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After a final, Feb. 28-March 6 maintenance stop, the world’s largest-diameter tunnel-boring machine has moved less than two blocks away from the disassembly pit in Seattle. TBM “Bertha,” churning a 1.7- mile-long tunnel for a state Route 99 replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, required a stop less than 1,000 ft from the pit to confirm that the 57.5-ft-dia machine was 6 in. off course alignment.

Costs for Kinder Morgan Inc.’s 715-mile-long Trans Mountain oil-pipeline expansion in Alberta and British Columbia have risen to $5.48 billion from $5 billion since 2014, when the project was announced, company officials said on March 9.

In a March 8 decision, a Wayne County, Mich., judge has thwarted the latest attempt to delay construction of the $4.5-billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

Efforts to improve lagging construction productivity have largely failed, notably in the U.S., but skills shortages and increasing constraints on migration likely will inflate pay and force productivity improvements across the globe, according to a recent construction-industry survey and forecast by the McKinsey Global Institute.