A year ago the company purchased a century-old structure in the historic Market District of Des Moines and began a $17M renovation project to turn the former warehouse into a state-of-the-art net-zero energy building. MODUS moved its offices to the newly modernized facility in December of 2014, and uses it as both its home base and a showcase of energy-efficient design a...
For more than three decades the National Association of Home Builders has sponsored The New American Home (TNAH), a house that showcases the latest technology in home construction, sustainability, materials, and energy efficiency. While previous versions of TNAH were unique custom-built houses, The New American Home 2015 shows a building that’s intended for mass producti...
I have been casually observing the replacement of a bridge near my home in Colorado, a bridge over a tiny stream on a road that leads to a park. The existing bridge was demolished, and new abutments built, followed by placement of six steel girders, with several cranes, then a poured concrete deck. Once the deck was fully cured (under blankets and tarps), work progressed...
That was when I met Bill Kreysler of Kreysler and Assoc., and nervously attended a meeting of the ACMA’s Architectural Division. My knowledge of composites was still very rudimentary at that point, and I hadn’t thought much about the use of composites in architecture, but Composites Technology magazine had run a story on fiberglass architectural decorative elements in 19...
Clark Contracts won 10 new contracts in March 2015, totalling £11m. Individual contracts ranged in value from £120,000 to £4.7m. The largest was a contract from Falkirk Council to undertake the first phase of the regeneration of Denny town centre. This involves the construction of 10 new build retail units, a library and community space with associated car parking and...
Bowmer & Kirkland started earthworks earlier this year at theWestmoor Park 3 Site in Doncaster where it is building a 60,000m2 distribution warehouse for the retail group Next. The project also includes a four-storey 8,500m2 office building and a link bridge between the two structures. Billington is providing 5,000 tonnes of structural steel for the project, including...
The US$671m (£454m) project is includes construction of a new terminal, runway and control tower. It is expected to provide additional capacity for 10 million passengers per year, bringing the total capacity to 18 million annually. Sharm El-Sheikh airport has been Egypt’s fastest-growing facility and is Africa’s third-busiest airport, with an average of 10% annual gro...
Carillion and Laing O’Rourke/Interserve were shortlisted by Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust in September 2014 and were due to submit their final bids this month. Balfour Beatty withdrew at an earlier stage and now Laing O’Rourke/Interserve has followed suit. HealthInvestor website reports that the health trust is satisfied that continuing the procurement process ...
From 1st September 2015 it will be a scheme requirement that anyone attending a CISRS Part 1 Scaffolding Training course must have held a valid CISRS trainee scaffolder or labourer card for a minimum of six months. Since the scheme began 40 years ago, Part 1 course delegates have had to have minimum of six months on site experience as a as a trainee scaffolder or labo...
With the Internet of Things now upon us, it has the potential to dramatically change our lives at a dizzying pace. Gartner believes that the IoT market will grow from 0.9 billion units today to 26 billion units by 2020, an almost 30-fold increase resulting in a nearly $1.9 trillion global market value. Beyond the “things” themselves — everything from wearable techn...
Last week while attending the Association of Equipment Management Professionals Management Conference and Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, I heard a term I’d never heard before: “tribal knowledge.” I thought it sounded like a pretty cool thing until I looked it up on Google. Turns out tribal knowledge is a term used in SixSigma, which defines it as: “Any unwritten i...
For example, what would be the top three types of equipment for a contractor with annual sales of less than $5 million, compared to one with sales of more than $16 million? For this study, we looked at a sample of equipment financed during the years 2010 through November 2014. Since financed sales take time to be processed, and since this data was compiled the week of ...
The UK-based company had already announced a cut in forecast profits after a review by accountants KPMG. However, Balfour Beatty’s full-year results did show international construction revenues up 24% at constant exchange rates to £1.0 billion (€1.36 billion), predominantly as a result of a Hong Kong-based joint venture. Middle East construction showed underlying loss...
Higher injection pressures, careful design of the piston and combustion chamber, turbocharging and other mechanical ploys improve combustion efficiency and help ensure maximum power is extracted from each unit of fuel, but they don’t change the fundamentals. More power still requires more fuel. But mid-size dozers’ duty cycles vary considerably as do their power require...
Compared to skid steer loaders, compact track loaders cost more, have slower travel speeds, are better in soft underfoot conditions, and handle slopes better. Common knowledge. But if your assessment of the performance of CTLs and their potential for your business stops with the commonplace, you can’t make the right decisions regarding their use. Cost First, the cost f...
A few weeks ago, while vacationing in Maine, I caught a flash of faded yellow out of the corner of my eye. My wife knows that when I pause during a summer walk or hike, it is often because I’ve seen a machine. Before I’m branded for not enjoying time with my wife, or hiking, or even being able to disconnect on vacation, admit that it’s happened to you, too. And if you...
One thing our inaugural class of Under 40 in Construction Equipment Award winners seems to have in common is an incredible drive to learn and use what they’ve learned. As asset management becomes increasingly multidisciplinary—incorporating technology, accounting, maintenance management, training, communication skills, personnel recruitment and more—being able to abso...
Barilla opened a pasta processing plant and distribution facility in Avon, New York, US, on 19 October 2007. Spread over 49 acres, the facility features a 110,000ft² pasta processing plant and a 205,000ft² distribution centre. Located 23 miles south of Rochester and 50 miles east of Buffalo, the plant produces 81,000t of pasta per year (as of July 2009). Barilla, an Ita...
Production work is repetitive loading using a V-pattern (or Y-pattern) cycle or a load-and-carry cycle. The loader may run constantly throughout a work shift. Utility work involves more varied use – including digging, loading and lifting – and may have more idle time. The challenge for OEMs is to create features that are of value to all customers, regardless of which ca...
“Concrete overlays have been around for a while, but within the last seven to eight years in particular, we’ve seen a tremendous growth in the use of the technology,” says Bill Davenport, vice-president of communications at the American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA). “The downturn in the economy has played a part in that. Agencies are required to do more with less...
There’s a reason for that. Most people in this business understand that their success is directly tied to how well their employees do their job. Happy employees tend to be the best employees and the business owners that make their employees’ well-being a priority tend to do very well. That being said, it’s not all that often that you meet a contractor who says his or he...
The 2014 Spec Guide has about the same number of ADTs as did the 2013 version, but the percentage of models listed as new is much higher: 48 percent in 2014 compared to 30 percent in 2013. Comparing 2014 to pre-recession 2008 shows the model count down nearly 31 percent but the percentage of new models up more than 108 percent. So what’s new on these models? Much of the...
Two additional advantages include reduced cabinet heat loads and more straight forward drive architecture. The question arises however, which technology is better, an integrated motor/drive solution or a detached motor and drive? So often in life the answer to a question is neither A or B, but instead C. This is true for the discussion of decentralized versus centrali...
Buildings that rock during an earthquake and return to plumb would withstand seismic shaking better than structural designs commonly used in vulnerable zones of California and elsewhere, a Case Western Reserve University researcher has found. Those buildings would also be more easily and cheaply repaired and put back into use more quickly, said Michael Pollino, an ass...
