Employers soon will be held to a higher level of accountability regarding construction cranes. Federal safety regulators may be asking employers for their operator’s certification card during a routine jobsite inspection or accident investigation. However, the significant yet controversial mandate for operators to be trained,tested and certified to a national standard nearly died on the bargaining table. It was the will of one hoisting expert—under intense pressure from special interests to vote it down and even facing the possibility of losing his job as a prominent contractor’s crane-fleet manager—that kept it alive. Related Links: Construction Industry Gets Ready To Implement

Contractors building one of the largest and tallest pediatric research hospitals, hemmed in on a tiny site in Chicago, say they are several months ahead of schedule in part due to the owner�s requirement that designers and contractors collaborate using building information modeling, a digital tool that helps prevent errors. However, the use of BIM apparently still has some growing up to do. For the 1.25-million-sq-ft hospital that stands 457 ft tall on just 1.8 acres, the building team not only is tackling the challenges of urban, vertical hospital construction, it also is conducting research to determine if the time

Two groups have aligned to develop a nationally accredited exam for a construction professional called by many names: crane inspector, crane certifier, crane surveyor and so on. Not required by the federal government, such a credential is only mandatory in California, and recently, Washington state, which started enforcement this year. The states launched inspector tests after tower cranes collapsed in San Francisco in 1989 and Bellevue, Wash., in 2006. The Fairfax, Va.-based National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators, which helped Washington develop its test, and the Vancouver-based Crane Certification Association of America�which administers a private exam to its

As more cities and states are imposing bans on silica grit used to clean bridges, buildings and other infrastructure, suppliers offering safer alternatives are seeing tremendous growth. Photo: Tudor Van Hampton Surface-preparation alternatives are increasing as bans on sandblasting rise globally. Photo: Tudor Van Hampton BlastGreen’s new wet-abrasive system is available in the U.S. this year. Photo: Sponge-Jet Inc. Sponge-Jet’s dryblasting system includes a recycling machine that sorts debris so foam media can be reused. Related Links: VIDEO: Master Blasters: Sandblasting Goes Green “Typical sandblasting is being eliminated across the country,” says Keith Eliason, vice president of EcoQuip Inc., a

Gordon Chew, a handyman in remote Tenakee Springs, Alaska, needed a 12-volt coil to get his Case 686G telehandler up and running again. He called a dealer and was told the part was not in stock. “Case couldn’t find it,” says Chew, who notes the price quoted to him was $230. Not wanting to wait for a special order, he typed the part into a search engine and found GCIron.com. Chew had never heard of the site before, but that didn’t matter. He called up the company, and the operator cross-referenced the part and quickly located it in inventory. “They

You might think Bill Dunn Sr., who heads up one of the nation’s largest prison builders, is trying to undo a part of the family business by starting a jobs program for ex-cons. Yet Dunn, 86, whose firm has been successful at building around 50 jails in the last 10 years, is troubled deeply by the prison system’s burden on society. “We felt that maybe we had an obligation to help people who needed a chance,” says the chairman emeritus of Kansas City, Mo.-based JE Dunn Construction. Building prisons, he says, costs $50,000 to $100,000 per cell. —Bill Dunn Sr.

Gordon Chew, a handyman in remote Tenakee Springs, Alaska, needed a 12-volt coil to get his Case 686G telehandler up and running again. He called a dealer and was told the part was not in stock. Photo: GCIRON Once a client buys a part, Villella (above) and his team have it shipped from GCIron or the OEM. + Image Image: GCIRON Website offers free diagnostic tools to help contractors identify the source of the problem. “Case couldn’t find it,” says Chew, who notes the price quoted to him was $230. Not wanting to wait for a special order, he typed

Owners of homes and other buildings containing Chinese drywall now have a clear directive from the federal government: Tear out "all possible problem drywall" and replace it, the U.S. Consumer Product Commission and Dept. of Housing and Urban Development advised on April 2. Photo: CPSC Homeowners should replace Chinese drywall (slightly gray in color) with new wallboard (white in color), federal agencies say. In addition, owners should replace all electrical systems, gas piping, sprinkler systems, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms, whose metal components corrode under high levels of hydrogen sulfide. Who will pay for the work remains unclear, but

Hanging more than 200 ft over a jobsite in downtown Kansas City, Mo., James Hague doesn’t seem to notice the tiny people and equipment below his feet. Photo: Tudor Van Hampton Hanging from a protective harness, Hague uses a dial gauge to check for excessive play in the crane�s rotator gear. The senior technician is intently fiddling with a dial gauge that measures the amount of play in a crane turntable—the giant gear that rotates the jib. “A bearing could go bad,” says Hague, suspended from a full-body harness. “And that’s something we want to know before the top falls

Grace Lai’s interest in construction began right where the bus would drop her off hours before class at Chicago’s American Academy of Art. Starting out as a sidewalk sketcher, Lai was soon invited inside the project gate to become a celebrated “on-site” artist, earning commissions from contractors and building developers, as well as tradespeople’s nods of approval. As an artist, Lai was a late bloomer, going to art school and taking up painting in her late 50s after her husband, Harry, died in 1985. Previously, she was an assistant in his art studio. Lai’s art was her personal therapy, but