Online Exclusives

3D LASER SCANNING KEEPS PROJECTS ON SCHEDULE AND IDENTIFIES UNKNOWN ISSUES BY BRIAN LAIRD, PRINCIPAL PROJECT MANAGER, RICK ENGINEERING COMPANY PATRICK EARLY, ESTIMATOR/PROJECT MANAGER, ALLGIRE GENERAL CONTRACTORS Hotel Churchill – a historic San Diego structure originally built in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition, is being modernized to serve San Diego’s homeless veterans and individuals suffering from mental illness. Last year, ...

USING FLOOR-TO-CEILING WALLS AND SOUND MASKING BY NIKLAS MOELLER K.R. MOELLER & ASSOCIATES LTD. Closed offices and meeting rooms are built with the intention of providing occupants with both visual and acoustic privacy. While the first goal can easily be achieved, the latter often proves more challenging. Some argue that this failure indicates poor design or construction. However, this position ...

BY KEVIN KING AND GREGORY PODOLAK The complex world of construction risk transfer is a hotbed of emerging and evolving issues, with critical issues constantly being shaped by case law and the practical realities of day-to-day business transactions. Among the numerous issues that we see, there’s been a noticeable increase in discussion about the need for professional liability insurance and ...

BY NEIL B. CONNELLY, ESQ., BROWN GRUTTADARO GAUJEAN PRATO, LLC Business is slow. Nothing is in the pipeline and there are a few jobs on the horizon. Then, miraculously, an RFP pops up. It’s right in your wheelhouse, but you know there will be a lot of bidders. What to do? You cut your margin to the bone. After all, ...

BY SEAN O’KEEFE LAYER CAKE CREATIVE Construction challenges come in all shapes and sizes, and much like the nearly limitless diversity of potential challenges, solutions can be equally unique. For general contractor WW Clyde of Springville, Utah, a member of multiple AGC chapters, one such challenge and innovative solution recently presented itself on a road and bridge project in Pocatello, ...

BY JOSHUA ESTRIN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE STEPHEN A. ESTRIN & CO. INC. The average safety hard hat weighs approximately 14 ounces. The average worker’s head weighs 14 pounds. So there is an ounce of safety for every pound of head — provided the head protection is properly worn and maintained. But there is more to safety than the equipment protecting the ...

NAVAL HOSPITAL PROJECT TEAM EXECUTES A COMPELLING OFFENSE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST PROJECT RISK BY JIM EISENHART VENTURA CONSULTING GROUP The design-build project team for the new $448.8-million U.S. Naval Hospital at Marine Corp Base Camp Pendleton faced a big challenge. They were charged with building a leading-edge, 500,000-sq-ft hospital and surrounding medical campus, and it had to be built ...

CYBER LIABILITY EXPOSURES IN CONSTRUCTION BY LAWRENCE LEJFER AND MIKE ZYSMAN, CRIS Know any contractors who don’t use a single computer? Not likely. The use of technology and computing infrastructure is vital in the day-to-day operations of running a business. And as a result, the amount of private data and information being used and stored by organizations is growing at ...

BY CORY BENNETT BENNETT THRASHER LLP As construction companies deal with rising labor and material costs, many are looking at other areas of their business to keep costs in check. Fortunately, financial reporting is becoming less complex and costly for small, private businesses in construction and other industries. For many years, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which sets accounting ...

BY NATHAN WATSON RYAN TRANSPORTATION The movement of goods and materials can often seem secondary to the work that takes place at a construction site. With so many aspects of a project to manage, you may not turn your full attention to transportation unless something goes wrong. When something does go wrong, however, transportation can have a significant impact on ...