Partnering for Success
Partnering as a method of doing business is spreading throughout the construction industry. With everyone fed up with the litigious nature of the industry, partnering represents an opportunity...
Investments in the Future
The projects that earned the 1994 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Awards of Merit were improvements to the nations transportation and environmental infrastructures. On the outskirts...
Chicago's Waterfalls
The 1994 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award goes to successful implementation of an elegantly simple idea: aerate sluggish water by letting it fall through man-made waterfalls....
Deicing Denver
Glycol-based deicing fluids are an essential part of winter operations at most airports. While these chemicals help ensure safe and timely aircraft operations, stormwater runoff contaminated...
Reclaiming Water With Wetlands
Drought is a fact of life in southern California. The limited supply of potable water could stall economic growth in the region and may be available only in restricted amounts for environmental...
Lessons Learned from the Design, Construction and Operation of Hydroelectric Facilities
Detecting Dam Failures
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission guidelines say that unattended hydroelectric dams must be monitored against failure around the clock. Design and installation of failure monitoring...
Computer-Integrated Construction
Computers have been used quite successfully as replacements for manual drafting, but to stop there seriously underuses the potential of computer aided design. By using the computer's...
Engineers and Managerial Challenges: A Transitional Perspective
Many engineers eventually become engineering managers, but the two roles are very different. The winning essay in the 1993 Daniel W. Mead Contest for Students offers some advice on the...
Restoring Freedom at the Capitol Dome
Early one morning last spring, a helicopter lifted that Statue of Freedom off its pedestal at the top of the U.S. Capitol Dome where it had stood undisturbed since shortly after the Civil...
Let's Go to the Videotape
Illustrating a design concept to educate and soften the resistance of community groups, environmentalists, government regulators and funding agencies is not a new idea. But the state of...
Survival Skills
Thinking of what will become of a firm once an owner leaves is an important topic what many owners of firms choose to ignore. As a result, many firms fail soon after ownership is transferred....
Reforming Japan's Public Works
Japan's public works bidding system has traditionally been dominated by money politics and industry collusion, which has served to keep out small Japanese companies as well...
Light at the End of the Chunnel
While the construction of the Channel tunnel was an engineering triumph, the project also had its share of cost overruns, inadequately prepared contract documents, and disputes over safety...
Sharing the Risk
In infrastructure privatization, arranging financing is as much an art as a science. At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., speakers discussed the opening of the public capital markets...
Engineers and Contractors Go Global
The telecommunication explosion and the rise of free-trade agreements are pushing consulting engineers and construction companies toward globalization, a trend seen in past decades among...
World Bank Update: In Deep Water
The World Bank has announced a dramatic shift in water policy that will nearly quadruple its spending in this area while it shifts the emphasis toward sustainable development. Instead...
Hong Kong: The US$10 Billion Dollar Question
Connections, deep pockets and perseverance were important in the awarding of contracts for Hong Kong's US$10.5 billion airport megaproject. The author notes many of the firms...
Poland Gets Moving
Poland's transportation network is a victim of two world wars, foreign domination, and neglected maintenance, but there are ambitious plans to rebuild the road and rail systems....
The Inflation Equation
The authors, a Brazilian and an American involved in a US$1 billion-plus project to build schools in the state of Rio de Janeiro, discuss how they managed despite monthly inflation of...
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