Arizona has done the rest of the country a favor by provoking us to try to finish the business of immigration reform that Congress failed to complete in 2007. Whether or not the Arizona law is found to violate civil rights, comprehensive national reform legislation is the only way to resolve most of the immigration issues. Here is a short list of what needs to be done in the best interests of the construction industry and the U.S. Stiffer penalties for employersshould allow for good-faith mistakes, especially when employers mustrely on government-supplied data. 1) Tougher border security is critical. Walls
ALLEN When Transportation Management Services, Sandy Spring, Md., was looking to do business in South Africa, company officials contacted the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Service office in Johannesburg. We introduced the company to key South African transportation officials, who, in January 2007, were traveling tothe U.S. We then provided the company with customized support from overseas commercial officers and specialists. In the end, TMS signed a memorandum to provide $156,000 worth of services to a provincial government and then later agreed to $15 million in World Cup contracts. Sixteen years after holding its first general elections with universal adult suffrage, South
Book Reviews: 04/21/2010 Bucyrus Drills By David M. Lang 128 pages; $34.95 (Iconografix) Whether digging holes for water, oil or rock blasting, the humble drill rig has greatly sped the pace of modern development. For more than 75 years, the Bucyrus brand name has remained a leader in drilling technology. Bucyrus started building drill rigs in 1933 after buying the manufacturing rights to the Armstrong drill brand. For 10 years, Bucyrus sold these Bucyrus-Armstrong rigs, paying a 5% royalty to Armstrong for each unit. The deal turned out to be a bad one, at least for Bucyrus: It eventually shelled out
SCHLEIFER While the economy may be improving, I believe the recovery is fragile. Any trouble in the financial markets could be serious enough to force the whole process to begin again. Whatever happens, contractors should realize that while they can’t control the market, they can control their response, including making layoffs when needed. Prospering in cyclical markets and surviving a downturn in the construction industry starts with recognizing what will happen when the markets soften and backlog falls off. The same thing has happened without fail in every industry down cycle for the last 50 years. The potential for profit,
Disney Concert Hall Redux As president of the owner/operator of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, I read with interest the article on Frank Gehry’s Beekman Tower. While it was generally informative, I wish to correct serious errors in the first paragraph. Walt Disney Concert Hall is a complex structure perfectly designed and suited to its purpose. As such, the design and construction team were, indeed, confronted with challenges that far exceed those of Beekman Tower. To say that Disney Hall was “tortuous” to build is like saying a Wagner opera is “tortuous” to perform. Such profoundly important and
There’s plenty of irony in the possibility that fly ash, a by-product of coal combustion, now may be classified as a hazardous waste by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It has been successfully recycled for years in what previously had been considered an environmental triumph. Punishing the sound environmental use of fly ash, especially as a substitute for cement in concrete, is the wrong direction. Exempting fly ash from Resource Conservation and Recovery Act provisions has allowed coal-combustion products (CCPs) to develop into a growing business. The use of fly ash in concrete is considered environmentally responsible because it replaces
Book Reviews: 04/07/2010 Those Amazing Engineers Second edition, updated by Charlotte Forbes 30 pages; $10.95-$15, with special pricing for bulk orders and the Adopt-A-School program (Trilogy Publications, 2010) Those engineers, they continue to amaze! So, this update of a 2004 primer on the profession, geared toward older elementary and middle-school students, reflects not only new engineering records and niches but also offers incentives to boost its appeal to kids, teachers, parents and corporate sponsors. The book, which explains what practitioners do in key engineering specialties, has not changed much in presentation, with mostly the same vibrant visuals and kid-friendly text.
The romantic myth of the American inventor doesn’t have much substance. A colleague used the term to describe Award of Excellence Winner John Hillman, but there is very little romance in the process of creating an invention for profit. Large amounts of perspiration and legal entanglement are more typical. Hillman’s story involved, as our cover story notes, “endless sketches, headaches and hope,” and he is a good example of what it takes to produce such an invention. His story could serve as a template for others who fear construction has forgotten how to innovate. Related Links: Award of Excellence Winner
Don’t send the stonemasons to carve President Obama’s image on Mount Rushmore until he and the Congress deliver more on healthcare cost control. Congress could have saved the country a lot of stomach acid by reforming health care before a sense of urgency led to mistakes, but there wasn’t sufficient interest to run the political gauntlet. Now that the Democrats have passed the plan—and the President delivered on his top domestic policy promise—the only realistic approach is to make it work and improve it. At its heart, the reform measure consists of taxes and penalties designed to pay for and
Graphics Are Misleading In Stimulus Story I would like to point out that the circular graphics used on pages 26-29 in the cover story “As Federal Dollars Pour Out, A Second Stimulus Plan Grows” are inappropriately used. These charts compare obligated funds to ARRA Total Allocations by using the ration of the diameters, not the ration of the areas. As such, they visually mislead the viewer into believing more funds remain to be spent. The chart on page 29 is the most egregious example. Values below the chart indicate that $2.1 billion of the total $5.5 billion in this category
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