Critical Path

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The battles over project labor agreements continue, and show no signs of abating.  On Sept. 6, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld a Michigan law that banned project labor agreements on state projects. Business-oriented groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors cheered the decision.

September 11: It's time to name this date a memorial holiday for all we lost as a nation and for all we need to learn from it.

 Although we take several factory tours each year, it is rare that we get to take home photos shot from inside a plant.  

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, in a review of the "vanity height" of supertall buildings, has come up with some interested findings.

Know someone between 13 and 18 who likes to invent??OR…are you someone who could mentor a student in a really fun design competition…and help him or her win a free trip to New York City to see a movie premiere??THEN, have we got a contest for you—the Gravity Design Challenge…BUT YOU HAVE TO ACT FAST!STUDENTS—You need to design and build a household space machine BY TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10MENTORS—You need to complete a 2-hour mentoring course BY FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, and then volunteer one hour per week on line through the end of the competition period.

It looks as if HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan is going to be the closest thing to a "Resilient Building Coordination Czar" that the Sandy-affected regions and the nation will have. Today, the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, chaired by Donovan, released its 69 rebuilding recommendations.

Breaking news, videos and the interactive features like our Twitter feed caught the judge’s attention in the American Society of Business Publication Editors awards competition this year.  ENR.com won Best B2B Website of the Year.

As promised, HUD has released the names of the 10 finalists of its Rebuild by Design competition. There are high-profile firms on the list, including OMA, Sasaki and BIG. But it's “black Friday” for Elizabeth English, the lesser-known mouse that didn’t quite roar enough to get her team—pushing amphibious buildings that float in floods—on the list.

Mila Kennett, the high-performance and resilience program manager for the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, has been plugging away for 10 years, developing risk management and other resilient-building tools for the design and owner community, first for FEMA and now for DHS.