Industry News Briefs
February 18, 2010 Headlines
RAND Report Analyzes Funding Alternatives to Fuel Tax
U.S./Canada Agree On Stimulus Project Procurement
Owners Realizing Numerous Advantages of Utilizing BIM on Projects
Industry News
RAND Report Analyzes Funding Alternatives to Fuel Tax
RAND Corp. (02/10/10)
The pending federal transportation reauthorization bill provides Congress with an opportunity to consider new ways of funding the U.S. transportation system, such as shifting from indirect fees like fuel taxes to a system that charges drivers directly for the miles they travel, according to a report from the RAND Corporation. The report, requested by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and prepared for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program of the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council, focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of alternate methods for adopting mileage-based road use fees. "The prospect of more fuel-efficient conventional vehicles and alternative-fuel vehicles in the coming decades—though clearly beneficial in terms of the environment and energy security—threatens to make funding challenges worse," says RAND operations research Paul Sorensen, the lead author of the report. "Shifting from fuel taxes to mileage-based road use fees would help to overcome this problem, and there are several promising options for implementing such a shift." The federal gasoline tax has not increased since 1993, and as vehicles have become increasingly fuel-efficient, the amount of money needed to maintain the transportation system has fallen drastically short. Since 1980, the total number of vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. has doubled, but fuel consumption only rose 50 percent. Liisa Ecola, a co-author of the report, says there is no guarantee that instituting fees based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), or other efforts to increase VMT fees, would be less controversial than increasing fuel taxes. Additionally, collecting VMT fees will most likely be more expensive and more troublesome than collecting fuel taxes. "However, it's clear that the present system isn't working and fees based on vehicle miles traveled, if properly implemented, could result not only in more money to support the nation's transportation system, but also spread the cost burden in a more fair and equitable way," says Ecola.
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U.S./Canada Agree On Stimulus Project Procurement
Maine Public Broadcasting Network (02/08/10) Mostue, Anne
The United States and Canada recently announced that they have reached an agreement that will allow Canadian firms to bid on American stimulus projects, and in return Canadian provinces have agreed to open their contracts to bids from U.S. contractors. Almost a year ago, the U.S. Senate softened the "Buy-American" provision in the $900 stimulus bill, which stipulated any government contracts must comply with World Trade Organization rules, and that any public buildings or works funded by the stimulus must use iron, steel, and manufactured goods made in the U.S. Businesses and trade organizations largely argued that the Buy American provision was burdensome and confusing to contracts, engineers, and the cities and towns that have been using stimulus funds to invest in drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. The U.S. has agreed to give Canadian suppliers with access to state and local public works projects in a variety of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act projects. In return, U.S. suppliers will have access to a variety of construction contracts across Canada's provinces, territories, and several municipalities. Previously, U.S. contractors could bid on projects for the Canadian government proper, but not individual provinces. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the agreement, and the United Steelworkers of America has issued a statement of approval, saying that members of its union, including both Americans and Canadians, should have access to new job opportunities.
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Owners Realizing Numerous Advantages of Utilizing BIM on Projects
Reed Construction Data (02/08/10) Neeley, Dennis
Many projects are coming in at 10 percent lower than budgeted when architects and engineers create their drawings and specifications using BIM as a modeling tool. There are also early reports of projects coming in at 20 percent below budgeted when Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is used on a project. IPD is where contractors and sub-contractors add detailed construction modeling to the architects and engineers BIM projects before bidding and construction. This approach allows conflicts to be resolved in the model instead of in the field, and also enables prefabrication because dimensions are very accurate, providing confidence that prefabricated items will fit. BIM is very new, but it is widely agreed that it will result in significant change for almost everyone dealing with buildings. BIM projects and data will most likely affect a few specific areas, specifically architecture and engineering, site selection, operations, procurement, franchising, estimating, and a few others. Some departments are already looking into how BIM will impact their operations. It is important to ensure you are being given accurate advice to avoid believing BIM will be able to accomplish more than it actually can, or that it is easier to implement than it really is. Taking several actions can significantly increase BIM value, including creating or standardizing assemblies and objects and implementing those objects into current projects. Owners should also create committees to unite areas that will be affected by BIM.
