already,
After cruising along in the 1.5 to 3% range for several years, inflation measured by ENR’s two cost indexes received quite a jolt in recent months. At the beginning of the year, inflation measured by the Building Cost Index (BCI) was 3.2%. By the end of the first quarter that rate had jumped to 5.8%. During the same period, the annual rate of increase for the Construction Cost Index (CCI) went from 3.3 to 5.0%.The mechanics of what drives ENR’s indexes are explained below. ENR began systematically reporting materials prices and wages in 1909, but it did not establish the
There’s victory in the air around San Diego’s ballpark neighborhood, a 26-block section of the city’s most blighted area. Never mind that opening day at the $452.6-million PETCO Park, the new home to baseball’s Padres, isn’t until April 8. No matter that there are more holes in the ground than completed hotels, retail and apartment buildings. Area land values have soared from $35 to $200 per sq ft. Economists project $3 billion in development by 2020 in the surrounding 100-block East Village. And the Padres construction team delivered the project on its revised schedule and budget, having survived a 16.5-month
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