Stern's Museum for African Art Set to Open in 2011
From an Upper East Side townhouse to a SoHo storefront to a Long Island City industrial space, New York City’s Museum for African Art has had three different homes since opening to the public in 1984.

$1.4-Billion South Texas Powerplant Both Praised and Damned
Amid political and environmental conflicts over Texas air quality, International Power announced a long-awaited powerplant expansion in South Texas.

2010 Hurricane Season Will Be "Active to Extremely Active," Scientists Predict
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is issuing an especially dire forecast for tropical storm activity in the Atlantic and Caribbean basins this hurricane season.

AIA Announces 18 Winners of 2010 Housing Awards
The American Institute of Architects has announced the 18 winners of the 2010 Housing Awards.

Affordable Housing Goes Green in the Bronx
Construction finally has begun on Via Verde, a sustainable, mixed-income housing project in the South Bronx designed by Grimshaw Architects and Dattner Architects.

An Experimental Early Work by Renzo Piano Threatened
A small, little-known building by a young Renzo Piano may soon fall victim to the wrecking ball, reports the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

April Construction Falls 9%
New construction starts in April dropped 9% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $397.6 billion, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Caltrans Realizes Big Savings in Construction Costs Due to Economic Downturn
The Great Recession has enabled the California Department of Transportation to save approximately $2.4 billion in construction costs for major projects since 2006 due to competition and some bids coming in up to 40% less than estimates, says Kris Kuhl, supervising transportation engineer and official chief for contract awards and services at Caltrans. Overall, Kuhl says that so far this fiscal year, project bids are averaging 33.8% under estimates.

Clinic Made of Freight Containers Heads to Haiti
As the efforts to rebuild Haiti after its devastating January 12 earthquake inch along, a medical clinic is headed to the island nation that can be set up quickly and opened straight away.

Communication Breakdown Lifts Price of Tacoma Ramp
The Washington State Dept. of Transportation describes the highway off-ramp improperly built on a new interchange in east Tacoma as "unfortunate and embarrassing."

Construction Industry Loses 22,000 Jobs in June
In a troubling sign for construction, the industry's unemployment rate showed no improvement in June after three straight months in which the rate declined, as the industry lost 22,000 jobs during the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

Corps Speeds Up Permitting For Gulf Coast Cleanup
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is initiating emergency permitting procedures to expedite cleanup in anticipation of oil coming ashore from the April 20 explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon rig about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Deal Sends Tishman Construction Into AECOM’s Arms
Global design giant AECOM Technology Corp., Los Angeles, and leading New York City-based building construction manager Tishman Construction Corp. are linking up to share needed capabilities in a changing construction market.

Debate Over Radioactive Waste in Texas Gets Hot
Vast amounts of low-level radioactive waste could be transported to a West Texas site if a commission made up mostly of Gov. Rick Perry appointees decides that Texas can accept such waste from 36 or more states.

Did BP Skip Approval for Platform Engineering Design?
It’s battling the oil gushing out of the well after the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

EPA Stiffens Coal-Ash Rules, But Proposal Allows Recycling
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on May 4 unveiled a draft rule to regulate coal ash, for the first time, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

EPA to Modify Regulations on Sewer Overflows
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson recently announced plans to mitigate environmental damage from sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs).

Engineer Rejects N.Y. State's 'Sling Theory' in Rigger Trial
Attorneys on July 12 began presenting their case in defense of William Rapetti, the Long Island, N.Y., crane rigger on trial for manslaughter.

Feds Seek Energy-Efficient Building Projects
The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE), seeking commercial projects for its energy-efficient commercial buildings program, has extended a call for potential projects until noon Eastern on May 14.

Finalists for 2010 Aga Khan Award Announced
The 19 finalists for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture are to be announced this afternoon during an event at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Finally, BP Advances Effort To Stop Leak
The capping stack was tested at Cameron Elastomer Technology’s facility in Berwick, Lou., where it has been assembled over the past two months. The stack was installed July 12 and will potentially stop oil from gushing into the gulf.

Green Design-Build Model Crafted for Buildings To Achieve Net-Zero Energy Use
While some are testing the waters of integrated project delivery, a group within the U.S. Dept. of Energy is tilling greener pastures by devising a new design-build project-delivery model for fast-tracked, net-zero-energy buildings, public and private.

Groundbreaking for First TIGER Project
Officials have broken ground on a South Dakota highway upgrade, the first of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's $1.5-billion Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program projects to get under way.

Gulf Oil Spill: Industry Waits for Cleanup Call
For the most part, contractors have not yet been engaged in cleanup or remediation efforts to combat the flow of oil encroaching on the Gulf Coast.

