Thu.Jun 08, 2017

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Paving the Road to Better Benchmarking

Construction Business Owner

We live in a competitive world. Who has the most marketing leads? Who won the bid? What is your safety record? Pertaining to your self-performed work, what are the actual production rates compared to the budgeted production rates? Is work being performed on time, and with the level of quality that is desired? Whatever the question, you have to know the score.

Roads 175
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BIM for FM

Job Order Contracting

BIM for FM. BIM for Facilities Management – 12 Reasons. Peter Cholakis Senior Vice President at Four BT, LLC, Moscardi, Lemsys SRL. 12 Good Reasons to Adopt BIM for Facilities Management. Despite the fact that the use of the BIM [1] methodology in Facilities Management is becoming ever more important for all organizations for both economic and environmental reasons, BIM software adoption for facilities operation and maintenance (O&M) remains poor.

BIM 100
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Breaking Through Estimation Limitations

Construction Business Owner

When pencils, paper and calculators were the go-to tools for estimating, spreadsheets represented a major breakthrough to contractors looking for a smarter solution. Now, contractors who rely on spreadsheets find themselves at a disadvantage when they compete against companies equipped with estimating software. Even processes built around advanced, customized spreadsheets are no match for the collaboration capabilities provided by specialized software.

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Team win: Clemson University Allen N. Reeves Football Operations Complex

BD+C

The Allen N. Reeves Football Complex, which includes 1.5 acres of outdoor space, supports the day-to-day activities of Clemson University's football players, coaches, and staff. It was constructed in 15 months with zero change orders and within Georgia’s strict cost limitations—a testament to the Building Team’s planning and coordination with owners, staff, and trades.

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Optimize Operational Processes With an Industry-Specific ERP

As the use of Enterprise Resource Planning systems in the construction industry is critical to optimizing operations, it's critical that decision makers conduct a thorough software evaluation to find the one that best aligns to their needs.

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Nail Down Your Parts Strategy

Construction Business Owner

As a business owner, unexpected maintenance can place financial strain on your company and directly impacts profitability. To make matters worse, you or your equipment operators may not have adequate service training or access to an on-site mechanic for the repairs that get your compact equipment up and running. That’s why partnering with your local equipment dealership for parts and maintenance can be beneficial.

Equipment 155

More Trending

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Beyond the Check-Engine Light

Construction Business Owner

The role of your company’s work trucks in delivering materials to a construction site quickly, efficiently and safely can make or break a project. To enable the many steps in a construction process to stay properly sequenced and on schedule, intricate vehicle timing is essential. By contrast, any delay in the process can subject contractors to delays, cost overruns and liability issues.

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Narrow site, broad vision: LA Metro Light Rail Operations & Maintenance Facility

BD+C

Nine and a half acres may sound like adequate space for a 70,000-sf building, but when that acreage is shoehorned into a narrow corridor, problems can quickly arise. Such was the case for the LA Metro Division 14 Expo Light Rail Operations & Maintenance Facility. To make the building site work, the design team needed to make as efficient use of the space as possible.

Metro 86
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Put Success in the Hands of the Operator

Construction Business Owner

Aforecast from PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, estimates the volume of construction output will grow by 85 percent to $15.5 trillion worldwide by 2030. Such growth presents both a challenge and an opportunity for companies. Faced with increasing pressure and razor-thin margins, businesses are making significant investments in telematics technologies to meet this demand.

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Nail-Laminated Timber Design and Construction Guide released

BD+C

The Bi-national Softwood Lumber Council recently released the Nail-Laminated Timber (NLT) U.S. Design and Construction Guide. The first-of-its-kind manual for the U.S. design and construction community was conceived and prepared by practitioners dedicated to advancing high-quality timber construction across industries, typologies, and geographies. Available for free download at reThinkWood.com, the guide provides direction to ensure safe, predictable, and economical use of NLT.

