Cliff Schexnayder / ENR A shielded TBM would be trapped, experts warned. In the mountains of Peru a tunnel-boring machine named “Pacha Mama” is grinding through the heart of the Andes under rock as deep as 6,890 ft. It is carving away at a 20.2-kilometer-long tunnel through the South American Continental Divide to deliver water to arid coastal farmland. Even though the 5-meter-dia, unshielded Robbins gripper TBM is tunneling through one of the lowest reaches of the Andes, it is still one of the deepest tunneling projects in the world. The Gotthard Base tunnel in Switzerland, with 7,588.6 ft of
Arup Group Airport transit system will make debut in London. The elevated track of London Heathrow Airport’s new personal rapid-transit (PRT) system is on the verge of completion. PRT advocates say it is the world’s first true PRT system. The 1.1-km line will carry four-person automated vehicles between the new Terminal 5 and two parking-lot stations. Passengers will punch in a destination at the station, and their vehicles will arrive non-stop. In the future, the system will use smart cards for payment and passenger profiles. Airport owner BAA PLC chose the pioneering system because “we found it difficult to solve
Embry-Riddle A researcher tests one of the hightech aviation systems at Daytona. Daytona Beach International Airport is serving as a NextGen National Test Facility for implementing and evaluating new safety, ground-management and air-traffic-control systems. The Federal Aviation Administration has set a goal of upgrading the country’s air-traffic-management system by 2025, says Christina Frederick-Recascino, vice president for research at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University of Daytona Beach. “We can try out all the ideas here, and then we slide out to the busier airports and say, ‘It looks like this will work; you try it out,’” says Ian Wilson, project principal investigator. Along
Panama City Bay County Airport Panama City-Bay County Airport will be the first greenfield facility of the 21st century. Construction is under way at the nation’s first brand-new greenfield airport in the 21st century, with planners doing their best to anticipate the security, technology and environmental needs to come. The new Panama City-Bay County Airport, scheduled for completion in 2010, presents “somewhat of a guessing game,” says John Zebroski, airport project manager. The $330-million airport is the centerpiece of the West Bay Sector Plan, an ambitious 74,000-acre long-term development for the Gulf Coast. Initial steps in the land-use plan include
LAWA Gensler Congested ticket counters (Above) will give way to self-service kiosks that reduce the need for lobby space It was a construction success story, of sorts. At Passenger Terminal World, in Amsterdam this April, Angela Newland described the project to renovate and expand Ohio’s Columbus Airport with a $7-million contract, $2-million change order and “flash-track” design and build process. “We ordered steel before the terminal was designed,” the vice president of planning and engineering recalled. In half a year, the regional airport authority renovated almost 10,000 sq ft of operations and ticketing space and 11,000 sq ft of terminal
Guy Lawrence / ENR Design-build continues to be a major presence in the construction landscape, as more owners search for efficiencies in the construction process. For ENR’s Top 100 Design-Build Firms, 2007 was a big year. The group generated $83.44 billion in revenue in 2007, up 21.2% from 2006. Domestically, the revenue figure was $53.75 billion, an increase of 19.7% over 2006, while international work, much of it from giant engineer procure-construct jobs, rose to $29.68 billion, up 24.1%. The 2008 Top 100: Overview Design-Build Firms | Rankings CM-for-Fee Firms | Rankings CM-at-Risk Firms | Rankings Top 40 Program Managers
ABDELRAZAQ Some may have considered Ahmad Abdelrazaq’s late 2004 move from architect-engineer Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to contractor Samsung Corp. a missed opportunity. SOM had just issued the foundation package for the supertall Burj Dubai—and Abdelrazaq had been working on the design for a year. Why give up the chance to help engineer what was touted as being the world’s tallest building? Perhaps because Samsung finally made Abdelrazaq an offer he could not refuse; to lead the Seoul-based contractor’s high-rise building and structural engineering group. “I had helped them expedite construction, through design, on a 93-story Seoul project, which went up
Veteran elevator consultant James W. Fortune says he used to hear about a supertall tower like the Burj Dubai once every five years. These days, he hears about one a month. “And one out of 10 is built,” he adds. FORTUNE When Fortune started working on the vertical transportation system for the supertower in Dubai, he was president and CEO of Lerch Bates & Associates, Littleton, Colo. He subsequently retired—for two weeks—and hung out a sign in Galveston, Texas. “All I do is design elevators for mega-high-rises,” says the president of Fortune Elevator Consultants. For the Burj Dubai, Fortune designed
Emaar Properties PJSC seemed to rise out of nowhere, much like the Burj Dubai—the superskyscraper it is building in the desert city on the Persian Gulf peninsula it calls home. The developer is only 10 years young, yet it reports an international project portfolio of more than $65 billon, which it says does not include the company’s largest-ever international project in Libya, near Tripoli. The company has six business segments and more than 60 active companies operating in 36 markets in the Middle East, North Africa, Pan-Asia, Europe and North America. Of its 600 employees, 100 are outside Dubai. Dubai’s
+ click to enlarge The place was a bar called Vu in Dubai. The date was April 3, 2003. There, George J. Efstathiou, a managing partner in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Mark Amirault and Robert Booth, executives of Emaar Properties PJSC, Dubai, shook hands to seal the deal for SOM to design a 550-meter-tall skyscraper that would be the icon of a $20-billion development in Dubai (see p. 26). Nothing was put on paper. “We cemented the deal and a three-way friendship,” says Efstathiou. Related Links: 650-Plus Meters Skyward, Crews Are Already Out of this World
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