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After the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, research was done to find ways to make sure buildings don't collapse like that.

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How will the collapse of the World Trade Center towers change tall buildings?

By BOM Editorial Staff Commercial Office Facilities Article Use Policy

In the weeks following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, media reports were filled with as many questions as they were facts. How did terrorists bypass airport security? How did terrorists gain access to airliner cockpits? How did foreigners learn to fly commercial airliners while living in the United States? The answers to most of the questions resulted in changes that were evident in longer airport security lines and the creation of a Department of Homeland Security.

But even as measures to thwart future attacks were put in place, one issue remained shrouded: Why did the towers collapse?

Now, after nearly four and a half years of intensive study, there is consensus about how the towers collapsed. But even today, there is no agreement on the lessons that can be drawn from that tragedy. The most ambitious attempt to define those lessons came in the final report on the collapse of WTC 1 and WTC 2 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). That report offered 30 recommendations on ways that tall buildings can be made safer.

Some recommendations are concerned with structural stability. Others discuss how emergency responders should react to situations involving high-rises. Others lay out improved procedures for evacuating buildings.

The most far reaching of the recommendations have provoked a debate among facility executives, code officials and others involved in building, designing and operating high-rise structures.

This series of articles explores some of the issues that will determine how high-rises are constructed in the years to come. The first article looks at the NIST effort as a starting point for the discussion on how high-rises can be made safer. The second article looks at the issues surrounding a single recommendation - full building evacuation - that would change how building occupants and emergency workers respond to emergencies in high-rises. A third article looks at an element of building operations that NIST was not charged with investigating: building security.

As industry bodies grapple with possible changes to codes and standards, they will have to decide what sorts of disasters high-rises should be designed to survive. Although NIST officials say the recommendations were not developed solely on the basis of the terrorist attacks, others question whether they go too far in protecting against other kinds of threats. Those critics say that the World Trade Center attacks are unique, and therefore should not be used to justify taking very costly steps to implement some of the NIST recommendations.

Some industry observers might also use the contents of a forthcoming NIST report investigating the collapse of a third World Trade Center tower - WTC 7. Because that tower was spared the impact of an airliner, many are viewing its collapse as more typical of the type of emergency high-rises around the nation might face. That tower was spared the impact of an airliner. Although the NIST report due out in spring will detail the cause of the tower's collapse, the agency has already reported fires resulting from the initial attack on the other two towers played a role.

Decisions of whether to require building codes that call for thicker fire-resistive coatings on high-rise structural members, use of redundant sprinkler systems, for example, will be influenced by whether such improvements are worth the expense. Many of the NIST recommendations will cost building owners money. In the case of some recommendations, perhaps a lot of money.

The codes and standards groups reviewing the recommendations face an arduous task. On one side, they'll hear from a group of people who say nothing in the NIST report is worth implementing. On the other side, they'll hear that everything in the report is not only valid, but that some specific recommendations don't go far enough toward protecting buildings.

Code groups will be charged with plotting the middle ground without knowing exactly what future terrorist acts or natural disasters will test the limits of high-rise design. Those groups are charged with finding the elusive answer to the question, "How safe is safe enough?"

forming codes and standards

Speaking In Code

National organizations consider fundamental changes to how
high-rises are designed, built and operated

By Mike Lobash, Executive Editor

The collapse of the World Trade Center towers triggered an investigation unprecedented in cost and scope. Nearly 200 investigators spent more than $40 million and three years to determine why the towers collapsed and to issue recommendations on how to make high-rises safer.

Now, with 43 reports constituting more than 10,000 pages filed, the question has changed. No longer is the question, "Can high-rises be safer?" Rather, it is, "How safe should high-rises be?"

"The bottom line is no one can tell us how safe is safe," says Gerald Jones, co-chairman of a National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) committee reviewing recommendations in the federal government's final report on the collapse of two of the three World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the attacks. "Everything is a compromise between safety and economics."

Code organizations will likely spend the next several years discussing 30 recommendations contained in a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report aimed at improving the safety of buildings taller than 120 feet. At issue in the discussion will be whether the recommendations - taken individually - should be made part of the model building codes and national standards that govern how buildings are designed and constructed.

The recommendations are broken into eight subject areas. They are:

Increased structural integrity.

Enhanced fire resistance of structures.

New methods for fire resistant design of structures.

Improved active fire protection.

Improved building evacuation.

Improved emergency response.

Improved procedures and practices.

Continuing education and training.

As the recommendations are reviewed, some are likely to become model building codes with little debate. And a few recommendations, particularly those regarding education and training of emergency responders and of architects and engineers, require little or no action by code and standards organizations. One recommendation suggesting that academic, professional short courses and Web-based training materials be offered in the use of computational fire dynamics and thermodynamics, for example, affects professional associations and doesn't require code changes.

Fundamental Shift

Other recommendations will prove to be more controversial, with the amount of debate surrounding the adoption of each being proportionate to the cost involved with implementing it. Perhaps none of the recommendations are more controversial than the ones that aim to change the way high-rises are evacuated. One recommendation calls for full building evacuations during building-specific and large-scale emergencies, such as widespread power outages, fires, explosions, terrorist attacks and unforeseen natural disasters. Another would require high-rises to contain more remote exits and two sets of structurally hardened elevators. During emergencies, one set of elevators would be used by occupants and the second set by emergency personnel. The exact number of exits and elevators required would depend upon building size and the number of occupants.

Those recommendations constitute a sea change in the approach to the way high-rises are designed to accommodate evacuations. By and large, high-rises are designed to handle the evacuation of a single floor. If necessary, multiple floors are evacuated one at a time in what's known as a staged evacuation.

