Coverage related to the COVID-19 pandemic continued to attract the most page views, but there were also several engineering failures that garnered much attention as well.

The true economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region’s specialty contractors has unfolded in stark terms.

With another year of the coronavirus pandemic nearing its end, owners have mostly moved past reactionary plans for completing stalled projects and are now actively planning new ones. Looking ahead, how will fundamental changes to market sectors lead owners to potentially reconfigure business models?

Site work is underway for a vaccine manufacturing facility in a Dartmouth, Mass., business park, set to develop new vaccines for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Sundt and PCL are constructing a $700-million water reclamation facility to replace an aging 33-million-gallon-per-day wastewater treatment plant in the city.

Over the summer, BP marked the safe start-up of the Manuel project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the fourth of five major projects the energy company expects to deliver globally in 2021.

Work is underway by Mortenson to repower the 60-MW Oasis wind farm in Mojave, Calif., for renewable energy developer and operator Terra-Gen. After acquiring the plant in 2019, Terra-Gen brought in Mortenson as its construction partner to repower the facility, which first operated in 2004. 

As part of an overall strategy to relieve congestion and expand mobility options in Santa Barbara County, Calif., Granite Construction is serving as construction manager for Caltrans’ upgrade of a 10.8-mile segment of U.S. Route 101 between the cities of Santa Barbara and Carpinteria.

Skanska will break ground this fall on a nine-story office tower in Arlington, Va. The building will feature 191,000 sq ft of office space and 10,000 sq ft of retail space.

Sustainable design and contracting revenue dips, while healthy building standards help projects turn over a new leaf.