Book Reviews

A Bold New Vision for Construction Safety

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0400

How many employers will adopt a new way of measuring safety performance?

Infrastructure: Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 11:16:41 -0400

Does a new book meet its promise to describe how cities work and power our lives?

Jacobs' Role in a Huge Coal Ash Cleanup and the Workers' Quest for Justice

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0500

A review of a new book and its allegations related to the firm's safety activity on the project.

AEC Leaders Share Construction ‘Secrets’ in New Anthology

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:00:47 -0400

Author Elinor Moshe talks with ENR about how the book’s narrative insights from AEC “industry titans and young guns” reflects the shifting scope of the construction business.

Book Review: Looking at the General's Other Battle

sawyert@enr.com (Tom Sawyer) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 12:24:00 -0400

Retired U.S. Army Major Gen. Gregg F. Martin, construction unit commander during the Iraq War, in Bipolar General: My Forever War with Mental Illness, reaches out to military, construction and business leaders and others to better understand the destructive nature of bipolar disorders, warning flags and how to get help.

Oxford Professor's Latest Book Examines Roots of Project Failure

reina@btinternet.com (Peter Reina) — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0500

Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner's "How Big Things Get Done" stems from Flyvbjerg's work at Oxford University studying megaprojects.

Just Don't Call It an Accident

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 14:40:00 -0500

Jessie Singer, author of “There Are No Accidents” (Simon & Schuster, 336 pages), works for a nonprofit dedicated to making cities safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but her views of error and accidents go far beyond urban life and cars.

What Earthquakes, Hurricanes and Disasters Teach Us

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 16:30:00 -0400

In Genesis 6:11-9:19, God tips off Noah with the famous forecast of 40 days and nights of rain, but ever since then, we’ve been pretty much on our own when it comes to dealing with earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.

The Construction Safety Story Not Everyone Gets

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 15:15:00 -0400

Sometimes the most important ideas take a long time to sink in. Two books that have helped to reshape ideas about occupational safety, published by the same academic press in 2014 and 2012, are Sidney Dekker’s The Field Guide to Understanding ‘Human Error’ and Todd Conklin’s Pre-Accident Investigations.

How Supertall Buildings Lift Us Higher

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 11 May 2022 23:48:00 -0400

In a world beset by troubles, supertall buildings, which measure from 984 ft to 1,968 ft, would not seem to rate high on a list of priority concerns.

Does Construction's Past Contain Clues to Its Future?

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 00:00:00 -0500

The painful development, and the glories as well, of American construction.

Why The Disaster Response Always Seems to Fall Short

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 14:43:00 -0400

A new book by 'disasterologist' Samantha Montano on poor preparation and responses.

New Bechtel Book Expands On Contractor’s Blurred Lines

rubind@enr.com (Debra K. Rubin) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:30:00 -0400

Some 28 years after a portrait of Bechtel Corp. attributed much of the success of the family-owned contracting giant to its skill at influence-peddling, author Sally Denton unveils a 436-page tome that extends much of that story line to today.

Transporting to the Top: Women Share Their Stories

choa@enr.com (Aileen Cho) — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 00:00:00 -0500

Threatened, condescended to, vilified—many women faced big obstacles yet rose to the top of the transportation world.

Put an End to the Skill Bias in U.S. Immigrant Worker Policy

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 12:00:00 -0400

With millions of people around the world on the move, it's tempting to see the immigration problem in the U.S. as a matter of what to do about the undocumented 11 million.

Natural-Gas Pipe Route Too Close to Nuke Plant, Foes Say

Wed, 07 Oct 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Critics have sounded the alarm to halt pipeline near Indian Point nuclear plant. Controversy dogs the Algonquin Incremental Market Project nearly six months after construction began.

Gridlock Sam Brings His Own Street Smarts to Transportation

choa@enr.com (Aileen Cho) — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Equal parts transportation-planning compendium, autobiography and love letter to New York City, "Street Smart" (Perseus Books Group) lays out Sam Schwartz's vision for the future of multimodal and multinodal transportation systems.

Shattering the Myth of Bilateral Time Extensions

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

When requesting a time extension, most construction contracts require the preparation of a time-impact analysis (TIA), in which unanticipated or changed work is inserted into the schedule to demonstrate what impact the change will have on the schedule.