That was the design approach at the World Trade Center towers, says Shyam Sunder, deputy director of NIST's Fire Research Laboratory and lead investigator on the collapse of the towers. Stairwells were designed to be wide enough and positioned so that 390 occupants - the maximum on any one floor - could be evacuated at one time.

On Sept. 11, 99 percent of the people located below the floors of impact were able to escape the World Trade Center towers before they collapsed, even though the building wasn't designed to accommodate full building evacuations, according to the final NIST report on the collapse of the towers. The story would have been different if the buildings were fully occupied.

Beyond Terrorism

Even so, Sunder says the recommendations in the NIST report were not based on the ability of a high-rise to withstand the impact of an airliner or to evacuate occupants after such a terrorist attack. Rather, they were developed to aid the evacuation of buildings for any emergency situation, including earthquakes, widespread power outages, tornadoes and other events.

"The need to evacuate a high-rise might need to happen even without a terrorist attack," Sunder says. "If you look at the nominal life of a building as 100 years, there are likely emergencies that require full evacuation of buildings."

If the recommendations will make high-rises safer in case of events other than terrorist attacks, that would help justify their being adopted in model codes. Some perceive the NIST report as being narrowly focused on preventing the catastrophic results of Sept. 11.

Samir Mokashi of the engineering firm IDC says immediately following the terrorist attacks, everybody thought that hardening buildings to withstand the impact of airliners was a potential design goal. But now that the event hasn't been repeated in more than four years, support for that idea has waned.

"Is a plane going into a building something we need to protect against?" he asks.

Phil DiNenno, one of eight members of the National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee, which advised NIST in its investigation, says of the 30 recommendations issued by NIST, one requiring additional remote exits might have changed the outcome of the attacks on Sept. 11. The addition of those exits - stairwells on the corners and on the perimeter of the building - might have allowed more occupants located above the floor of impact to evacuate.

"But that is singularly an expensive change," says DiNenno, who is also president of Hughes Associates, a fire protection engineering firm.

The expense comes not only in the design and construction of additional exits, but in the loss of rentable real estate, most notably, the amount of premier daylit space landlords could lease to tenants along a building's perimeter.

As the recommendations work their way through the code adoption process, expect debate among code-making bodies, building owners - who will ultimately fund the cost of the new codes through increased high-rise design and construction expenses - and building component and material manufacturers whose businesses stand to benefit or suffer from the adoption of certain recommendations as codes.

Seeking Help

NIST has already contracted with NIBS to work on turning the recommendations in the final WTC report into code language that can be adopted by model code groups, including the International Code Council and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Jones' committee, aptly called the Committee for Translating the NIST WTC Investigation into Model Building Codes, is moving quickly to get at least some changes incorporated into the 2007 supplement to the International Building Code

. The deadline for submitting code change proposals for consideration in the next code cycle is March 24, with final action scheduled for May 2007.

"We're going to do our best to get at least some of the recommendations adopted in the current code process," Jones says.

Some of the measures recommended by NIST began working their way into codes and standards even before the agency completed its investigation. For example, NFPA included a provision in its 2003 edition to require wider stairwells for buildings with more than 2,000 occupants. In the 2006 code cycle, there were no dramatic code changes based on the NIST report, says Gary Keith, vice president of building and life safety for NFPA.

For the 2009 code cycle, which will be available for public comment in 2007, Keith says the association's High-Rise Safety Advisory Committee will review the recommendations and monitor proposals for code changes.

"The questions will be whether anyone looking at the report sees recommendations that are worthy of code changes," he says.

Shortly after NIST's final report was issued, BOMA International, representing building owners and managers, issued a statement calling for further study, including a risk-benefit analysis, into some of the recommendations. One comment took issue with a NIST recommendation calling for the development of national standards and codes to prevent the progressive collapse of buildings.

"The big issue here would be to what extent it would be required to prevent progressive collapse?" wrote BOMA's David Johnston, a member of the organization's advocacy staff, in submitting written comments to NIST. "How many column failures (specific number, a percentage of a floor, etc...) would need to be able to be withstood? 'Progressive collapse should be prevented' is a pretty vague goal without a better explanation of what factors must be considered."

Another recommendation that has drawn early criticism from BOMA is one requiring the fire resistance performance of structures. NIST recommends that uncontrolled building fires result in burnout without a structure suffering either partial or total collapse.

"The effort is a bit unrealistic and unwarranted," BOMA wrote. "NIST assumes the complete loss of the sprinkler system, and no intervention by fire departments."

As the process of reviewing the recommendations moves forward, code-making bodies will likely hear those types of comments as well. While the arguments might not be geared at questioning whether a certain code will make buildings safer, they will be pointing out that the cost of implementing a code might not be worth the expense.

"The real question as the process moves forward is how much will a change cost," DiNenno says. "That's the real world where code is written."

elements of future high-risesclick on image for a
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new evacuation procedures proposed

Evacuation 911

Full building evacuations and use of elevators during emergencies are among sweeping proposals for egress procedures

By Brandon Lorenz, Senior Editor

After more than four years, it's possible to forget not only how tragic the events of Sept. 11, 2001, actually were, but also how much more tragic they could have been. Had the buildings been fully occupied, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has estimated that it would have taken more than three hours to fully evacuate the buildings. In the process, 14,000 people - 28 percent of the occupants - would have died because of insufficient stairwell capacity.

Those stark numbers prompted NIST to call for changes in high-rise building design to improve evacuation time in an emergency. If the recommendations are adopted, facility executives could one day oversee high-rise buildings that have timely full building evacuation plans for non-fire emergencies. The buildings would have hardened elevators and stairwells. Stairwells would be wider and spaced farther apart, and upgraded elevators would be used for evacuation and for emergency responders.

But the NIST recommendations are both controversial and broadly defined, which means industry code bodies will have a significant role to play shaping the recommendations into code - if they are adopted at all.

