JASPER In discussing the “information-centric organization,” the research firm Gartner notes the new value placed on information assets and the people who manage them. To realize that value, employees and partnering organizations must have immediate access to information when and where they need it. This is especially true on construction and engineering projects involving many different organizations, each with their own processes and work flows. In just 18 months, even a relatively small $200-million project can generate hundreds of thousands of documents that typically flow among more than 250 participants from 40 organizations. Slow and incomplete information flow forces project
Earlier this year, when ENR Editor-at-Large Nadine M. Post was briefing the videographers on Award of Excellence winner Jeffrey M. Baker and his project, she described his accomplishment and its significance. But when asked, she couldn’t describe the man. That was because she had not yet met Baker.
Mike Hill, ENR’s newest blogger, has no training in medicine or psychology but is hoping to help you get a better night’s sleep by demystifying the issues surrounding surety bonds and insurance. A surety bond broker with the Baldwin Cox Agency in North Texas, Hill has many years of industry experience. During that time, he has amassed enough knowledge to know that winter comes every year, rain often follows thunder, and that both rain and snow can make a mess of construction sites, such as the one pictured above in Virginia. Some of the questions that he will be pondering
MIYAMOTO As an engineer and expert on seismic design, Kit Miyamoto was in Tokyo on March 11 for a conference when the earthquake and tsunami struck northern Japan. Following are excerpts from his blog posts on the Miyamoto International website. March 12 (Tokyo) I was in the train near Ikebukuro station when the train suddenly stopped with a loud creaking noise at 2:55 p.m. today. Japan’s state-of-the-art earthquake system at work .... That’s what I thought at first. But it has been a struggle since. It is 1:30 a.m. now and we are still not far from where the train
As regular readers of Engineering News-Record and longtime volunteer leaders of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, we were extremely disappointed by two articles relating to the Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s crane and derrick standard that painted the association in an unfavorable light. The articles in question, “Gutsy Builder Took a Quantum Leap” (8/16/2010) and “Hoisting Hero Sent Clear Message to Industry When Voting for Higher Safety” (1/12/2011), stated that ARTBA “pressured” its rulemaking committee representative, Joe Collins, to vote down a key provision of the crane and derrick standard “on the grounds that it was bad for
On March 2-3, ENR gathered policymakers, scientists and construction industry leaders to brainstorm about how to direct national attention to disaster mitigation. One week later, those conference presentations took on a greater significance in light of the catastrophic events in Japan. “We have less latitude to withstand disasters than we ever have had in our history,” suggested John Voeller, vice president of engineer Black & Veatch, in a video made at the conference and now appearing on ENR.com. Shot by Senior Editor Tom Sawyer and edited by Assistant Editor Luke Abaffy, the video highlights discussions about how disasters can be
It felt like the Oscars. Five times when the announcer said, “The envelope please,” the winner was Engineering News-Record. It was an exhilarating afternoon at American Business Media’s Jesse H. Neal Awards, held March 10 in New York City. Photo: Sue Pearsall Winning Team members include: (from left, first row) Aileen Cho, Jane Kolleeny, Joanne Gonchar, Francesca Messina, Laurie Meisel, Tom Sawyer; (second row) Richard Korman, Scott Lewis, Richard Demler, Bill Hanley and Alanna Malone. In addition, ENR’s sister publication GreenSource won a Neal for Best Integrated Package for “GreenBuild Chicago: Transforming the Metropolis” and its managing editor Jane Kolleeny
Trying to control nature is a human trait, and engineers have much to say about how to do it. There will be many lessons drawn from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, but one issue that should receive greater attention is the failure of land-use rules to protect coastal communities. It would be surprising if this factor were overlooked, given how much thought is devoted to sustainability and preserving nature, not to mention how much is already known about the way population density increases the destruction caused by tidal waves. Plainly, better land-use rules could have saved
SIEGEL The recent news that CDM acquired Wilbur Smith is another example of how the A/E industry is changing. Every deal is different, but I believe that clients’ evolving demands are behind the current merger mania. Clients are reacting to challenges to staffing and oversight by bundling more projects together, and they are looking to have single contracts that encompass a wide variety of services. For example, it is becoming much harder to find clients with separate contracts for civil, structural and geotechnical engineering.Further, many clients are using alternative delivery techniques that put the A/E industry in a different contracting
CLARKE Later this year, world leaders will meet in Durban, South Africa, to define the political map of a low-carbon society. Politicians, expert negotiators and even carbon-credit traders all will have a place at the table, but my argument is that engineers must occupy a leadership seat. If we take a lesson from history, we see that the last industrial revolution was pioneered by engineers who didn’t just answer questions and solve problems that were put in front of them—they defined the questions. It has long been accepted that the world one day will have to move away from fossil
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