2018 Erosion Control Survey

Redmond Elementary School’s Stormwater Detention System

Lake Washington School District’s new Clara Barton Elementary School in Redmond, Wash., is one of the new elementary schools in the Redmond Learning Community that was included in the district’s Long-Term Facilities Planning Task Force recommendations. The new school is built to house 690 elementary students under state-funded class-size reductions. As part of the project, Oldcastle Precast Auburn was contracted to supply several hundred precast concrete panel sections for two massive detention...

Project Management Insights: When Everyone Is a PM, No One Is a PM

About 10 years ago, the #lifegoal in the industry was to become a Principal within one’s engineering or architecture firm. With that position came prestige, owner perks, financial and professional security, and decision-making authority on strategic matters. Managers were eager to trade in bonuses for any number of shares offered. Seats filled up quickly at seminars that taught “the business of the business.” This trend soon brought unique challenges, and we consulted around those, too. Ownersh...

Madison Square Park Tower: Slender, Inverted, Remarkable

The last decade witnessed a global boom in tall building construction, and, like every year since 2014, 2017 set another record for tall building construction with the completion of 144 buildings taller than 655 feet. New York City, practically synonymous with skyscrapers, saw its fair share of tall buildings erected as developers continue reaching for the sky. However, unlike most of the tall buildings going up worldwide, New York leads the way in a new trend: slender skyscrapers. Slender Skys...

Executive Corner: Is It Time for a Shareholders’ Agreement Tune-Up?

A well-crafted shareholders’ agreement is the foundation of any professional service firm’s ownership transition plan. In privately held firms (which make up the vast majority of firms in the A/E industry), this is the document that governs how ownership is transacted by and between the company and its shareholders. A good agreement will speak to virtually any circumstance that may arise, and specify the obligations of the company and shareholders in each circumstance with respect to ownership....

Tulsa’s ‘Gathering Place’ Brings a Community Together

Located along the Arkansas River in Tulsa, Okla., the Gathering Place is too large and topographically complex to be taken in from a single vantage point. Circulation ties the wide-ranging elements together.   Thousands of Tulsa, Okla., residents turned out Sept. 8, 2018, to get their first look at the Gathering Place, a $465 million riverfront park developed by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Situated along the Arkansas River just two miles from downtown Tulsa, the 66.5-acre park’s...

Code Update: A Seismic Monitoring Systems Snapshot for Building Code Compliance in California

California is most associated with earthquake risk, but the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) points out that while all U.S. states have some potential for earthquakes, 42 of the 50 states “have a reasonable chance of experiencing damaging ground shaking from an earthquake in 50 years.” Even with this assessment, it was only in the last decade that California building code required seismic monitoring. In the rest of the United States, there are no seismic monitoring building codes, except in Oreg...

Engineered Solutions: Modernizing Infrastructure to Keep Costs Low and Profit Margins High

Sponsored By:       Founded in 2007, Egnyte delivers a content platform designed for business. Egnyte’s cloud-based platform serves as the foundation for collaboration, enabling secure file sharing and compliant data protection, while also helping to modernize infrastructure. Thousands of businesses worldwide use Egnyte products, and AEC companies are among those reaping the greatest rewards. The following are some examples: Balfour Beatty: Cutting Costs Balfour Beatty US is an...

Infrastructure Outlook: We Need 21st Century Solutions for America’s Infrastructure

Americans know how bad the country’s infrastructure has become, particularly our roads and bridges. The growing U.S. population, currently at 328 million people and rapidly approaching 400 million, puts a tremendous strain on our already taxed infrastructure. Commuting to work, going to the doctor’s office, and getting the kids to their activities are taking us longer due to worsening roads and congestion. The people expect their federal elected leaders to act to improve these problems, but so f...

From the Editor: Managing a $10 Trillion Construction Industry

Several years ago, the trillion-dollar global construction industry (projected to hit $10 trillion by 2020) caught the eyes of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Much has been written (including in this column) about the industry’s inefficiencies, and there’s much interest in capitalizing on efficiency improvements. The result was and continues to be a flood of money pouring into construction technology. One area of particular interest is project- and design-management software platforms intended...