New Approach to Evacuation

High-rises have been built assuming that the entire building wouldn't need to be evacuated at once. Instead, during a fire on one floor, occupants evacuate to adjacent floors until it is safe to return.

What does timely full building evacuation entail? NIST's recommendation says that a building's size, population, function and iconic status should be taken into account in designing an egress system. "The key question is how much time should be allowed or specified for total safe evacuation," says Milosh Puchovsky, principal fire protection engineer for the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

There is little agreement about how much time should be allowed for a full building evacuation because the topic is relatively new, says Ron Klemencic, chairman of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. "Clearly, if you put in 10 stairwells, you could get people out of the building much faster," he says. "But how fast is fast enough?"

A full building evacuation during a prolonged power outage, for example, would not necessarily need to be rapid. An explosion, however, might require faster evacuation.

Even if there is disagreement regarding how fast a full building evacuation should be, elevators, stairwells and evacuation plans will all need major revisions to make full evacuation practical.

Structural Changes Required

The final NIST report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers indicated that the overall evacuation rate in WTC 2 was 108 survivors per minute, about 50 percent faster than WTC 1 at 73 survivors per minute. That's because occupants in WTC 2 used the elevators in the 16 minutes before the second tower was struck.

For more than 30 years, building occupants have been told not to use an elevator during a fire. With new recommendations from NIST for full building evacuation, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is examining whether elevators could safely be used to evacuate high-rises during an emergency.

Designing elevators that could safely be used during a fire or other emergency is a serious challenge, says Edward Donoghue, administrator for the National Elevator Industry Inc. (NEII) and a safety and codes consultant. For example, one hazard that needs to be overcome is keeping water used during firefighting out of the hoistway, Donoghue says. ASME is conducting separate hazard analyses to see whether elevators can safely be used by occupants for evacuation and whether they can also be used for emergency responders during a fire or other emergency. The NIST report also recommends emergency responders have access to a dedicated elevator.

"It's a very extensive analysis," Donoghue says. "It's probably going to take another couple of years to complete."

Upsides and Downsides

While elevators factor into the timely evacuation of high-rise buildings, NIST has not ignored stairwells. NIST recommends designing stairwells wide enough to accommodate both descending occupants and ascending emergency responders. That means wider stairwells. "For certain size buildings, provisions have already been implemented in NFPA 101 and NFPA 5000 that require additional stair width to accommodate the counterflow of emergency responders," says Puchovsky. NFPA 101 is a life safety code. NFPA 5000 is a model building code.

The 28-story Cira Centre in Philadelphia, for example, has stairwells that are 50 inches wide, as opposed to the 44 inches required by code. Construction on the building began in 2003, and the stairwells were voluntarily widened, says Stephen Rush, leasing agent for Brandywine Realty Trust.

NIST has also recommended that stairwells be marked with consistent signage, be located farther apart without increasing average travel distance and maintain their integrity under foreseeable building-specific or large-scale emergencies. Each World Trade Center tower had three emergency stairwells, but only one stairwell in WTC 2 remained passable after the towers were struck, according to NIST. Increasing stairwell distance means more stairwells could move from the building core to the perimeter.

However, maximizing the distance between stairwells could slow evacuation as it takes longer for occupants to reach a stairwell, Klemencic says.

New York City's World Trade Center Building Code Task Force issued a variety of recommendations in 2003 that are now required by the city's Local Law 26. Three requirements regarding stairwells apply to buildings 75 feet and higher and are retroactive. Photoluminescent markings are required in all exit doors and exit stairs. Additional signage is required when the exit path is not clear and such signs must have battery or generator power.

Disaster Planning

Disaster planning in a post-9/11 world means evacuation plans should move beyond fires. Power outages, earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, explosions and terrorist attacks should all be taken into account when evacuation plans are formulated, according to NIST.

"When we are talking about full building evacuation, we are talking about evacuation for potentially any type of situation," says Jim Carrigan, supervising engineer for fire and life safety for the Syska Hennessy Group. Prior to 9/11, for example, facility executives really didn't talk about hazardous material issues when formulating evacuation plans.

Unlike NIST's recommendation for full building evacuation, the recommendation for better evacuation planning appears to be gaining traction.

In one case, a tenant occupying multiple floors in a high-rise paid to have its evacuation plan reviewed and upgraded after the developer declined, says Carrigan. The original plan only contained provisions for a fire emergency, while the revised evacuation plan was broadened to take other potential emergencies into account. It was later adopted by all 40 building tenants, Carrigan says.

In New York City, Local Law 26 requires that emergency evacuation plans include non-fire-related events. "The idea was that while the codes have had sufficient fire protection and fire safety plans, the conditions of other emergencies that are not directly related to a fire have not been considered," says Ronny Livian, chairman of the World Trade Center Building Code Task Force.

In earthquake-prone Seattle, a full building evacuation plan doesn't necessarily make sense, says Ben Barron, vice president of development for Clise Properties, which manages 1700 Seventh Avenue, a 23-story office building. "We feel that the tenants are safer in our building than out on the street, at least until we analyze what is going on."

Barron says that a man threatened to blow himself up while standing in the lobby of a nearby courthouse. Rather than completely evacuate the 1700 Building, tenants were moved away from the side of the building nearest the courthouse. The reason? Tenants who left the building likely would have gathered in a courtyard near the courthouse, placing them in danger.

Beyond the Exits

Facility executives can't forget about occupants once they leave a building. Proper planning means making sure occupants remain safe once they are evacuated, says Livian.

"In a larger building, you may have an occupant load of 10,000 or 20,000," he says. "Where do you put them and still be safe? You can't just leave them out in the street."

