New Orleans has a better defense should another big storm hit the city. But it’s never going to be completely safe. JoEllen Darcy (left), assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, speaking in New Orleans. At right are Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, chief of Engineers for the Corps of Engineers and Colonel Edward Fleming, commander of the Corps� New Orleans districts. “You can’t eliminate risk no matter where you are,” said Jo Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, at a March 22 press conference in New Orleans. “What we are doing here is buying down
Plus Concrete, Inc., a subsidiary of RMD Holdings, Ltd., New Haven, Mich., began work March 10 on Phase Two of the $6.7-million rehabilitation of about 3.5 miles of Magazine Street in New Orleans. The project is part of the $118-million South Louisiana Submerged Roads Program (SRP), a comprehensive program to repair and resurface roughly 56 miles of roads in the Greater New Orleans area that were damaged as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. RMD Holdings has six contracts for projects in the SRP. Photo: DOTD The city of New Orleans contributed funding to install new blue
Louisiana drivers are paying a congestion tax, as well as wasting time and money on sitting in traffic that is caused, in part, by Louisiana’s failure to adequately fund transportation, says Ken Perret, president of the Louisiana Good Roads and Transportation Association (http://www.louisianagoodroads.org/index.html). Baton Rouge has the worst traffic congestion in the nation among mid-sized cities, according to the Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) Urban Mobility Report 2010 (http://tti.tamu.edu/documents/mobility_report_2010.pdf). The College Station, Texas-based organization is a part of Texas A&M University system and a Texas state agency. PERRET The cost to Louisiana’s capital city drivers is equivalent to 37 hours, 30
The last fully funded segment of the $622 million I-49 North extension from I-220 in Shreveport to the Arkansas state line was awarded on February 18 by the Louisiana Dept. of Transportation and Development (DOTD). James Construction Group LLC, Baton Rouge, won a $25.7-million contract to build a 3.4-mile segment of the four-lane interstate from La. Hwy 530 to La. Hwy 170. Work should begin this spring and last until spring 2013. To date, the Louisiana DOTD has awarded nine contracts valued at $460 million for construction of the I-49 North corridor. Two remaining segments of the corridor–critical to freight
A parking-deck structure under construction partially collapsed Feb. 14 in San Antonio, injuring two construction workers at the University Health System’s University Hospital site. Related Links: Texas Parking Garage Job Idle Until Collapse Cause Known The 10-story, 3,000-plus-car garage is being built in three phases by a joint venture of Zachry Construction, San Antonio; Vaughn Construction, Houston; and Layton of Phoenix, as part of a $900-million system-wide expansion project by the public health system owned by Bexar County. Just before the collapse, workers reported hearing a rumbling sound, and construction supervisors evacuated the site, according to Melissa Sparks with the
Hoping for a bigger Super Bowl attendance at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the owner arranged for temporary sections to increase seating capacity. But some of those seats were not ready at game time. Eric Grubman, NFL executive vice president, said the problem was officials “just ran out of time” to complete infrastructure such as railings and steps, and to tighten risers. The stadium owner says that the $1.3-billion stadium was designed to fully accommodate the additional seats. Seating Solutions, the Commack, N.Y.-based contractor charged with installing the temporary seats, had no comment.
Big Brother is watching your tools. That’s the idea behind a new asset-management system from Snap-on Industrial. Photos courtesy of Snap-on Industrial In its place For its latest tool box, Snap-on installed four to six cameras that take high-speed snapshots of drawers as they are closed. A computer compares those images to stocked drawers and alerts asset managers of discrepancies. Born in the aerospace field, the company’s latest tool box is designed to help people in construction, especially those who work in high-risk areas that require tight security over “foreign-object damage” or “foreign-material exclusion”—such as nuclear powerplants—or those using large
Texas could become the nation�s leader in clean-coal technology, with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality recently giving its approval to three such projects. The powerplants, though, face some opposition from neighbors opposed to the new coal plants�clean or not. Map: Sue Pearsall for ENR Three clean-coal projects are estimated at nearly $8 billion in construction costs. On Dec. 14, the TCEQ gave an air-quality permit to Omaha, Neb.-based Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center, allowing it to build a 600-MW, $3.5-billion clean-coal powerplant in Penwell. On Dec. 29, the state agency granted an air-quality permit to the Summit Power Group of
Touting his Pickens Plan, Dallas oilman and philanthropist T. Boone Pickens, the 82-year-old Texas oil tycoon, gave the keynote address to attendees in September at the 2010 Sunbelt Builders Show held at the Gaylord Texan. div id="articleExtrasA" div id="articleExtrasB" div id="articleExtras" Pickens says out of the 85 million barrels of oil produced daily across the globe, the U.S.–with 4% of the world’s population–consumes 21 million [per day] of those. “Of the 14 million barrels we import every day, five million comes from OPEC and the Middle East; from countries where our State Department advises us not to travel.” He adds
San Antonio-based Overland Partners Architects earned the 2010 Firm of the Year title from the Texas Society of Architects. Photo: Overland Partners Overland Partners designed �The Bridge� project in Dallas. The Architecture Firm Award is the highest honor bestowed upon a firm in Texas that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years and has contributed to the profession and community. “This is an award we’re particularly excited about because it’s about celebrating the totality of the people that make Overland what it is today and those who contributed over the past 20 years,” Overland principal Bob Shemwell
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