Building Abroad Has Corps of Engineers Working Hard To Adapt
By Tom Sawyer
The Europe District of the Army Corps of Engineers is the vanguard of U.S. efforts to build green abroad, but the effort is beset by cultural translation issues at every turn. Every country has different rules for the game.

Recession Spreads To Nonresidential Buildings:
Little Room For Costs To Move
By Timothy Grogan
The deepening recession in nonresidential building will keep a cap on costs, frustrating producers who are trying to take advantage of any signs of life in homebuilding. There will be some ups and downs, but in the end, there is too much idle capacity and too little demand to allow prices to stray beyond this year’s bottom.

Design Team Held to Competition Promises
By Nadine Post
Masdar Initiative reconvened competition jury halfway through design of its sustainable headquarters in Abu Dhabi to keep on positive-energy track.

Buffeted by High Winds and Setbacks, a Bypass Is Making History Near Hoover Dam
By Tony Illia and Aileen Cho
Contractors are building a longspan, single-arch bridge to take traffic off Hoover Dam. The project has been plagued by delays, including the collapse of its cableway system.

As More Buildings Go Geothermal, Project Teams Are Thinking Outside the Borehole
More crews are installing geothermal systems as building owners look to reduce energy costs, impact on the grid and emissions. But the technology still has some growing up to do.

By 2020 China Will Pass U.S. As Preeminent Construction Market
China will push the U.S. into second place as the world's biggest construction market before the end of the next decade, according to a new Web-based report called Global Construction 2020.

Stimulus Funds Kick Off A Slow Comeback After Market Bottoms
Stimulus funds will start to kick into high gear next year just as the housing market rebounds to 2008 levels. This gain will be counterbalanced by a deepening decline in nonresidential building markets.

Military Construction Is in High Gear As Big Jobs Hit Their Stride
Corps of Engineers becomes more flexible in project delivery to handle burgeoning workload.

Academia Takes On Tougher Times
Engineering and construction academic programs are weathering the recession, coping with budget cuts and helping students navigate a tough job market with stronger skills.

Delayed Russian Dam System Nears Reality
Flooding has been a continuing and even predictable problem in Saint Petersburg, ever since Peter the Great founded the city that became the Russian capital in 1703 on low-lying land within the Neva River estuary.

A Snapshot of Top Shovel-, Wrench- and Pencil-Ready Projects
Stimulus-funded projects from across the U.S. show the diversity of work funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The Top 600 Specialty Contractors
The recession is taking a toll on subcontractors and specialty contractors, and most are struggling to find creative ways to deal with it.

Breathing New Life Into Old Facilities
Removing greater levels of phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater is driving a new round of construction as old plants are fitted with new technology and new plants are built.

Competition Intensifies as Recession Deepens
The drop in materials prices is starting to bottom out, but that is being followed by fierce competition that is cutting margins and driving construction costs well below last year’s levels. As the recession grabs hold of the non-residential building markets, this competition will intensify.

Shanghai’s Sunken Treasure
Only the giant cruise ships sidled up against the riverbank offer any hint of what lies below Shanghai’s newest stretch of green along the Huangpu River in the resurgent North Bund district.

Traylor Bros. Tackles Tough Projects By Building Up An Iron Army
Traylor Bros.’ equipmentrebuilding program takes wellworn machines and transforms them into better-than-new equipment for a variety of tough infrastructure projects.

Where Are the Jobs?
Construction employers are boosting payrolls with federal stimulus money to tamp down unemployment. But funding is still slow and may not solve all industry woes.

Peaceful Transition: Native People and Hydro-Québec Share Benefits of Big Project
Hydro-Québec’s James Bay project is rolling smoothly because the utility is respecting the indigenous people’s needs. It’s a new experience for both.

Canadians Commit To Concessionaire Contracts for Infrastructure and Buildings
In just a decade, the "big four" Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec have embraced public-private partnership (P3) projects to the point where they are almost a mainstream construction-delivery method.

Proposal For Portable Safety Records Is Generating Dialogue and Controversy
A proposal that workers carry personal safety records as part of their employment history touched some raw nerves.

Digital-Modeling Veterans Want Data for Life Cycles
Virtual design and construction began with the creators of process and chemical plants. Today, their goal is to integrate, manage and share facilities data with consummate ease.

Just-in-Time Dredging Pulls Out Toxins
Innovative dredging process saves millions in world’s largest cleanup of riverbed PCBs at a Superfund site in Wisconsin.

A Public-Sector Success
Keith Clarke has rejuvenated W.S. Atkins, bringing the U.K. designer back to its traditional engineering focus and positioning the firm to make money in a recesssion.

Wrenches Put In Tower’s Works
Builders of the 160-meter-tall Capital Gate tower in Abu Dhabi were slowed down by the complicated geometry caused by offset floors that create an 18° slant from the vertical axis.

Intelligent Compaction Is on a Roll
Intelligent compaction represents a huge cultural shift in project delivery but could save billions of dollars annually in building infrastructure and maintaining vehicle fleets.