To be successful, full building evacuation plans must be tailored for specific buildings and the types of occupants in the buildings, says Carrigan. In addition, the plans require training so that facility executives know when it is appropriate to call for a full evacuation and when to call for a phased evacuation. What's more, facility executives should not call for a full-building evacuation by paging the entire building and asking occupants to leave, as was the case on 9/11, Carrigan says.

"The purpose of a full building evacuation is to do a staged evacuation in a controlled manner," he says. "With the current buildings, if the stairwells haven't been widened, you have to do a staged evacuation or there will be a bottleneck."

Counting Occupants

Comprehensive disaster planning also means accounting for mobility-impaired occupants. According to NIST, 6 percent of the occupants in the World Trade Center were mobility-impaired. In a traditional phased evacuation, mobility-impaired occupants can be moved away from a fire or other emergency with relatively little difficulty. A full building evacuation is more troublesome. Knowing which occupants are impaired and where they are located is key. Ideally, an evacuation plan also takes into account visitors and occupants who are temporarily impaired because of illness. In the case of non-fire emergencies, Carrigan recommends using elevators to evacuate mobility-impaired occupants.

In Seattle, Clise Properties has identified mobility-impaired tenants. In case of an emergency, a "buddy system" has been arranged to make sure the mobility-impaired tenants can get the assistance needed to evacuate, if necessary. The company has ordered an evacuation chair that will allow occupants to be evacuated down a stairwell, Barron says.

Even if the NIST recommendations governing full building evacuation and elevators are approved by code bodies, implementation will likely take years. While not all cities require high-rises to develop separate emergency action plans for fire and non-fire events, a proper plan that considers fire and non-fire-related emergencies can ensure that a building disaster doesn't become a greater tragedy.

"In a post-9/11 world, everybody needs to have an emergency evacuation plan for fire and non-fire events," says Carrigan. "We have different threats today."

security guidelines to keep high-rises safe

De Facto Standards

Although codes don't govern building security systems,
these high-rise systems have been upgraded across the board

By Greg Zimmerman, Managing Editor

Designing and maintaining high-rise security following 9/11 represents a multifaceted challenge to building owners. Absent a report like the one the National Institute of Standards and Technology produced with its list of recommendations for fire safety, evacuation procedures and technologies, high-rise building owners are largely on their own to determine how best to protect people and property at their buildings.

The need for particular high-rise security measures depends on a building's location, proximity to other types of buildings, tenants, purpose and visibility, among other things. However, access control is one area of security that building owners have ramped up in high-rises nearly across the board since 9/11.

In the past, standard operating procedure had been to control access in many high-rises only after business hours, says Carlos Villarreal, vice president, national security and life safety for Trizek. Many high-rises had a single card reader in the elevator vestibule that wasn't turned on until the close of the business day. While some access control was usually in place at the building's main entrance, once a visitor or occupant made it through the first point, the person was free to wander.

"Traditional high-rise buildings were much like schools before Columbine," says Sean Ahrens, senior security consultant at Schirmer Engineering and a member of the ASIS commercial real estate council. "They were open and people could walk around at will."

Controlling Entry

Since 9/11, that has changed. Access is controlled 24/7 at elevators, including freight and service elevators. Visitors and occupants may need specific permissions tied to their credentials to gain access to certain floors. Also, gone are the days of flashing a badge to a security guard at a building's main entrance.

"Optical turnstiles are being used more in large buildings," says Geoff Craighead, vice president of high-rise and real estate services at Securitas and chair of ASIS commercial real estate council. "It's all very well to have card readers at elevators, but if you can't control piggy-backing at the main access points, then you're not controlling access at all."

Visitor management policies have also become more sophisticated. Gone is the simple sign-in sheet. In its place are automated systems that allow occupants to pre-register visitors, who are then given a badge, which must be returned when they leave. In many federal high-rises, or other buildings with many visitors, a dedicated visitor management station exists so as not to slow the entry of regular building occupants.

And it's not just visitor management that's getting its own lobby space. In general, experts say high-rise building lobbies are becoming more segmented and compartmentalized.

"It's important to separate people that haven't been screened yet," says Lauris Freidenfelds, vice president at Sako & Associates. "Lobbies are getting bigger, too. The lobby is the area where there is most likely to be an incident. If there is an incident, it's essential that the lobby is designed so the incident has the least impact on the rest of the building."

Security by Design

To make controlling access easier, many high-rise buildings, including newly designed ones, are cutting back on the number of places people are able to get in and out. In addition, many high-rises have designated a single entry for mail, packages and large deliveries. New high-rises are being designed so that the mailroom is situated at the exterior of the building and can be cordoned off at a moment's notice in case of a threat, says Ahrens.

Policies that govern vehicle access are receiving new scrutiny as well. It's become common to design new structures with lower deck parking - structures with smaller floor to ceiling distances - near the building so that only small vehicles can fit. Higher deck parking for large vehicles that could potentially carry large amounts of explosives is farther away from the building. Also, experts suggest locating occupant parking near the building, with visitor or public parking located farther away. If the high-rise is serviced by underground parking, Ahrens warns that building owners should make sure measures are taken so that the building above is properly protected. "There needs to be increased vehicle screening," he says. "That means putting mirrors under the cars as they come in and opening trunks."

Other exterior measures intended to mitigate the effects of bombs include bollards, concrete barriers and even sculptures or artwork. Tiered landscaping or ponds, when the site allows, can also make approaching the building by vehicle more difficult.

However, if the high-rise's site limits stand-off distances or physical measures, window film and blast-resistant glass can help reduce the impact of a bomb. New high-rises are sometimes being designed with fewer windows near grade. For instance, the new Freedom Tower, which will be built on the World Trade Center site, is being designed with no windows on the first 20 floors of the building, says Craighead.