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High-Speed Rail: Skipping Your Town
CNN (02/10/10) Hargreaves, Steve
Much of the $8 billion in high-speed rail funds awarded last month by the federal government will actually be used to make existing lines faster. Only $3.5 billion will be spent on true high-speed rail, far below what is actually needed to create a 21st century rail network. High-speed rail is generally defined as trains that run on separate tracks from freight rail and are capable of reaching speeds above 150 miles per hour. Most of the money will be used to improve existing lines, which could benefit freight trains and passenger rail, and would increase speeds to between 90 and 110 miles per hour. Most passenger trains in the United States currently travel below 80 miles per hour. If the United States truly wanted to build out the Department of Transportation's vision of a high-speed rail network, the actual cost would be close to $100 billion. Supporters of the current high-speed rail stimulus urge patience, saying the rest of the funding will come and that such efforts take time. For true high-speed rail, new railroad beds will have to be built that are straight, free of slow-moving freight trains, and have few if any road crossings. Supporters of the rail system envision trains running at least 60 percent full, carrying people into and out of revitalized city centers. In this scenario, once the tracks are built the trains should pay for themselves. The economic argument for trains becomes even stronger if greenhouse gas laws make fossil fuels more expensive.
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Explosion Unlikely to Slow Gas Plant Development
Associated Press (02/09/10) Williams, Mark; Baker, Mike
The deadly natural gas plant explosion in Middletown, Conn., will not hurt the development of the industry, but it could lead to stricter processes used to clear air from gas lines. The blast, which occurred when workers were purging gas lines of air, also occurred at a Slim Jim beef jerky factory in North Carolina. After officials investigated the accident in North Carolina, they found similar explosions at four different facilities across the country. Industry experts expect the U.S. Chemical Safety Board to analyze the Connecticut blast for any similarities to the other gas line explosions that have occurred. The risks of purging air from gas lines has become more serious since the series of blasts, so the Safety Board has voted to create new safety recommendations for how it should be done. The agency has pushed plant operators to vent gases outside and to monitor gas levels while clearing air from gas lines. If this cannot be done, all nonessential employees should leave the area. The Safety Board hopes that with stricter guidelines, plants will become safer.
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ODOT Process Becoming Standard
Daily Journal of Commerce (OR) (02/09/10) Carinci, Justin
After advancing 365 bridge projects in 12 years, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) will apply the same project to accelerate other projects in the future. The Jobs and Transportation Act, passed by the Oregon Legislature in 2009, requires the ODOT to use the collaborative process the department pioneered a decade ago in response to listing Northwest salmon runs under the federal Endangered Species Act. The salmon listing added a new layer to an already complicated process of gaining approval for major projects, and seeking approval one agency at a time was not working. "We thought, ‘Why don’t we get everybody in a room at the same time and have one single conversation about a project?’" says Hal Gard, ODOT’s Geo-Environmental Section manager, "so we’re not taking an individual document and schlepping it around to all the agencies." The Collaborative Environmental and Transportation Agreement for Streamlining (CETAS) was the result. The process is unique because it sets commits money for liaisons from each agency, essentially paying for their time. Discussing ODOT projects early in the planning process allows problems and concerns to be solved addressed before they are written in stone. The state Legislature recognized the success of the program, and now the ODOT will use CETAS on all state highway construction projects.
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Access Management—an Overview
ITE Journal (01/10) Vol. 80, No. 1, P. 24; Williams, Kristine M.; Levinson, Herbert S.
There are four key components of modern access management programs—classifying roadways into a logical hierarchy according to function, defining permissible access for each class of roadway, applying suitable geometric design and traffic engineering criteria to each access point, and setting up policies and procedures to execute and enforce the program. The platform for contemporary access management programs is the access classification system, which recognizes the permissible access for every roadway. Modern access management is underpinned by a number of basic principles. Those principles include supplying a specialized road system in which different roads fulfill different functions; restricting direct access to arterial roads; placing traffic signals on major roads to favor through traffic movement; situating access connections away from road intersections; and providing a supporting street and circulation system. Site access planning and design correlate the three elements of the access system—the public roadway, private driveway, and the activity center location. All three of these components are regarded as part of an overarching system. Access management facilitates the provision of a more sustainable, energy-efficient transportation system, while also delivering improved safety and mobility and enhanced livability and environmental quality.
