Category: Sustainability

March 9, 2022

Construction firms should partner with talent organizations, build inclusion and measure their progress in doing so, according to a Building Talent Foundation report issued to coincide with this year’s Women in Construction Week. Though the number of women in construction […]

March 7, 2022

Many economic issues caused or worsened by COVID-19 have abated, and will continue to fade, according to ABC’s Chief Economist Anirban Basu. “Evidence indicates that contractors have had a somewhat easier time filling available positions recently,” Basu said in a […]

March 4, 2022

Keeping your construction projects on schedule to meet your completion deadline is no easy task. Adverse weather, costly rework, unavailable resources, and subcontractor default are just a few of the things that can throw your timeline off course. Damages and […]

February 10, 2022

Is it time to grow your construction business? Are you looking to expand into new markets or territories? Growing your construction business, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or have been in the industry for years, requires careful planning. […]

January 31, 2022

The growing consumer demand for transparency—especially around sustainability and environmental practices—has implications for industries from apparel to healthcare products. Mars Inc. recently released a cocoa sourcing map to tackle deforestation and increase accountability, and the Fashion Transparency Index pushes apparel […]

January 31, 2022

The National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA) recently announced the asphalt pavement industry’s plan to join other industries and sectors around the world in curbing climate change. The association’s research and implementation roadmap—The Road Forward: A Vision for Net Zero Carbon […]

January 27, 2022

Salt Lake City adopted the nation’s first two consensus standards that address offsite construction last March, six months in advance of their publication by the International Code Council and the Modular Building Institute. Though ICC and MBI expect other jurisdictions […]

January 27, 2022

Construction pros and economists are taking a cautious but more hopeful view on the year ahead, even in the face of the highest rate of inflation since 1982, material price surges, continuing supply chain snarls and the COVID-19 omicron variant. […]

January 26, 2022

Industry sources expect renewed commitment from the federal and state governments on infrastructure, sparking optimism for the industry overall in 2022. But that optimism hinges on what Washington, D.C., can deliver. “I think there’s a lot of hope about the […]

January 6, 2022

For construction, a “Help Wanted” sign is familiar, as the demand for new workers has continued to outpace the supply. The industry has faced a compounding labor shortage for decades, and, in 2022, a perfect storm of swirling factors could […]

January 5, 2022

The U.S. is adding more than 2,250 MW of new renewable energy capacity each month, both utility scale and small-scale, as states reduce barriers and industry adds new technologies, according to new analyses of government data, with solar power particularly […]

December 27, 2021

The way money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is spent has the potential to impact greenhouse gas emissions, a new report has found. The Georgetown Climate Center, part of the Georgetown University Law Center, analyzed the infrastructure package […]

December 17, 2021

Commercial buildings, including office spaces are responsible for over 40% operating expenses borne by the business. It is estimated that office and residential buildings will contribute to 8% of the total global energy by the year 2050. It is also […]

December 13, 2021

While COVID-19 had an impact on backlogs across the construction industry, some public companies performed better than others. When a company failed to grow its backlog, it was often because it worked for a sector that was struggling. “The primary […]

December 8, 2021

The U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) is seeking public input on the draft five-year DOT Strategic Framework. U.S. DOT announced a request for comments this week to give the public an opportunity to help shape the department’s goals and […]

December 7, 2021

The benefits of mass timber construction are many. It’s beautiful. It’s sustainable. And it’s more quickly assembled. But there’s one major challenge: Sound control is always an issue when the mass timber is left exposed on the ceiling. Unwanted noise, […]

December 2, 2021

The National Institute of Standards and Technology started working toward its goal of a wind-load standard for tornado-resistant design after a tornado devastated Joplin, Mo., on May 22, 2011. A decade later, on Dec. 1, NIST reached its goal when […]

December 1, 2021

As building certification programs become more complex and demanding, building material suppliers have a choice. They can passively provide what’s asked for, or, like Kawneer, they can go further to make buildings more sustainable than ever. Kim Ferro—vice president of […]

November 29, 2021

The vertical bars in Graph 1 tell the story of housing starts in the United States. The monthly numbers of actual groundbreakings in units are seasonally adjusted at an annual rate (SAAR). ‘Annualized’ means they are projected from a single […]

November 29, 2021

Buildings are a big contributor to global warming, not just in their ongoing operations but in the materials used in their construction. Truss structures — those crisscross arrays of diagonal struts used throughout modern construction, in everything from antenna towers […]