Preventing CBR

Concerns about a possible chemical, biological or radiological (CBR) attack have led many building owners to monitor access to a once-ignored part of the building: grade-level exterior and interior air intakes. The danger is that a terrorist could dump into the air intakes an agent that is circulating through the building's HVAC system within minutes. To combat that threat, some high-rise building owners are installing CCTV cameras with intelligent video algorithms on the air intakes. If a video frame is broken by motion, a security staff member is alerted automatically and can determine whether there is danger and, if so, begin evacuation procedures. This strategy probably won't prevent an attack, but it can help speed the response and evacuation.

However, if the vulnerability is deemed severe enough, Craighead says some high-rise building owners have undertaken the significant cost of relocating the air intakes out of pedestrian reach.

Also, many new high-rise buildings are being designed so that exterior air intakes are at least 75 feet above ground.

In the case of an outside or nearby CBR attack, many building owners have instituted defend-in-place procedures, which were nearly nonexistent before 9/11. "Traditionally, tenants had been trained to evacuate," says Villarreal. "But now we're seeing seminars on how to shelter in place, and how to completely seal off a building so no one can get in or out."

Freidenfelds says that practicing a procedure is just as important as instituting a procedure in the first place. "Make sure that response plans are exercised," he says. "We don't want to be dusting off these plans when there is an emergency."

Guidelines for Securing Facilities

Several documents produced since 9/11 aim to provide direction to building owners on improving security. While these documents are all applicable to high-rise buildings, and security personnel responsible for those structures, none was developed specifically for tall buildings. They apply to a range of occupancies.

The newest documents that can help building owners cope with these challenges were developed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The project to develop the documents began in 1994 on a request from the insurance industry. After several starts and stops, constant goading by the insurance industry, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, NFPA redoubled its efforts and released the documents in July 2005.

"NFPA was already going down the path to security guidelines," says Rich Bielen, chief systems and applications engineer at NFPA. "But 9/11 pushed everything."

NFPA 730, Guide for Premises Security, covers vulnerability assessments, designing a security plan and suggested security measures for different occupancies. NFPA 731, Installation of Premises Security Equipment, covers the application and installation of physical security technologies. Basically, NFPA 730 is the "what"; NFPA 731 is the "how."

Bielen says 730 is considered a guide while 731 is considered a standard, which is more stringent. Originally, 730 was going to be a standard as well.

"Many of the users on the committee were not comfortable with the mandatory requirements format, so the committee debated whether to make it a standard, a recommended practice or a guide," says Bielen. "The guide format was the most agreeable format as a mix of recommendations and information." Bielen says the ultimate goal is for both 730 and 731 to become regulation.

Instead of Code

Currently, no regulations or codes exist that govern how building security should be planned and executed. That's because creating security codes would be like creating separate fire codes for each building, says William Sako, executive vice president of RJA Group and chairman of the board for Sako & Associates. A central challenge for a high-rise building owner is determining what risks or threats exist for a specific property. Identifying where dollars should be spent to address the most urgent vulnerabilities and selecting systems that best mitigate threats are the other critical challenges.

ASIS has also developed several guidelines, which are oft-consulted tools for building owners to help assure that their security plans are on par with those of similar facilities in similar security situations.

"We create guidelines that are broad enough so that they're applicable to Fortune 500 companies, as well as companies with 50 employees," says Regis Becker, chairman of ASIS's guidelines commission and global director of security and compliance at PPG Industries. "Security is more an art than a science."

Topics such as business continuity, risk assessment, responsibilities and accountabilities of a chief security officer, private security officer selection and training, and workplace violence prevention and response are covered.

A guideline on selecting physical security elements, which Becker says will be most applicable to high-rise buildings, is under development.

As is the case with the NFPA and its documents, ASIS is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-accredited national standards developer, and all its documents were developed according to ANSI protocol.

-Greg Zimmerman, managing editor

Comments

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Safer High-Rises - Facilities Management Commercial Office Facilities Feature

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How will the collapse of the World Trade Center towers change tall buildings? By BOM Editorial Staff Commercial Office Facilities Article Use Policy In the weeks following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, media reports were filled with as many questions as they were facts. How did terrorists bypass airport security?

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An electrician who was working on the 53rd floor of a high rise fell and died. The proper fall protection was in place according to OSHA.

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Technology keeps getting more and more advanced when it comes to construction. Since workers are becoming less skilled there is a need for robots. These robots can be used to build objects out of wood and other materials.

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Article on 'Robotics in High Rise Construction' by Chaitanya Raj Goyal

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Article on 'Robotics in High Rise Construction' by Chaitanya Raj Goyal - Read online for free.

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High rises have to have strong foundations due to outside forces such as wind and earthquakes.

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Construction accidents have been on the rise in New York City. Recently an air conditioner fell from a crane 30 stories.

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"The more jobs we have, it either means fewer workers doing more work, or more new workers who may not have as much experience or training," said Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, a trade group representing contractors, developers and designers.

There was $36 billion in construction spending last year, according to Mr. Anderson's group, a record that trumped the $32 billion spent in 2008. The number of new building permits issued by the city exceeded 98,000 in 2014, up from 74,000 in 2010.

Still, the rise in accidents and deaths is worrisome as Mayor Bill de Blasio calls for more construction to achieve his affordable housing and economic development goals.

In the mayor's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the Buildings Department is one of the few city agencies seeing increased spending, to $148 million. That is 29 percent more than its current budget, by far the largest increase of any department.

"The department's highest priority is safe development," a spokesman, Alexander Schnell, said in a statement.

Officials were still trying to determine the cause of the accident on Sunday, which occurred around 10:30 a.m. The falling unit ripped holes in the 15th, ninth and eighth floors of 261 Madison Avenue.

Across the avenue, plywood had been placed on a few windows at 260 Madison Avenue, which belongs to the same landlord, the Sapir Organization.

