All Aboard the St. Louis MetroLink: Big Block, Hollow Core Retaining Wall System Protects Trains in Beautiful New Digs
The St. Louis MetroLink serves as a lifeline for commuters and visitors alike, with routes extending through downtown to the city’s international airport, near Washington University, and out to Scott Air Force Base near Shiloh, Ill. One of the busiest light-rail lines in the Midwest, MetroLink carries more than 53,000 passengers daily along its two lines with 38 metro stations. It’s a vital component of the St. Louis transportation infrastructure, so the Bi-State Development Agency so...
Letters from October 2020 Issue
Click Here to View the Letters from October, 2020 Issue
Construction Concerns: Ten Strategies for Planning a Successful Construction Project
JACQUELINE GREENBERG VOGT There has been a recent abundance of catastrophic construction failures. One of the more-famous failures occurred on March 15, 2018, when a pedestrian bridge collapsed at Florida International University, killing six people. On Oct. 22, 2019, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a report blaming design errors and poor oversight for the tragedy. Two other deadly accidents occurred in the last year involving construction cranes. These examples highlight a...
Code Update: Construction Stormwater Permitting and Regulations
LILY MONTESANO, CISEC Construction sites can generate substantial amounts of pollutants during a relatively short period of time. From exposed soils to concrete, trash and solvents, pollutants present at construction sites, if uncontrolled, can easily be conveyed offsite and into waterways, degrading water quality and damaging delicate ecosystems. To limit such degradation, the discharge of stormwater from construction sites is regulated at several levels: federally by the U.S. Environment...
Increasing Profits and Winning More Work: GMF Industries’ Journey from Traditional to Model-Based Estimates
Estimating is inarguably one of the most-important and challenging aspects of any project, especially in today’s market in which the pressure is high to deliver competitive estimates in tight timeframes. At the same time, errors during takeoff, the volatility of material prices and complexities of predicting labor requirements increase the potential for risk. Traditional estimating processes, which have evolved from hand-written documents and spreadsheets to on-screen digitizing takeoff, can b...
Engineered Solutions: Solving Common Bridge Design Problems with BIM
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Executive Corner: Four Action Items to Help Move Your Firm Forward
As we come to grips with the current economic landscape and ponder the post-pandemic future, it’s natural that negative feelings arise. We have the choice, however, to let these negative emotions debilitate or energize. As owners or leaders of our businesses, we can’t afford to let emotions get the best of us; and I believe, from personal experience, that the most-beneficial way to deal with these feelings is to take action. In this column I suggest a few actions you can take right now that will...
Engineered Solutions: Why You Should Drop the Tape Measure, Pencil and Digital Camera, and Start Scanning
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Engineered Solutions: SprayWall Demonstrates Structural Performance for CMP Rehabilitation
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Texas-Sized Joist Girder: A New Flat Roll Steel Mill in Texas Requires Engineers To Think Big
By John Barnett and Lloyd Smith The flat roll steel mill being constructed in Sinton, Texas, is the largest ever undertaken by steelmaker Steel Dynamics Inc. The $1.9 billion, 1,000-acre campus includes coating lines, cold and hot mills, and a melt shop that features a state-of-the-art electric-arc furnace with 24-foot-diameter exhaust ducts. Nearly 500 joist girders were specified by CSD Structural Engineers, the engineer of record (EOR) for the project. But the largest and heaviest of th...