Design 83
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The Ultimate Procurement Software Buyer’s Guide

Choosing the right procurement software is a crucial step in ensuring third-party risk management, process governance, and bidding efficiency. With so many procurement solutions to choose from, it can be overwhelming without a frame of reference and a solid starting point. This free buyer’s guide will cover: Benefits of Procurement Software –– Why do you need it?

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Fit for Competition

Construction Business Owner

Experts will tell you that the mergers and acquisitions market is ripe for activity. Several current conditions lend themselves to creating an attractive marketplace. First, the industry is seeing continued, positive traction in revenue growth. Secondly, the demand for construction services, specifically in the infrastructure arena, provides a stimulus, which further improves the attractiveness of many candidates by inflating potential backlog.

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Raising the bar: Zurich North American Headquarters

BD+C

Like a giant arrow pointing toward downtown Chicago, the top bar of the Zurich North America Headquarters building cantilevers 60 feet to the east and rests atop two other bars. Not only is this stacked, three-bar design striking to look at, it also provides occupants with unique collaboration spaces, open views of the surrounding landscape, and programmatic flexibility that typical center-core buildings cannot offer.

Chicago 77
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Preparing for Future Success

Construction Business Owner

General contractors don’t have the time or resources for excessive rework while working on large projects. This means that implementing new technology tends to get pushed to the back burner, because new technology means training yourself and your team on how to effectively use the tools. With little downtime between projects and no room for mistakes, construction business owners often delay implementing new technology, even when they know it will save them time and expense.

Resource 138
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Take a look at the plans for Google’s new 1 million-sf London campus

BD+C

Google’s King’s Cross Campus has taken another step forward as the company recently submitted an application for planning permission to Camden Council. The London HQ, which will be purpose-built and is designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, will rise 11 stories and comprise over 1 million sf. Google will occupy 650,000 sf of the new campus. The building will include cafes, gym and pool facilities, a covered multi-use games area, an Events Center, and staff training facilities.

Plans 75
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Stop Making These Mistakes and Start Scaling Your Specialty Contractor Business

Anything that is built on a poor foundation will soon crumble from the ground up. This is literally the case in the construction stage of projects and it applies just the same during the pre-construction stage. This free eBook is your ultimate guide to scaling your business with customizable software as early as during the bidding stage.

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2017 Insurance Update

Construction Business Owner

Thanks to new technology, our vehicles are getting smarter and safer every day, with programs to help manage everything from GPS navigation and blind spot detection to lane-departure notification and emergency braking. Yet, even as equipment has become safer, highway fatalities are increasing at an alarming rate, and insurance companies have targeted distracted driving from cell phone use as a contributing factor.

Insurance 136
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Construction safety tips: Avoiding the 10 most common hazards in construction

The Korte Company

Each year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes a list of the ten most common violations it issues on construction sites. Last year’s top ten violations are the same as in 2015. In fact, despite the educational and safety materials that saturate the industry, the violations that make up the annual list are usually always the same.

Safety 69
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Updating the Rules of Revenue Recognition

Construction Business Owner

After years of work, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) have issued ASU 2014-09, the Revised Revenue Recognition Model. The model is intended to harmonize what had been a collection of over 200 specialized revenue recognition systems under United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and provide a more principle-based framework for business in different countries or in situations not covered by the previous ar

IASB 130
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Drug Kingpins

Business Facilities

It's time to place the blame for the nation's opioid epidemic squarely where it belongs, in Washington DC. - Read: Drug Kingpins.

DC 81
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The Specialty Contractor's Guide to Job Cost Accounting

Supply chain challenges and rising material costs are forcing specialty contractors to pay more for what they need to complete each job. Following a simple set of principles, this easy-to-follow guide can help you manage job costs, ease the pains of accounting, and run a more profitable businesses. If you are a Specialty Contractor or Self-performing GC, you do not want to miss out on this essential guide!

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Make the Most of Your Home Field Advantage

Construction Business Owner

You have many marketing tools at your disposal, from social media to advertisements and promotions. You may not think of your company’s headquarters in terms of being a marketing tool, but the right building and the right company culture can have a beneficial impact on your business.