Officer workers and tourists on Monday stopped at the metal fencing lining the sidewalks and juggled smartphones and umbrellas as they tried to take photos in the rain of the crushed and snarled steel above.

Construction unions and contractors that use union labor contend that the rise of cheaper, nonunion labor, an increasingly common practice in one of the most expensive real estate markets, is to blame for the rise in accidents.

"This is the second-most-dangerous job in America after mining, so you need guys who know what they are doing," said Louis J. Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers' Association, which represents unionized construction companies that have been trying to fend off nonunionized competitors. "We have the best training and the best safety standards, period."

As evidence, he pointed to a 2012 report by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration showing six of the eight fatalities in New York City that year were on nonunion jobs.

Some of the recent serious accidents seem surprisingly mundane, underscoring the dangers inherent in construction work.

One worker died in December 2014 on a Lower East Side project after falling half a story from a ladder, while another died that month falling from scaffolding during an interior renovation in Times Square.

Another worker tumbled eight stories through a hole in scaffolding in April 2014 while repointing bricks on a West 55th Street hotel and died.

Other accidents can be unexpected, even freakish, as in March of this year, when a construction fence, meant to protect pedestrians from falling objects, came loose in the wind at the former St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village, which is being redeveloped as condominiums. It struck a woman and killed her.

And a large section of flooring collapsed during interior demolition of an apartment building in Brooklyn last year, injuring nine workers, though all survived.

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Fatal Construction Accidents Are Rising in New York

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"The more jobs we have, it either means fewer workers doing more work, or more new workers who may not have as much experience or training," said Richard Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, a trade group representing contractors, developers and designers.

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Coconuts are being studied to find ways to make earth quake proof buildings. Since coconuts fall from very high their outer shell has to be strong enough not to break.

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Coconuts are renowned for their hard shells, which are vital to ensure their seeds successfully germinate. But the specialised structure of coconut walls could help to design buildings that can withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters.

Coconut palms can grow 30 m high, meaning that when the ripe fruits fall to the ground their walls have to withstand the impact to stop them from splitting open. To protect the internal seed, the coconut has a complex structure of three layers: the outer brown, leathery exocarp, a fibrous mesocarp and a tough inner endocarp surrounding the pulp which contains the developing seedling. As part of a larger project on "Biological Design and Integrative Structures," researchers at the Plant Biomechanics Group of the University of Freiburg have been working with civil engineers and material scientists to investigate how this specialised structure could be applied in architecture.

The researchers used compression machines and an impact pendulum to investigate how coconuts disperse energy. "By analysing the fracture behaviour of the samples and combining this with knowledge about the shell's anatomy gained from microscopy and computed tomography, we aimed to identify mechanically relevant structures for energy absorption" says plant biomechanist Stefanie Schmier.

Their investigations found that within the endocarp layer -- which consists mainly of highly lignified stone cells- the vessels that make up the vascular system have a distinct, ladder-like design, which is thought to help withstand bending forces. Each cell is surrounded by several lignified rings, joined together by parallel bridges. "The endocarp seems to dissipate energy via crack deflection" says Stefanie. "This means that any newly developed cracks created by the impact don't run directly through the hard shell." It is thought that the angle of the vascular bundles helps to "divert" the trajectory of the cracks. The longer a crack has to travel within the endocarp, the more likely it is that it will stop before it reaches the other side.

The distinct angle of the vascular bundles in the endocarp could be applied to the arrangement of textile fibres within functionally graded concrete, to enable crack deflection. "This combination of lightweight structuring with high energy dissipation capacity is of increasing interest to protect buildings against earthquakes, rock fall and other natural or humanmade hazards" says Stefanie.

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seeds; botany; virology; extreme survival; construction; engineering and construction; civil engineering; energy and resources

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Coconuts could inspire new designs for earthquake-proof buildings

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Coconuts are renowned for their hard shells, which are vital to ensure their seeds successfully germinate. But the specialised structure of coconut walls could help to design buildings that can withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters.

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A company has created a concrete that is flexible. They plan on using it to replace old concrete slabs with light new ones. The new slabs can be made off site and are much lighter than normal concrete.

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from research organizations
Credit: Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University
Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) scientists from the NTU-JTC Industrial Infrastructure Innovation Centre (I³C) have invented a new type of concrete called ConFlexPave that is bendable yet stronger and longer lasting than regular concrete which is heavy, brittle and breaks under tension.

This innovation allows the creation of slim precast pavement slabs for quick installation, thus halving the time needed for road works and new pavements. It is also more sustainable, requiring less maintenance.

NTU Professor Chu Jian, Interim Co-Director of the NTU-JTC I³C, said, "We developed a new type of concrete that can greatly reduce the thickness and weight of precast pavement slabs, hence enabling speedy plug-and-play installation, where new concrete slabs prepared off-site can easily replace worn out ones."

Mr Koh Chwee, Director, Technical Services Division of JTC and Co-Director of the NTU-JTC I3C, said that the invention of this game-changing technology will not only enable the construction industry to reduce labour intensive on-site work, enhance workers' safety and reduce construction time, it also benefits road users by cutting down the inconvenience caused by road resurfacing and construction works.

"Through collaborations with universities such as NTU in research and development of disruptive technologies, JTC hopes to pioneer cutting-edge industrial infrastructure solutions to address challenges faced by Singapore and its companies such as manpower and resource constraints. We will continue to open up more of our buildings and estates to test-bed and if successful, implement such new solutions," Mr Koh added.
How bendable concrete works
Typical concrete comprises cement, water, gravel and sand. While this mixture makes concrete hard and strong, it does not promote flexibility. Thus concrete is brittle and prone to cracks if too much weight is applied.

