With a wave of sustainability initiatives sweeping the region in recent years, green construction is now standard for many of today's top contractors. But just as overall construction revenue declined in 2010 as the prolonged economic slump continued, green building revenue also declined. Photo Courtesy of Hensel Phelps Construction Hensel Phelps reached substantial completion on the LEED-Gold-rated University of Texas at Arlington Engineering Research Complex in November 2010. Related Links: Top Green Contractors Rankings List Total revenue last year at the 40 largest green contractors in Texas and Louisiana combined came in at $4.4 billion. In the previous year, the
For many top contractors in the region, 2010 will be remembered as the year that firms felt the full impact of the recession. Top contractors experienced significant top-line drops last year, as backlogs shrank and revenue from work contracted prior to the economic downturn began to ebb. Among the top 10 contractors that responded to ENR's Texas and Louisiana surveys over the past two years, firms collectively saw regional revenue drop 8.5% to $8.6 billion last year from $9.4 billion in 2009. Related Links: 2011 ENR Texas & Louisiana Top Contractors List ENR Texas & Louisiana Top Contractors by State
Clark Construction seems to have taken to heart the slogan “Everything is bigger in Texas.” Throughout its 30 years in the Texas market, the national firm, which is headquartered in Bethesda, Md., has focused on large jobs. But in recent years that strategy reached a new level as Clark—in a joint venture with Hunt Construction—added such megaprojects as the $730-million San Antonio Military Medical Center. The firm's Texas portfolio has amassed a combined value of $2.6 billion over three decades, with its current projects comprising $1.1 billion of that tally. Photo Courtesy of Clark Construction Clark built a new Terminal
For 108 years, groups representing New York City's union contractors and building trades have worked under the New York Plan for the Resolution of Jurisdictional Disputes, an agreement used to resolve inter-union disputes and bind union contractors to use organized labor. But at year-end, the era comes to a close. The Building Trades Employers Association, which represents union contractors, voted in May to let the plan expire after this year, giving members the option to use non-union workers. Related Links: View the Full ENR 2011 Second Quarter Cost Report (PDF) Contractors Hold Line on Pay How John Deere's New Hybrid
Craig DeFinis enjoys watching a craftsperson lose 15 minutes of work time about as much as he likes discovering that he just left his wallet in the back seat of a taxi. As the owner of Pittsburgh plumbing and HVAC contractor DeFinis Mechanical Contractors, he grants his union plumbers a quarter-hour morning break, even though his contract doesn’t require it, and hopes the workers don’t stretch it the way the half-hour lunch break sometimes goes to 45 minutes. Because each worker costs about $60 an hour in wages and benefits, extra minutes add up over the long run. “Multiply that
Union painters in New York City finalized a collective bargaining agreement on May 3 that makes several wage, benefit and work-rule concessions to employers, a result contractor groups hope will set a pattern for other city pacts now being negotiated. The Association of Master Painters of New York Inc., District Council No. 9 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, and AFL-CIO ratified the new contract after 10 weeks of bargaining. The four-year contract includes a wage freeze in the first year and wage hikes totaling $4.50 in the second, third and fourth years, averaging about 2% a
Bills dealing with air-pollution regulation have met different fates in the House and Senate. The Republican-controlled House on April 7 passed a bill to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from moving ahead with greenhouse-gas rules. But in the Senate, where Democrats have a majority, four air-pollution-related measures, including one identical to the House-passed bill, on April 6 failed to win the 60 votes needed to advance.
Despite the Dept. of Labor's efforts to improve its process for determining Davis-Bacon Act prevailing wages, it continues to produce potentially inaccurate data, according to the Government Accountability Office. A March 22 GAO report finds that Labor's wage survey has shortcomings in how timely and representative the information is and in using local data as the basis for wage calculations. Among surveys reviewed by GAO, Labor issued 11% of key wage rates at the county level, 42% at the multi-county level and 40% at the state level. More than 25% of rates were based on six or fewer workers. GAO
Nearly half of existing coal- and oil-fired powerplants may need pollution-control upgrades under a newly proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule that sets the first national standard for mercury, arsenic, nickel and other pollutants. The proposed rule was released on March 16 in response to a court-ordered deadline that was set following a case brought by several environmental groups. A final rule is required by November. EPA estimates that coal-fired plants produce 99% of mercury emissions and that existing technology could prevent 91% of mercury in coal from being released. EPA expects the rule, when final, to encourage the 44% of
Seeking to stretch federal public-works dollars, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has proposed legislation to create a federal infrastructure bank, called the American Infrastructure Financing Authority, to help fund transportation, water and energy projects. Under Kerry’s bill, introduced on March 17, the bank would have $10 billion in initial federal funding. He estimates that could stimulate up to $640 billion in private and other non-federal investment over 10 years. The Obama administration’s 2012 budget proposal includes an infrastructure bank, funded at $30 billion over six years but limited to transportation projects. It would provide grants and loans. Kerry’s bank would issue
