Two major stadium renovations at Washington state universities are aiming to attract more fans to college football and boost revenue. A $250-million upgrade at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium, Seattle, and an estimated $70-million, smaller rehab of Washington State University’s Martin Stadium in Pullman are pitting rival schools against each other in the stadium upgrade race. Rendering: Courtesy of The University of Washington Husky Stadium, first built in 1920 for the University of Washington’s football team, is set for a $250-million makeover to improve sight lines, add some capacity and correct structural deficiencies. Renovations to Husky Stadium, a 90-year-old

Skanska USA has nearly completed demolition and has begun structural work on the first major renovation in more than 60 years of the student union building at the University of Washington, Seattle. The $128-million overhaul of the 256,000-sq-ft structure will improve its functionality for a campus student population that has nearly doubled in that time to 50,000. Photo:Tom Sawyer For ENR Systems and seismic protection will be improved at student union, built in 1949. Don Kowalchuk, Skanska’s project executive, says that nearly six months of hazardous material abatement during demolition has been tricky. The five-story Husky Union Building is set

Ayear after shifting bridge bents halted work on the $217-million U.S. Route 20 project near Oregon’s coast, engineers are hoping for rain and a solution. Photo: Courtesy of ODOT Unstable soils have kept completion of an Oregon road section in limbo. While over 50% of the new 6.5-mile bypass is complete, four bridges up to 1,100 ft long sit partially constructed. Lateral load from adjacent fill and subsurface ground pressure may have caused two of the 20 bents on the 10-bridge project to shift as much as two inches. Since that discovery in February 2010, crews have been collecting data.

Preliminary work has crews already bustling on a new multibillion-dollar Intel Corp. fabrication plant in Hillsboro, Ore. While Intel has disclosed little about construction costs and project milestones, there can be no hiding a 1.3-million-sq-ft footprint for a facility set to manufacture next-generation 22-nanometer chips. Photo: Courtesy Intel Bill MacKenzie, Intel spokesman, confirms that Hoffman Construction, Portland, Ore., will manage the three-building complex—to include a semiconductor fabrication plant, emergency generator structure and process utility building—in Intel’s existing industrial park. While the buildings will have independent utilities, there also will be “interconnecting trestles, tunnels and product-handling links,” says MacKenzie. A Hoffman

A 55-in.-dia cut into a rebar-reinforced underground concrete tank with hardened nuclear waste, the largest slice ever into such a U.S. Energy Dept. storage structure, went “perfectly” on Dec. 19, says a site cleanup official. Photo: Courtesy of U.S. Energy Dept. Crew lifts an underground concrete waste tank’s plug—wrapped in protective plastic to avoid contamination spread during operation—to install a robotic waste removal arm. In what may become the norm at DOE’s Hanford site in eastern Washington state and possibly at other U.S. waste sites, crews from Boston-based AK Services used a pressurized mix of garnet and water to methodically

Canada's National Energy Board granted approval in December to the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project, which would string a natural gas pipeline from the upper-reaches of the Northwest Territories, Canada, 745 miles south into Northern Alberta. Before the $16.2-billion project can proceed, backers must put in place a funding framework. Image: Walter Konefal for ENR "Mackenzie needs to compete on a supply-cost basis with other sources of supply," says Pius Rolheiser, Calgary-based Mackenzie project spokesperson." It remains the critical challenge today to be cost- competitive with shale gas, liquefied natural gas and potential Alaska projects." While Mackenzie runs primarily south, staying

What easily could have been a run-of-the-mill sewer pipeline replacement project in Oregon went from underground to underwater—creating what participants say will be the world’s first buoyant gravity line. Photo: Brown And Caldwell Pipeline under construction in Lake Oswego, Ore., will be the world’s first buoyant-gravity line when completed next April. Now under construction, the Lake Oswego interceptor sewer boasts 17,000 ft of wastewater-carrying pipe and another 12,000 ft of attached air-filled buoyant pipe. Replacing an existing submerged concrete pile-supported pipeline built in 1963, the new system will hook to the city’s current system on both sides of the lake.

Getting supersized prefabricated steel modules to the Kearl oil-sands project in Alberta is proving to be the toughest part of the job for Canada’s Imperial Oil and ExxonMobil Canada. The evidence is in Lewiston, Idaho. Photo: Courtesy Imperial Oil Photo: Courtesy Imperial Oil Equipment modules, right, shipped from South Korea are parked in Idaho, more than 1,300 miles from their destination in northern Alberta’s oil fields. As part of the companies’ $8-billion construction project to produce as much as 345,000 barrels per day of oil roughly 45 miles north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Imperial Oil sourced 207 prefabricated specialized bitumen

Cutting a 55-in.-dia. hole into concrete is hardly rocket science in construction, but when the hole is being cut into the concrete shell of a huge underground tank that has been storing highly radioactive plutonium waste for more than 60 years, that action could be the equivalent of a space-shuttle trip into the unknown. Photo Courtesy of WRPS Matt Landon, a project engineer for WRPS, the cleanup contractor at the Hanford nuclear-waste site in Washington state, measures the progress of a concrete cutting tool during a test on a simulated underground waste-tank dome. Photo Courtesy of WRPS Employees of WRPS