ConFlexPave is specifically engineered to have certain types of hard materials mixed with polymer microfibres. The inclusion of these special synthetic fibres, besides allowing the concrete to flex and bend under tension, also enhances skid resistance.

The key breakthrough was understanding how the components of the materials interact with one another mechanically on a microscopic level, said Asst Prof Yang En-Hua from NTU's School of Civil and Environmental Engineering who leads this research at the NTU-JTC I³C.

"With detailed understanding, we can then deliberately select ingredients and engineer the tailoring of components, so our final material can fulfill specific requirements needed for road and pavement applications," explained Prof Yang.

"The hard materials give a non-slip surface texture while the microfibres which are thinner than the width of a human hair, distribute the load across the whole slab, resulting in a concrete that is tough as metal and at least twice as strong as conventional concrete under bending," he added.

ConFlexPave has been successfully tested as tablet-sized slabs at NTU laboratories. It will be scaled up for further testing over the next three years in partnership with JTC -- at suitable locations within JTC's industrial estates and in NTU where there will be human and vehicular traffic.

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Below are relevant articles that may interest you. ScienceDaily shares links and proceeds with scholarly publications in the TrendMD network.

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engineering and construction; construction; civil engineering; materials science; engineering; chemistry; nature of water; transportation science

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Researchers test-bed new bendable concrete that is stronger and more durable

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A new concrete has been developed to reduce the time needed for road works by more than half, report scientists. This innovation allows the creation of slim precast pavement slabs for quick installation, thus halving the time needed for road works and new pavements. It is also more sustainable, requiring less maintenance.

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This article is about a bridge that had collapsed a few years ago and how much of a cost it still is. There are many other types of bridges with the same design as the one that collapsed. They need to do more research into these bridges so they don't keep collapsing.

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When an important bridge collapsed on Interstate 5 near Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2013, questions were raised about how such a catastrophic failure could occur. A new analysis by a team of civil engineering faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign outlines the many factors that led to the collapse, as well as steps that transportation departments can take to prevent such accidents on other bridges of similar design.

The analysis by Illinois civil engineering professors Tim Stark, Ray Benekohal, Larry Fahnestock and Jim LaFave was published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities.

"The bridge repair costs exceeded $15 million, and that doesn't account for the economic losses that the area felt because they and visitors no longer had access to the interstate," Stark said. "Even though this accident occurred three years ago, it's still very important because many bridges have this same design, not only in Washington but in other states."

The collapse on May 23, 2013, was precipitated when an oversized trailer clipped the top of the second cross-frame on the bridge. The analysis found several inciting factors, including regulatory ones -- the truck had a permit to cross the bridge; structural ones -- a minor impact caused a chain reaction that collapsed the bridge; and human error -- miscommunication between the drivers of the truck hauling the oversized trailer and its pilot car.

How did an oversized vehicle receive a permit for a bridge with lower clearance than its height? Inaccurate record-keeping, Stark said. The opening of the bridge was curved, so that the clearance over the far lanes was lower than the clearance in the center lanes. However, the Washington Department of Transportation only keeps the maximum clearance in its bridge database, which is used to issue permits for oversized vehicles.

"The key issue in this case is the variable vertical bridge clearance," Stark said. "Many bridges have a square opening, so the clearance is the same across all lanes. The problem with this bridge was that it curved down over the edge lanes. The oversized trailer was 15 feet 9 inches tall. The database said the bridge was 17 feet 3 inches, which was in the center -- almost two feet higher than the edges, which is where the oversized trailer was traveling."

Benekohal recommended that other states adopt the Illinois Department of Transportation's policy of reporting the lowest vertical clearance of a bridge, rather than the highest, and its periodic use of LIDAR to verify clearance numbers, which can be affected by repavement, snow or other factors.

The pilot car was the source of the human error factors detailed in the paper. Oversized vehicles have pilot cars to guide them, intended to help thwart the kind of scenario that led to the I-5 collapse. The pilot car has an antenna that is supposed to alert the driver if it hits a bridge or other structure, indicating that the clearance is too low for the following oversized vehicle to continue. Then the pilot driver must call the truck driver to tell him or her to adjust course.

"In this case, the pilot car either did not impact the bridge or the driver didn't hear the impact. They never called the truck, so that part of the safety mechanism failed," Stark said. "One solution we suggest is a sensor at the top of the pole that automatically contacts the oversized vehicle if it hits an object. This eliminates the drivers having to communicate quickly so the oversized vehicle can change course. Also, the pilot car antenna was not straight, so it was not accurately measuring the full height."

The structural analysis revealed that the impact to the second cross-frame, rather than the first, caused so much damage because the way it twisted pulled down the top of the bridge truss, which in turn caused the entire structure to fail.

"I think one of the interesting things about this failure is that the initial damage of where the truck hit was not a primary support, it was a cross beam, and the damage cascaded, causing the entire collapse," LaFave said. "We then looked at ways to reinforce bridges with this design, to increase the capacity and reduce the chance of this kind of failure occurring. We can selectively add supports so there are ways to redistribute the impact load, so the structure can remain stable and stay standing even if there's damage to a particular area."

The researchers hope that their recommendations can help address the differing factors that contributed to this incident, so that it will not be repeated. Updating databases to reflect minimum heights, automated reporting between the pilot car and the oversized vehicle, and structural reinforcement could prevent accidents and collapses like this one, increasing safety and preventing costly repairs, they said.

"A structural failure is obviously not desirable. However, the positive outcome is that we're taking the opportunity to learn from a failure," Fahnestock said. "We want to understand what happened so that we can be a part of preventing something like this from happening in the future, and thus provide a safer and more reliable infrastructure."

