The Washington Monument in Baltimore has been closed to the public in light of a recent engineering study that found its parapet to be unsafe. CVM Engineering of Philadelphia studied the 178-ft-tall marble monument, which predates the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., as part of a $200,000 master plan to restore the monument and its surrounding squares. CVM reported that, on the parapet, mortar between slabs was missing and metal support brackets were rust- ed and should be replaced. Engineers recommended $1 million in total repairs, including $300,000 for work on the parapet. The monument, which was completed in 1829,
The U.S. Green Building Council is defending its decision to uphold the highest certification to be granted a public high school under its green-building rating system, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The engineers who filed the challenge to the LEED-New Construction Gold certification on behalf of a group of taxpayers in Eagle River, Wis., say the decision to uphold the certification damages the credibility of USGBC. The consulting engineers were pro bono technical experts for the five people who filed the 125-page appeal on Dec. 23, 2008, when Northland Pines High School was two years old. Consulting engineers
A new process that measures the value of the social and environmental benefits of projects is generating buzz among academics, the private sector, public entities and government agencies. Developed by Omaha, Neb.-based engineering consultant HDR, the Sustainable Return on Investment (SROI) process allows decision-makers to evaluate a potential project’s overall sustainability benefits by assigning monetary values to environmental, social and economic impacts. Image Photo: Diagram Courtesy Of HDR The values on the vertical axis show the probability that the corresponding return on investment values, described on the horizontal axis, will not be exceeded by the actual ROI outcome. “Communities want
The nation’s first voluntary rating system for sustainable landscapes, called SITES, has selected 175 pilot projects to test its green-landscape design, construction and maintenance program. The goal is to apply “The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009” to real projects to see whether the four-star rating system needs tweaking. Feedback from the pilots will be used to revise the SITES’ final rating system and inform the technical reference manual, scheduled for release in 2013. The fledgling SITES, under development since 2005, is modeled after the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating
In the latest round of a heated dispute between McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. and the owner of the distressed McGuire Apartments, a 25-story tower in Seattle, the St. Louis-based contractor maintains the concrete frame’s corroding post-tensioned slab system can be fixed for less than $2 million. McCarthy calls the local owner’s refusal to make “simple” repairs, its ejection of tenants and its proposed dismantling of the nine-year-old building “irresponsible acts.” + Image Image: Whitlock Dalrymple Poston & Associates Pitting Contractor’s summary of pitting corrosion on tendons of 25-story building’s post-tensioning. Photo: Whitlock Dalrymple Poston & Associates Samples Tendon failure tests
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), seeking commercial projects for its energy-efficient commercial buildings program, has extended a call for potential projects until noon Eastern on May 14. DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory had issued both a call for projects, aimed at commercial building owners and operators, and a request for proposals targeted at commercial building technical experts.The RFP deadline for the technical experts remains 3 pm Pacific on May 10. DOE’s national laboratories will use money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to select and fund technical
A new report from the U.S. Green Building Council highlights more than 30 existing federal programs worth $72 billion that could enhance efficiency in commercial buildings and multifamily housing. Released on April 29, the report concludes the federal government is not fully taking advantage of the opportunities presented by the programs. The report authors note that, as of 2009, green buildings represented only 2% of new residential and commercial construction in the United States. USGBC officials speaking at a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., said they hoped to use the document as a tool to educate policy-makers and building industry
While some are testing the waters of integrated project delivery, a group within the U.S. Dept. of Energy is tilling greener pastures by devising a new design-build project-delivery model for fast-tracked, net-zero-energy buildings, public and private. DOE calls the process progressive, performance-based design-build (DB). Haselden Construction, DOE’s DB contractor for the first application of the model—the $80-million Research Support Facility of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo.—calls it design-build “on steroids.” The 222,000-sq-ft RSF is the largest known net-zero-energy building in North America, says the DB team. Photo: Haselden Construction + Image Drawing: Stantec Siting, Massing and
The International Code Council and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Inc. have merged their efforts, rather than compete, to develop the nation’s first “green” model code for commercial buildings. The model code, released on March 15, is open for public comment through May 14 but now is available to jurisdictions. Version 2.0, based on public input, will be released by Nov. 3. The goal is to develop an adoptable and enforceable model code. “Bringing together the code expertise of ICC with the technical expertise of ASHRAE to create a comprehensive green building code will accelerate our
A multidisciplinary team of U.S. earthquake researchers and design engineers, organized by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), is leaving Feb. 28 to spend six days in Haiti. The team, under the leadership of Reginald DesRoches, Professor and Associate Chair of the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, will document scientific, engineering and societal effects of Jan. 12’s magnitude-7 earthquake. The goal is to focus on the disaster’s impacts on people, the performance of structures and lifelines, and the enormous societal challenges of relief, recovery and rebuilding, says the Oakland, Calif.-based EERI. Team members plan
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