Integrated-Project-Delivery Boosters Ignore Many Flashing Red Lights
More than five years into a collaborative building-production movement called integrated project delivery, warnings abound: Don’t try this with strangers. New risks replace old ones. Beware of waivers of claims.

Interview with Alain de Botton, Architecture of Happiness Author
“Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design,” writes pop philosopher Alain de Botton in his heartfelt case for good building, 2006’s The Architecture of Happiness.

June Construction Slips 3%
New construction starts in June dropped 3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $385.7 billion, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

ENR Names the Top 400 Contractors
For the past year, construction firms have been searching for signs that the recession, which began over two years ago, was abating.

LBJ Freeway Financing Secured, Project to Start by Early 2011
Construction will start by spring 2011 on Dallas’ $2.7 billion LBJ Freeway (IH-635), one of the nation’s most congested highway systems.

Manslaughter Trial Begins For New York Rigger
The manslaughter trial began on June 22 for a New York City crane rigger accused of causing a 2008 crane collapse in midtown Manhattan that killed seven, including the entire rigging crew and a civilian.

Kinks in Supply Chain Produce Road Paint Shortage
Already scrambling for highway funding, state departments of transportation and road contractors now are stymied by a nationwide shortage of pavement-marking paint.

May Construction Grows 3%
At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $406.3 billion, new construction starts in May climbed 3% from the previous month, according to McGraw-Hill Construction, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

NYC Skyscraper Is First U.S. Commercial Tower to Earn LEED Platinum
Last week, two years after its first occupants moved in, the owners of the 55-story office tower at New York City’s One Bryant Park celebrated the building’s official opening with a reception in the lobby.

Nashville Begins to Assess Damage From Epic Flooding
Nashville and Middle Tennessee businesses and individuals are cleaning up and trying to return to thousand

Naval Station Great Lakes Completes $770-Million Construction Program
On July 14, the U.S. Navy celebrated the end of a 12-year construction program that built 22 new buildings for its recruit-training center at Naval Station Great Lakes just north of Chicago.

OSHA Recognizes NCCER Program To Certify Crane Operators
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has expanded the list of organizations whose crane-operator certification programs it formally recognizes, with an agreement with the National Center for Construction Education and Research, Gainesville, Fla.

Piano Conceives a Respectful Addition to Kahn's Kimbell Masterpiece
The Kimbell Art Museum expansion project is finally moving forward. On May 27, the institution unveiled Renzo Piano's final design for a $70 million building adjacent to Louis Kahn’s masterpiece.

Profile Rises for Small Projects as Construction Market Tightens
In a roaring development cycle, size is an edge. The construction company with a monster lineup of staff, resources, equipment, and experience nearly always has a jump snaring attractive projects – benefiting from economies of scale and fatter profit potential.

Seven Teams Picked For $4 Bil in Guam Milcon Work
The U.S. Navy has selected seven U.S. and Guam-based joint venture teams for an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth $4 billion for design-build work mostly on Guam over the next five years.

Special Report: Gulf Oil Spill
Keep up to date on the latest news regarding the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one of the worst environmental disasters in recent history.

Speedy Runway Paving Job Means $5 Million Bonus
A contractor has won a $5-million bonus for repaving 10,925 ft of runway in 120 days at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

U.S. Architecture Schools Announce Leadership Changes
As campuses prep for the fall semester, some top architecture schools are experiencing turnovers among their high-level staff.

Nuns Celebrate LEED Platinum Certification
The rolling hills of southern Wisconsin are now home to the two highest-rated LEED-Platinum buildings in the country.

U.S. DOT Seeks Changes in Disadvantaged-Business Rules
The U.S. Dept. of Transportation said on May 7 that it is proposing changes in its requirements for disadvantaged-business-enterprise firms (DBEs), which include small companies owned by women and minorities.

USGBC Says Feds Can Do More for Green Building
A report commissioned by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) argues that the Obama administration has the legal authority to use 30 existing federal programs worth over $72 billion to improve energy efficiency in U.S. building stock.

University Of Alabama Debuts Disaster Response Study Track
More than a year ago, Martha Bidez, a University of Alabama-Birmingham engineering professor, envisioned a new online master’s-degree track to focus explicitly on disaster prevention and systems safety.

Virginia’s I-495 Expansion Fast-Tracked Thanks to D-B, Infusion of Private Capital
Virginia’s 14-mile Interstate 495 expansion will take just four years, thanks to design-build and an infusion of private capital

White House Picks Architect to Head Preservation Board
On May 18, President Obama named Milford Wayne Donaldson, FAIA, to head the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP). He is the first architect to lead the agency since its creation in 1966.