At the end of each year, I receive a new calendar from Hoffman Construction Co., Portland, Oregon. It features simple pictures drawn by employees’ young children depicting how to work safely on construction sites. The calendar is a terrific way to communicate how the ramifications of safety and health practices extend beyond jobsites, projects and companies to families and future generations of workers. GAMBATESE Sustainability principles incorporate a similar perspective on the value of life. The World Commission on Environment and Development describes sustainable development as a project approach that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
Reviewing and analyzing failures is a crucial element in engineering. As most experienced design professionals know, being able to identify the problem is most often more important than being able to implement well-known solutions. Fundamentally, failure analysis is the diagnosis of the root causes or underlying phenomena of results that are puzzling and costly, such as last year’s collapse of a coal-ash impoundment in Tennessee, or puzzling and tragic, such as the 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis. So why are too few students being exposed to this kind of critical thinking early in their engineering education?
Just the other week I heard of two bid openings in which qualified bidders lost the opportunity to pick up work and in both cases unqualified bidders got the job. How did it happen? The low bidders “bombed” their respective jobs, meaning, they bid the work substantially lower than the other competitors for the project. SHORT The low bid on one project was 25% to 30% below the second and third low bids. The rest of the bids were slightly higher than these two. You may say, “So what? The low- bidder apparently thinks it can do the job cheaper
In an industry already in crisis—with rising jobsite deaths and injuries and now in a rush to start and complete economic stimulus projects worth many billions of dollars—where, ultimately, does responsibility for worker safety lie? Does it, as some argue, rest partly with individual workers, or should employers, project owners or even the government be held fully accountable when there is an accident on a construction site? READ AND COMMENT ONTHE DUELING VIEWPOINTS: Proposal: Accident Prevention Is Everyone's Responsibility Reply: Unrealistic Plan Poses Many Problems And Won't Do the Job Earlier this year, ENR published a Viewpoint titled, “We Need
In May, New Jersey became the third state in the nation to privatize the cleanup of contaminated sites. The Site Remediation Reform Act (SRRA) established a Licensed Site Remediation Professional (LSRP) program whereby LSRPs, rather than the New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), primarily oversee and issue final approvals for most site remediations. With more than 19,000 sites in various stages of environmental investigation and remediation, SRRA supporters hope the privatized system will expedite site cleanup and save money. POLEVOY The new law presents a significant opportunity for clients to have a greater role in the management of their
Many ENR readers have watched with interest the recent debate over the proposed Las Vegas-to-Los Angeles high-speed rail corridor running along Interstate 15. Long viewed as a potential maglev project, things got a little murky last month when U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) switched his support from maglev to conventional high-speed steel wheel technology. But what happened in Vegas is not staying there. With the advent of the Obama presidency, rail suddenly is a hot and potentially lucrative topic everywhere.
MARC CASPE Security perimeter standards and physical-barrier technologies have rapidly developed in recent years due to increasing threats to buildings and human lives. Security perimeter technologies require assessing all risks and vulnerabilities. Based on crash-validation test standards, innovative technologies are available using analytic simulation tools followed by prototype validations. Attractive antiterrorism designs now can provide landscaping of city streets without deep excavations. Photo: Courtesy of KKCS Simulations and actual crashes fine-tune design process. “The Specification for Vehicle Crash Test of Perimeter Barriers and Gates” was first published in 1985 by the U.S. Dept. of State and then revised in 2003.
The global construction market is in crisis. Credit is tight or non-existent. Development deals are stalled or stopped. The money flow from lenders- to owners -to contractors is slower than normal. Based on past history, these conditions lead to more claims, more disputes, and more arbitration and litigation. So, what can be done to avoid or reduce the historical equation of “less money equals more disputes?” The construction industry has long served as a “laboratory” and proving ground for innovative dispute resolution prevention and resolution. Some processes have worked better than others. There are the preventative processes such as “partnering”.
With $130 billion in Federal stimulus money heading into the economy for infrastructure, the demand for engineering talent will be enormous and competition for that talent will rage. Whether it’s for designing and building new highways or bridges, water systems, transit lines or green buildings, proposed federal stimulus spending will see a massive change in how engineering staffing models are employed and utilized by the building design and construction industries. SALVUCCI But I have a few questions. Will the coming hiring binge sow the seeds for a counter cycle two or three years from now that will eliminate many of
According to the Federal Bureau of Labor and Statistics the construction industry has one of the highest occupational injury rates. What makes the situation worse is that the Social Security Administration notes that disability costs related to these injuries are projected to increase 37% this decade due to an aging workforce. This lost time due to injury/illness impacts both direct and indirect disability costs and that may lead to a variety of issues including a decrease in employee morale, increased litigation, and increased medical and lost time costs. It may also lead to an increased experience modification rate. So what
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