Smart Contractors Will Adapt To Serve Evolving Energy Market

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

The energy market last year fell as if swallowed by a Florida sinkhole, and a report from Moody’s Investor Service says the oil and gas price outlook will remain negative until well into 2016.

Hoosac Tunnel Tested Early Engineers

vanhamptont@enr.com (Tudor Van Hampton) — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Nearly a decade before the Brooklyn Bridge opened for business, tunnelers successfully bored 25,081 ft, or roughly five miles, through the Hoosac Mountain in western Massachusetts. For more than 40 years after opening in 1875, it was the longest tunnel in North America.

Will Seattle's Bertha Finish? A Perspective on Tunneling and Risk

Tue, 22 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

By now, everyone knows that "Bertha," the world’s largest tunnel boring machine, was stuck in Seattle’s subsoil for more than a year, since December 6, 2013.

Overhead: A Silent Killer

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

As part of our research into the recent downturn, my Arizona State University colleagues and I surveyed U.S. construction companies to discover what overhead they chose to cut and when.

How To Stop Overhead From Being a Silent Contractor Killer

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

What overhead did construction companies cut during the recent downturn? My colleagues and I at Arizona State University wanted to know, so we surveyed companies around the country.

Bridging the Gap

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Are we doing enough to get the best players onto the construction playing field and drawing on the entire talent pool?

Offshore Wind Has Come to the U.S.; EPCs Can Help It Gain Momentum

Wed, 26 Aug 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Related Links: First Offshore US Wind Farm Installs Turbine Foundation Deepwater Milestone: R.I. Work Begins on Wind Farm Project Offshore wind energy could add 4.2 million megawatts to the generating capacity of the U.S., according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, but the U.S. market has stalled almost completely, hindered by regulatory uncertainties, political opposition, litigation and a lack of available financing. Recently, however, several broad market and regulatory themes have emerged—record low energy prices, technology improvements, the start of construction of the first commercial offshore project near Rhode Island’s Block Island and increasingly favorable federal and state policies for

Into the Deep End of the Pool: The Making of an Engineer

Mon, 24 Aug 2015 12:00:00 -0400

Dr. Lev Zetlin was a Russian-born, charismatic, creative structural engineer who surrounded himself in his New York City practice with very bright, young, well-educated engineers.

Improving DBE Programs: How To End The Abuses

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 12:00:00 -0400

The U.S. Dept. of Transportation’s disadvantaged business enterprise program was designed to support the development and growth of legitimate DBEs. But the way the program is currently written, interpreted and administered actually defeats those purposes and undermines the goal. Recent DBE fraud prosecutions, most of which involve the test of whether a commercially useful function has been performed, have led some contractors to respond with overzealous and incorrect interpretations of the rules for regular dealers (our firm falls into this category of company).As background, all 50 states must comply with the DBE program. U.S. DOT serves as the administrator and

Give Us More Details About Olympics Risks

kormanr@enr.com (Richard Korman) — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 12:00:00 -0400

We’ve reached a teachable moment about risk when it comes to Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, which is being promoted as a major driver of housing and infrastructure. To make its case, the Olympics bid committee's proposal includes a risk plan that is detailed—but not detailed enough. Will Boston win?Such moments have arrived before with other Olympic hosting proposals, most notably Chicago’s bid, in 2009, to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. There, the proponents also showed they had covered all the risks with a detailed plan, but they failed to win the bid.Construction costs and overruns

Why Contracts Undermine Subcontractor Protection

Wed, 15 Jul 2015 12:00:00 -0400

At ENR’s “Risk Summit” last month in Dallas, the editors asked my panel to ponder why Texas subcontractors weren’t “dancing in the streets” in light of seemingly favorable laws such as prompt- payment statutes, retainage restrictions and limits on indemnification. While the panel focused on Texas, the topic is relevant throughout the U.S., and I’ll explain why. Every state has a mountain of protections for the purpose of benefiting construction participants at the bottom of the contracting chain.These protections can be traced to 1791, when Thomas Jefferson introduced the nation’s first mechanics’ lien laws in Maryland. In doing so, he

Letter to the Editor: The Climate-Changers Are Killing Construction

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 12:00:00 -0400

It’s too bad that your magazine is publishing articles written by left-wing environmentalists (likely devoid of any science background) making statements like “the very real effects of climate change