A New York company and two utilities have a cost-effective solution to the nation’s aging underground infrastructure: a robot that crawls through cast-iron natural-gas pipelines and replaces their deteriorating joints, effectively renewing the pipes for up to 50 years.
High above New York City’s streets, ironworkers building the 70-story One Manhattan West tower are laboring inside of a six-story, 900-ton steel-mesh cocoon that hydraulically crawls up the sides of the building as they erect structural steel around the tower’s concrete core.
Major specialty contracting firms in the New York-New Jersey region appear to be benefiting from the still strong metro area building construction market, with revenue for the 10 largest firms on this year’s regional list up nearly $1 billion, to $2.97 billion.