Three New York City construction officials indicted and arraigned on Dec. 22 in connection with a fatal fire at a vacant Ground Zero high-rise being cleaned of asbestos and demolished posted bail and will reappear in court in Manhattan on Jan. 7. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau charged the officials, including the site safety manager for project contractor Bovis Lend Lease LLC, with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment. The charges relate to their alleged roles in the August 2007 fire at the Deutsche Bank building that killed two city firefighters. Photo: AP/Wideworld Bovis manager Melofchik (center) charged with
John Hernan, a construction advertising sales executive whose West Coast-based career at Engineering News-Record and its parent firm McGraw-Hill Corp. spanned more than 44 years, died Dec. 19 in California of melanoma-induced cancer. He was 85. Hernan began his ENR career in 1960 and soon became one of its most prolific and successful ad sales executives. "He was an extraordinary professional," says Howard Mager, a retired McGraw-Hill senior vice president and ENR publisher. Hernan retired in 2004. John Bodrozic, president of Meridian Systems, a Folsom, Calif.-based project management software firm, recalls Hernan's guidance when the firm started operation in the
A New York City prosecutor charged the site safety manager for Bovis Lend Lease LLC with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection with a fire that damaged a Deutsche Bank high-rise in lower Manhattan 16 months ago and killed two firefighters. The building had been undergoing asbestos abatement and demolition. Photo: AP/Wideworld Jeffrey Melofchik, Bovis site safety manager at Manhattan's Deutsche Bank demolition project, arrives for his arraignment Dec. 22 The indictments were announced Dec. 22 by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau against Jeffrey Milofchik, who had been Bovis site safety manager at the 40-story Deutsche Bank, which was
Trying hard to hang onto its valuable construction workforce, at least one contractor has launched a new jobsite-wide health and safety measure: deployment of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to revive sudden heart attack victims at all of its U.S. and Caribbean project sites. Photo: Moss & Associates Moss safety manager Gerard (center) demonstrates defibrillator device operation to other contractor employees. The firm has deployed the devices at U.S. and Caribbean jobsites. While AEDs have found their way into more workplaces and other public spaces, executives of Moss & Associates LLC and other heart-attack prevention professionals believe the Fort Lauderdale-based building
As workers struggle to remove remnants of Hanford’s old industrial mission, construction of a $12.3-billion state-of-the-art waste-treatment plant symbolizes its future. If construction officials master cost, schedule and technology challenges, the vitrification plant will restore production to the site and offer the region an economic boost. Bechtel Group Inc. Complex will turn waste into glass when operating by 2019. Bechtel Group Inc. Complex will turn waste into glass when operating by 2019. Related Links: Huge Cleanup at Bomb-Making Megasite Is The New Atomic Fallout The multibuilding, 65-acre vitrification complex will receive nuclear and chemical waste from aging underground tanks, remove
M.A. Mortenson Co Mort Mortenson and his 1987 Volvo are both icons at the Minneapolis firm M.A. “Mort” Mortenson Jr. says his favorite project in 48 years at the family construction firm was dismantling 300-plus Minuteman missile sites in South Dakota. But it’s probably a good thing the firm could not win more demolition jobs: Building things up has worked out much better for the 72-year-old entrepreneur and his Minneapolis-based M.A. Mortenson Co., which he has led for almost four decades as chairman. One of construction’s most technically savvy and prolific design-builders, Mortenson faces the future—even an economically uncertain one—with
David Richter is key half of top management team along with his father Irvin E. Richter in boosting Hill into a project management/claims megafirm altering landscapes around the world.
The experience of women who have charged into the "good ol’ boys"
universe of construction in the last quarter century has improved but still remains worlds apart from male peers in many aspects.
Since the 1920s, the family owned heavy contractor quietly toiled, but grew large, building lots of infrastructure in and around New York City. It took a more public stance decades later in rushing in to dig out and rebuild the devestated Ground Zero area of Manhattan after 9/11.
Twenty-five years after the first college-level program earned legitimacy through accreditation, construction education is feeling the highs and lows of maturity.
