Continuing education services provider GreenCE, Inc. cites the industry’s first comprehensive LEED v4 specification program for building product and material interests. The new U.S. Green Building Council rating system compels manufacturers and suppliers to submit product and material documentation as part of significant changes surrounding project credits.
Updated from a charter 2008 version and available in a free trial, Permeable Design Pro Software v2.0 for permeable interlocking concrete pavement (PICP) generates time-saving cross section drawings with base and subbase thicknesses, plus CAD drawings illustrating calculated hydrologic and structural requirements from user-designated rainfall events, runoff flows from contiguous surfaces, traffic loads, underdrains and soil subgrade characterizations.
A National Concrete Masonry Association-led team of producers and allied interests has finalized “Product Category Rules for Preparing an Environmental Product Declaration for Manufactured Concrete and Concrete Masonry Products.” The 21-page document presents baseline data for life cycle assessments detailed in Environmental Product Declarations. In turn, EPD support concrete product customers seeking certification or recognition under new or emerging green building rating systems.
Read MoreIn its latest round of national emission standards for hazardous air pollutants (NESHAP), Environmental Protection Agency proposes lower limits for mercury and non-mercury metals, plus hydrogen and chlorine gases from clay brick tunnel (continuous curing) kilns, coupled with target startup and shutdown periods. EPA also envisions work practice standards for more specialized periodic kilns, which are heated up to 2,000°F, then left to cool for several days. Tunnel kilns are typically fired by natural gas or sawdust; periodic kilns, coal.
Germany’s HeidelbergCement AG projects a first quarter closing on the $1.4 billion sale of Hanson Building Products operations in the U.S., Eastern Canada and United Kingdom to an affiliate of Lone Star Funds, a real estate investment-centered private equity firm with Dallas, New York and Frankfurt offices. A definitive agreement on the transaction, announced late last year, superseded a Hanson Building Products Ltd. public offering HeidelbergCement had outlined three months prior in a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission filing.
In an early-February U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, CRH Plc confirmed a binding commitment to acquire certain assets Switzerland’s Holcim Ltd. and Paris-based Lafarge SA had bundled for sale, thereby advancing a merger the producers hope to consummate by mid-year. The commitment centers on a transaction with an enterprise value of about $7.4 billion, and encompasses Holcim Canada Inc. plus a host of overseas cement, concrete and aggregate businesses.
Led by architectural and structural building product demand, U.S. precast concrete shipments are on track to rise from $8.9 billion in 2013 to $12.15 billion in 2018. Time-saving and quality control advantages will enable precast to capture more market share from cast-in-place and steel alternatives over the next four years, according to a new study from Cleveland market researcher Freedonia Group.
Read MoreAnalyzing federal government data on construction spending through November, Associated General Contractors of America confirms that overall 2014 project activity was set to modestly outpace 2013 totals. Figures released early last month coincide with association members’ push for action on a series of federal infrastructure programs, including funding for highway and transit upgrades, plus clean water initiatives.
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Construction- and engineering-geared management consultant FMI Corp. views increased infrastructure spending levels, continued housing activity growth and accelerated market consolidation as linchpins to a successful year. In its U.S. Markets Construction Overview 2015 report, the firm observes:
A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeks to prevent the National Labor Relations Board from implementing its final Representation-Case Procedures rule, which critics contend enables “ambush” elections by limiting the actions of employers responding to petitions of organizing-minded union locals. The rule significantly shortens the period between the time the union files a request for an election with the Board and the time the election is held.