Goodbye Cables, Hello Energy Beams
New Scientist (02/08/10) Robson, David
Traction is building for the concept of wireless power transmission via energy beams, albeit at a smaller scale than previously envisioned. The three viable options include transmission by radio waves, striking a photovoltaic cell with a finely focused infrared laser beam, and magnetic induction. In the third technique, a fluctuating magnetic field emanating from one coil can trigger an electric current in another coil in close proximity--although efficiency drops as the space between coils widens. To get around this problem, Aristeidis Karalis and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a method in which transmitter and receiver coils resonate in sync, boosting the portion of energy transferred in the presence of interference. "Power transfer efficiency scales independently of power, so the same efficiency can be achieved for laptops, consumer electronics such as TVs, and smaller portable devices such as cell phones," says Intel research engineer Emily Cooper. Among the concerns that wireless power transmission raises are its potential environmental effects in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. "The fact that these appliances are only 10 to 60 percent efficient means that 90 to 40 percent of the electricity the householder is paying for is wasted," says the Energy Saving Trust's Paula Owen.
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High-Performance Workplaces
Building Design + Construction (01/10) Sullivan, C.C.; Horwitz-Bennett, Barbara
Building professionals around the world are learning that the workplace is changing radically, with owners and tenants looking to reinvent corporate office buildings to be more competitive on a worldwide scale. Companies are exploring ways to shrink their overall footprint and reduce overhead costs to stay competitive. Workplace consultant DEGW managing director Andrew Laing says companies are becoming quite innovative in how office users perform their jobs, including activity-based work, co-working, mobile officing, and distributed workplace models. This re-invention of the workplace is leading to a new wave of renovation and reconstruction at a time when new construction has largely stalled due to the recession. "The whole idea of work and workplace is being transformed. Now developers and designers of office buildings face enormous challenges in what they should provide to organizations and end-users," says Laing. For builders, the challenge is to adapt office facilities to the newest technologies and work styles as quickly as possible. A U.S. Workplace Survey conducted by Gensler shows that top-performing companies have significantly higher-performing work environments than average companies. Gensler says workplaces must successfully support four primary work modes; focused work, collaboration, learning, and socialization. Many top corporate developers, architects, interior designers, and building owners agree that a highly functional, supportive work environment is crucial to both employee and company success.
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Sharp Water
Roads & Bridges (01/10) Vol. 98, No. 1, Quinn, Jim
A new patented technology, called the Simply Complex machine by WaterWerks, promises to significantly lower the cost, labor, and time needed to retrofit the nation's concrete highways with load-transferring dowel bars, while improving quality and safety features. Using an array of precision-controlled water-blasts, the Simply Complex machine has proven the viability by simultaneously cutting up to six slots in concrete highway sections, allowing for the precise placement of steel dowel bars that reinforce and stabilize adjacent pavement slabs. The machine was designed to perform three jobs at once: precision cutting of dowel-bar slots, excavating the cut concrete, and vacuuming the water and concrete debris into a storage tank for processing and reuse. A prototype of the machine was demonstrated for the Washington State Department of Transportation, and Washington, California, Texas, and Minnesota have all committed to approve the use of the machine when a commercial version is available. It has been estimated that the water-blasting technique could reduce the cost of cutting and cleaning concrete slots in dowel-bar retrofit (DBR) projects by more than half. The system uses high-pressure water-blast nozzles and vacuum equipment utilized up to pressures of 40,000 psi. In addition to cost reduction benefits, the water-blasting DBR system promises to deliver important technical, maintenance, safety, and environmental benefits. For example, the system takes less than four minutes to produce six dowel-bar slots.
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Concrete Construction Synergies
Structural Engineering & Design (01/10) Vol. 10, No. 12, P. 30; Maingot, Martin R.
Concrete builders are always on the lookout for ways to speed up construction while using less materials or to use labor and equipment more efficiently. The initial phases of a project present a prime opportunity for concrete designers to shape cost by considering both structural design and constructability. It is essential that any effort to lower cost of a cast-in-place concrete structure include the consideration of formwork, and the most common obstacles to cost savings in regards to formwork can include a concentration on individual components rather than an entire system; an approach that looks for cost savings by minimizing concrete volume; a lack of understanding of formwork and structural framing compatibility; inadequate focus during conceptual and initial project phases; and private versus public projects. An awareness of the synergy between structural design and the anticipated forming system can enable the designer to steer the successful outcome of a cast-in-place concrete building. Among the tactics that can be implemented to realize cost savings are preplanning, consistency and uniformity, and cooperation with the builder. The most economical system from a concrete formwork perspective is a flat plate or flat slab system in which the formwork has very limited interruptions and can be put together and taken apart relatively easily. Tight collaboration between owner, contractor, and designer can facilitate design and construction efficiencies in which both the contractor and designer are closely entwined to capture higher productivity rates available through the selection of the most suitable framing and formwork systems.