Landscape Architecture Rising
Landscape architects are making a comeback by combining nature, engineering and culture to manage stormwater and remove pollutants while creating attractive places.

2Q Cost Report: Hard Bids, Low Costs
In less than a year the construction market has gone from owners fishing for bids to a bidding frenzy.

NASA Fuels for Liftoff
NASA is beginning demolition and construction of launch pads for a new rocket system to return to the moon, but organizational weaknesses threaten the agency’s ability to achieve its goal.

Digging In To Deliver Clean Water
Contractors now are moving quickly to build New York City’s water filtration plant 100 ft below grade. When finished, its roof will be covered and used as part of a golf course.

Staging Machinations
The curtain is going up soon on both an experimental and classical theater in Dallas, thanks to a building team that jumped through hoops to construct the high-rise theater's frame-on-stilts.

Everybody’s in Business
Distributed energy resources, linked and communicating over the smart grid, are transforming the entire country into a virtual powerplant.

Panama Widens Horizons
Massive amounts of earth now are being moved in preparation for building a third set of locks to expand the Panama Canal and double its capacity.

Learning to Live Off Last Year’s Bounty
Contractors believe the current widespread industry recession will last through 2010 and are relying on backlog and good management to see them through a lean year.

Inside a Safety Turnaround
The new worker-safety program at the gigantic CityCenter project in Las Vegas has stopped fatalities but not lost-time accidents. ENR takes a close-up view of the program.

Digging into 3D Modeling Unearths Many Worms
A look at projects being designed and built using multiple buildinginformation- modeling systems shows it can be a bumpy road for all members of the building team.

Long Road to Reality
After years of delays, the new Bandra-Worli Sea Link will cut a trip across Mahim Bay in Mumbai, India, from about 40 minutues to six. The 4.7-km viaduct with two cable-stayed spans is slated to open to traffic in mid-May.

Firms Have One Question: How Long Will the Recession Last?
For large design fi rms, 2008 was the last hurrah before the recession hit. Now that bad times are here, designers are living off backlog, learning to manage and discovering how to become lean and mean.

Dollars Roll Out At Uneven Pace
Construction spending is rising, particularly for transportation work, but the money flow is uneven as agencies still struggle with planning and provisions.

As the Economy Worsens, Machinery Auctions are Swamped
Prices plummeted at one of the largest industry auctions held earlier this year. Despite the mass exodus of equipment, the results were better than many people expected.

Academic Ignites Engineering Talent to Drive Levels of Needed Change
Bernard Armadei, professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado-Boulder, has served the industry and the world with the creation of Engineers Without Borders-USA. It engages students, engineers and companies on meaningful projects.

Tight-Fisted Banks Stall Development
Few building construction companies have seen a market like this one, where weak banks hesitate to lend to anything involving real estate. Patrick Cebelak, controller of Granger Construction Co., Lansing, Mich., is resigned to the fact that "this isn't going to be a fast recovery." Most of the experts on real estate finance would agree.

Engineers Focus On Big Delta Threats
Deltas house great ports and centers of industry, but they perch on fragile land, buffeted by the rivers that made them and threatened by the seas. They will take the brunt of sea-level rise and climate change, which is fueling concern.

Best of the Best - 2008
Judges selected the most outstanding design and construction projects of 2008 from McGraw-Hill Construction’s regional publications. Learn who won and what the judges said.

Modeling Pathfinders Impatient To Have A Much Fuller Digital Toolbox
Software developers know product capabilities, but user needs influence where technology goes.

Unwrapping the Big Package
Industry officials are scouring the voluminous stimulus bill, looking not only for how much money it has for individual programs but also for critical details on exactly how and when the funds will be disbursed.

San Francisco-Oakland Crossing Starts To Take Shape
Preparatory and temporary construction is in full swing for the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge’s signature element, a self-anchored suspension bridge.

America May Gain from Materials Designed To Stretch Your Stimulus Dollars
As infrastructure begins drawing attention on Capitol Hill, venture capitalists are looking for firms with innovative products and materials to bring to market.

For Contractors and Their Advisers, A Sinking Feeling Is Good in Busan
Tunnels and bridges form $1.8- billion, 8.2-kilometer-long project that some believe paves the way for future links between Korea and its neighbors.

Proposal in House Fires Up Debate
The Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president coincides with an $825-billion stimulus proposal now before Congress that includes billions in construction investment and business tax relief. How quickly it is enacted and in what final form is a key industry focus.

Stupendous Setting Is Crummy Site
Vancouver convention center offers great views but is being built on a difficult harborside site that complicated design and construction.

The Top 25 Newsmakers of 2008
In recognition of those who serve the best interests of the construction industry, ENR editors have chosen 25 individuals for their innovations and achievements featured in ENR and ENR.com in 2008.

2008: Images of the Year in Construction
More than 800 photographs flowed into ENR's seventh annual "Images of the Year in Construction" photo contest, and our judges studied them all to select the top shots for this winners' gallery issue.