Feds extend mixer truck driver hours exemption to concrete pump peers

Sources: Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA); CP staff

American Concrete Pumping Association members have secured a five-year exemption from the FMCSA requirement that short-haul drivers utilizing the records of duty status exception return to their normal work reporting location within 12 hours of clocking in. It enables all concrete pump operators, pumping companies, and truck drivers who operate concrete pumps to use the short-haul exception but return to their work-reporting location within 14 hours.

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Research sheds increasingly favorable light on design-build delivery

Sources: Design/Build Institute of America, Washington, D.C.

New Design/Build Institute of America-backed research finds that the design-build (DB) method delivers projects faster and with greater cost and schedule performance than Construction Management at Risk (CMR) and traditional Design, Bid, Build (DBB) alternatives. 

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EPA Cleaner Trucks Initiative: Cut NOx emissions, compliance red tape

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; CP staff

Through its just-announced Cleaner Trucks Initiative (CTI), EPA aims to further decrease nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from on-highway heavy-duty trucks and update a current engine exhaust standard in an early-2020 rulemaking. Set in 2001, the standard culminated in 2010 with a 0.2-gram brake-horsepower-hour NOx threshold for which engine manufacturers deployed selective catalytic reduction equipment and urea-based diesel exhaust fluid. 

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