Related Links: McLaren Engineering Group Langan Engineering and Environmental Services Engineers and contractors deployed all over the metropolitan New York City area in Sandy-related tasks.McLaren Engineering has 25 engineers working with the New York City Dept. of Buildings assessing damage to the thousands of structures on Staten Island, the New York City borough where 14 deaths were attributed to hurricane Sandy.“We are applying Applied Technology Council ATC 45 procedures for assessment, providing red, yellow or green cards on each building inspected,” says Malcolm G. McLaren, CEO of the West Nyack, N.Y.-based engineer.Red means a building is unsafe to re-occupy; yellow
Related Links: Sidebar: At 49ers Stadium, Buckling-Restrained Braces Are a Big Plus Cities Stuggle with Sports Villages, But Keep Building Sports Construction Vets Cry Foul on Owners' Reps New Santa Clara Stadium http://pm-alliance.com For five uneasy years, the team responsible for building the San Francisco 49ers' $1-billion new home had hung together through three work hiatuses, a recession and a regrouping caused by a site relocation 45 miles to the south—from San Francisco's Candlestick Point to Silicon Valley's Santa Clara. Then, early last fall, things changed. Suddenly, the snail's pace became a race.Based on an early opportunity to secure financing,
Photo Courtesy of Turner/Devcon, Joint Venture. A BRB lateral system weighs significantly less than an equivalent concrete shear-wall system. Related Links: 49ers Use Collaborative Delivery 'Special Teams' To Speed Stadium Construction Cities Stuggle with Sports Villages, But Keep Building Sports Construction Vets Cry Foul on Owners' Reps MCEER Report on Buckling Restrained Braces During both the conceptual and schematic design phases for the San Francisco 49ers' stadium, the structural engineer developed a matrix of 66 structural-system scenarios. Then, the design and construction team evaluated each for schedule and cost. The team ultimately selected a steel frame, with composite metal decking
Related Links: N.Y.C. Greener Greater Building Plan Green-building boosters are lauding the disclosure last month of private-sector building energy-use data for nearly 1.8 billion sq ft of space in New York City. The data, collected as part of the city's "Greener, Greater Buildings Plan," is seen as a positive step toward energy conservation.The report is an eye-opener, especially for small and midsize building owners, says Kevin Hamilton, CEO of NuEnergen, a White Plains, N.Y., energy consultant. "They can see in black and white what they are consuming and … they can start to think about what to do to conserve,"
Related Links: Sheer Innovation China Grapples with Supertall Building Boom The People's Republic of China is the center of tall building construction in the world. China has seven of the 10 tallest buildings in the world that are under construction. Yet China construction practices, even on closely scrutinized iconic supertall buildings, do not always meet U.S. quality and safety standards, said many high-rise construction experts, at a recent conference on tall buildings, organized by the Council on Tall Buildings & Urban Habitat.That is one reason why it is somewhat comforting that China’s building codes are more conservative, agreed the tall-building
Related Links: National September 11 Memorial & Museum After a prolonged fight, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey have settled financial and other differences regarding the subgrade museum at the World Trade Center. The dispute halted museum construction last December, cast a shadow on the two entities leading the project and delayed the scheduled Sept. 11, 2012, opening by about a year.The seven-level museum and some port-authority projects share infrastructure at the 16-acre site in Lower Manhattan (ENR 8/16/11 p. 34). The authority, which owns the land, had
Related Links: HP Labs Architectural Record HP Labs, the research arm of computer technology giant Hewlett-Packard,is giving back to the environment. The lab has set a goal to develop a method for designing and operating a data center that would consume no net energy from the public utility grid over the lifetime of the facility."This would take into account the building's embedded energy and operational energy," says Cullen Bash, director of ecosustainable systems for HP Labs, Palo Alto, Calif.For the project to be a success, the data center would have to have a two-year payback period for the up-front investment
photo courtesy of skanska modular RISING Factory-built data centers can save owners 30% to 40% on up-front capital costs because they are the right size for current demand and can grow in response to increased future demand. photo courtesy of integrated design group rows of racks Dense computer servers and related equipment generate heat that must be constantly ejected to avoid meltdowns. Related Links: EPA's Energy Star Program The Green Grid ASHRAE Uptime Institute Gartner Inc. Data centers in the U.S. gulp an estimated 388 billion liters of potable water every year. Experts say that's enough water to fill 155
Related Links: Engineering News-Record Uptime Institute Well over half of the respondents to a recent survey of 1,100 data center owners and operators around the globe said that saving energy is a major priority for their organizations. Eighty-two percent said saving energy translates to cost-savings. Yet most companies do not have financial incentives optimized to affect real change.These are some of the findings of the Uptime Institute's second annual data center industry survey, conducted in March and April.Information technology organizations that take a systematic approach to saving energy will get the most benefit, says the survey. They need to consolidate