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Efficiency and Building Envelope
Building Operating Management (01/01/10) Snyder, Loren
Building performance is based on the controllable factors of the systems within the building and the envelope's efficiency. When constructing a new project, facility executives can request engineering firms to build an envelope model that estimates the cost of energy against heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system performance, building load needs, construction materials, and various other factors. Executives should be able to use the model requirements to make informed decisions about the R-values, U-values, window, wall, and roofing specifications necessary to fulfill targeted envelope performance. Andre Desjarlais with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Building Envelope program says that there is abundant aid that facility executives can take advantage of to model envelope performance in existing buildings. However, he advises retrieving the original building schematics in instances where the budget to hire a team of consultants is unavailable. In addition, an accurate metric of any building's envelope performance requires a little more research. For example, facility executives also should look into the applicable energy codes and standards at the time of a building's construction.
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Optimizing Deepwater Salt/Subsalt Drilling With Hole Openers
Offshore (01/10) Vol. 70, No. 1, P. 56; Aburto, Marco; D'Ambrosio, Piero
The use of expandable concentric underreamers or hole openers in deepwater drilling has become extensive over the past 10 years, but the addition of underreamers into the bottomhole assembly (BHA) has complicated drilling dynamics by introducing new sources of shock and vibration, which can induce various system failures before arriving at the next planned casing point. Thus, appropriate BHA design is essential for operators to facilitate optimal deepwater salt and subsalt drilling performance. Schlumberger developed a tracking system to assess overall underreamer/BHA system performance in the Gulf of Mexico, and to shield drilling tools from high levels of shock and vibration and guarantee optimal BHA design while drilling with underreamers, existing data was examined and lessons learned documented throughout the Drilling Engineering Center to set up an initial suite of best practices based on extensive experience with numerous operators and vendors. Analysis has yielded two sets of recommendations for operators, with the ultimate objective being to drill from casing point to casing point with a single BHA. Achieving optimal BHA design and performance demands that all parties actively collaborate to identify the appropriate solution. Best practices suggested to ameliorate underreamer-related shock and vibrations to the BHA as well as avoid component malfunctions or BHA twist-off include ensuring stable, balanced cutting structures; positioning the hole opener above MWD/LWD tools; putting stabilizers above and below the hole opener; maximizing drill collars above the underreamer; and managing drilling parameters in real-time via transitions. Best practices for optimizing directional drilling with underreamers below salt include real-time management of drilling parameters, running expandable stabilizers above the hole opener in directional holes, and maximizing wear resistance of underreamer blocks and cutters.
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Going Ultra: New Directions in Transmission
Energybiz (01/10) Vol. 7, No. 1, P. 22; Salamone, Salvatore
It is becoming increasingly crucial to deliver wind, solar, and hydro-generated power from remote areas to high-demand urban areas. This calls for the use of high-voltage transmission systems that are capable of carrying power across longer distances. "You have losses moving power long distances, so if you are putting in a new systems, use the best or most efficient transmission technology available," advises Bill Babcock, director of the utilities practice at consulting firm LECG. The newest AC and DC ultra-high-voltage transmission systems have rated voltages of 1,000 kilovolts alternating current, 800 kilovolts direct current, or higher. Such advances might enable the United States to obtain hydro-power from Quebec, for example, or wind power from isolated Hawaiian islands that could be transmitted to densely populated areas. China's State Grid Corporation intends to invest upwards of $14 billion over the next three years to four years to construct and enlarge an ultra-high-voltage network. To improve the testing and certification of high- and medium-voltage products and technologies, KEMA has opened a new laboratory in the Netherlands. KEMA will issue type test certificates and reports for components like cables, insulators, power transformers, and switchgears. In addition, testing is now taking in many places on low loss, high capacity superconducting cables that are appropriate for carrying electricity over shorter distances in cities.
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