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Car sharing popularity means parking zoning and codes may be promoting overbuilding of garages

BD+C

Ride sharing services are growing more popular and autonomous vehicles may be on the horizon. These developments may mean a surplus of parking garage space is on the horizon, if fewer people own their own vehicles in the future. Most cities and counties are not modifying their parking requirements on new developments in light of these trends, though.

Zoning 65
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Productivity, Power & People

Construction Business Owner

Jobsites are generally dirty, unforgiving places. They are the product of a hard day’s work, and the reason why so much emphasis is now placed on dust-control solutions. But at the end of a day’s worth of grinding, sawing and drilling, keeping your equipment running in the best possible shape comes down to prioritizing tool maintenance. Properly maintaining your suite of tools keeps them running harder for longer periods of time before the eventual replacement.

Products 127
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Quick turnaround: Partners HealtchCare

BD+C

This administrative building, the largest in Somerville, Mass., consolidates 4,500 employees from 14 locations across Boston into one place. The project’s 30-month schedule was half of the typical time frame for such a building. So the Building Team had little margin for delays or mistakes. Twice-weekly meetings that included the client, AEC firms, and consultants were guided by seven core values that served as a roadmap during the design process.

Boston 65
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Report: Optimism for Construction Growth in the Next Year Remains High

Research reveals 96% of respondents are very or fairly optimistic about their organization’s growth prospects for the next year. The InEight Global Capital Projects Outlook also finds over half see digital technology as the greatest growth opportunity. But these are only some of the findings. Don't be kept in the dark when it comes to the future. Read the report today!

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Creating Files, Not Piles

Construction Business Owner

Sarah Mueller. Director of Human Resources, SHRM-SCP. Shapiro & Duncan.

Resource 172
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Video: Backhoe Smash & Grab Fail

Construction Equipment

Police in Maryland are looking for a thief in Prince George's County who stole a backhoe, drove five miles to a nearby Bank of America, and around 4:30 early on Thursday, June 1, began to attack an ATM in hopes of getting some quick cash.

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Prefab, press the right ‘fit’ at SolarCity project

Contractor Magazine

Special to CONTRACTOR. SolarCity is a 1.2 million-sq.ft. manufacturing facility and the crown jewel of the $750 million, 96-acre RiverBend project in Buffalo, N.Y., becoming the first city to produce the first-ever true solar roof — a roofing product with solar panels built in. read more.

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OSHA Focus Four Hazards: Best Practices to Prevent Accidents and Fatalities

Construction Dive

In fiscal year 2015, OSHA Citations in the Focus Four Area constituted 94% of the fines among the TOP 20 OSHA Violations. Year-in, year-out, OSHA Citations are at 85% for Focus Four Violations and 90% of the fine amounts. Given these numbers, an OSHA inspection will likely concentrate on Focus Four areas. During a recent webinar program presented in conjunction with ConstructionPro Network, Neil Opfer, a professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, told attendees that as construction project

OSHA 48
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Discover 7 Ways to Cut Construction Inefficiencies

Construction sites are often just-barely-controlled chaos. Without clear coordination, you risk everything from clashes to delays, cancellations, and missed deadlines. Get the free eBook & learn how to solve the biggest challenges in construction!

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Business development: Why you should keep an “objections book”

Construction Marketing Ideas

Michael Stone in his regular newsletter suggests that once you complete a sales call, you should log situations where you encounter objections and your sales call fails. Here is some of the narrative. You can read the complete posting here. Your notes do not have to be long-winded, but they need to cover the conversation […].

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Concrete Form Collapse Injures Construction Workers

Construction Dive

In a recent blog entry in Construction Junkie, Shane Hedmond reported on an accident at a mixed-use building in Oakland, California where about 20 construction workers fell 10 to 15 feet while placing concrete on the second floor. Read more.

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How to Add 39 Tons of Steel to the Top of the Empire State Building

ENR Construction

When engineers made plans to reinforce and upgrade the carrying capacity of the Empire State Building’s mast and tower, they had to protect pedestrians below.