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transportation science; automotive and transportation; construction; civil engineering; vehicles; engineering and construction; aviation; engineering

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Structural, regulatory and human error were factors in Washington highway bridge collapse

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When an important bridge collapsed on Interstate 5 near Mount Vernon, Washington, in 2013, questions were raised about how such a catastrophic failure could occur. A new analysis by a team of civil engineering faculty outlines the many factors that led to the collapse, as well as steps that transportation departments can take to prevent such accidents on other bridges of similar design.

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Gotham Construction is a commercial construction company doing many projects in New York City. One of their recent projects is an entire block of residential housing built in New York City. They also do many other types of buildings such as hospitals, hotels, retail stores, and even schools.

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Gotham has taken an industry-leading approach to transforming the buildings and neighborhoods where people live, work, shop, dine and unwind in New York City.

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Clune Construction Company currently has projects all across the United States. They specify in commercial construction such as health care offices, restaurants, condos, and even schools. I would want to work for this company because they have an office located in New York City.

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© Copyright 2018 Clune Construction Company. All Rights Reserved.

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Mortenson Construction is a heavy civil construction company. This company not only constructs baseball stadiums and museums, but they also have a lot of projects in clean energy. These such projects are wind turbines, solar panels, and recycling materials.

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Construction and Real Estate Development | Mortenson Company

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Mortenson Construction is known for Construction Expertise in Commercial Building, Green/Sustainable Construction, Virtual Design & Construction (VDC), Construction Safety, Construction Quality and much more.

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There is a company that has found a way to recycle plastics into a useable building material. These blocks are made up of old pieces of plastic and can be used to build a wall or a barricade. No glue or adhesive is needed when putting the blocks together.

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One thing that really bugs me is all the one-time-use plastic in the world - plastic grocery bags, water and soda bottles, and plastic silverware to name a few culprits.

The stuff is a scourge. I make tepid attempts to avoid the plastic glut, but I feel like the irritating eccentric when I halt the mechanical motions of the check-out clerk at the grocery store by requesting paper rather than plastic. I get a blank, slack-jaw stare, while my request is being processed and usually get a "huh?" so I repeat the request... "paper grocery bags, please." Needless to say, I'm not consistent in being eco-man at the grocery store. I don't always have the patience to request, repeat, and watch the clerk struggle with opening a folded-up paper bag, especially if there's a line behind me.

That's why I like Brooklyn, New York-based ByFusion's innovation that recycles plastic into what they claim are durable construction blocks. According to them, "The process will repurpose the plastic waste permanently rather than creating another disposable plastic product."

They've coined the name RePlast to describe the process of compressing plastic debris into blocks of various shapes. The finished blocks sort of look like composite-board plywood, where it is possible to see the various chunks of the raw ingredients. The RePlast system is portable, designed to run on gas or electric and the best part is that it doesn't require the plastic to be sorted or washed.

The blocks need no glue or adhesives. They have been designed to use in walls and road barriers with the possibility of customizing the building material for use in other types of projects.

I'd love to see RePlast blocks used instead of cinder blocks or poured cement slabs. If they can demonstrate the structural strength and durability needed, why not?

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BLOG: A Construction Use for Plastic Waste

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One thing that really bugs me is all the one-time-use plastic in the world - plastic grocery bags, water and soda bottles, and plastic silverware to name a few culprits. The stuff is a scourge.

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This construction project started in the early 2000s and still hasn't been completed. One of the reasons it has not been completed it because of a bonding problem. They have just recently been approved for a 1.15 billion dollar bond.

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LYNDHURST (AP) A multibillion-dollar retail and entertainment complex in the Meadowlands sports complex is a step closer to completion.

On Aug. 25, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority approved amendments to two parts of a $1.15 billion bond that is to be issued in September.

Construction workers could return to the site soon, after nearly a year of inactivity.

The mall, which will include an indoor water park, snowdome, ice rink and observation wheel, in addition to high-end retail, originally was known as Xanadu.

It has been in the planning process since the early 2000s and has faced various delays and financing problems

Developer Triple Five has said the complex is scheduled to open in mid-2018.

Approximately $800 million in bonds is connected to an agreement between Triple Five and East Rutherford, the borough where the complex is located, for payments in lieu of taxes. The remaining $350 million will be issued in conjunction with tax breaks for the project approved by the state.

The bonds are scheduled to be issued by a state agency in Wisconsin.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, said the deal will cost the state "hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue."

"This dirty deal allows American Dream mall to pay off their bonds in lieu of taxes," Tittel said in an email. "That means New Jersey will be losing revenue because the mall will cost essential services."

The original Xanadu was slated to open in 2007, but the project languished during the economic downturn before Triple Five, whose properties include the Mall of America in Minnesota, took over at the end of 2010.

The immense structure has sat unfinished between MetLife Stadium and the New Jersey Turnpike for years. During the 2014 Super Bowl it was used as a command center for security operations.

MetLife Stadium's owners, the NFL's New York Jets and New York Giants, sued the developer in 2012, claiming Triple Five didn't get their permission - as required under an earlier agreement - to expand the footprint for the mall from its original design. They sought to have the mall closed on game days to avoid traffic backups.

The parties reached a settlement in 2014 in which the teams, the developer and various state agencies will implement a variety of mass transit and traffic improvements on football game days.

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$1.15B Bond Gives American Dream Project Green Light

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LYNDHURST (AP) A multibillion-dollar retail and entertainment complex in the Meadowlands sports complex is a step closer to completion. On Aug. 25, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority approved amendments to two parts of a $1.15 billion bond that is to be issued in September.

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Constructing the tallest Building in the World.

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At over 828 metres (2,716.5 feet) and more than 160 stories, Burj Khalifa holds the following records: Tallest building in the world Tallest free-standing structure in the world Highest number of stories in the world Highest occupied floor in the world Highest outdoor observation deck in the world Elevator with

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Building the Palm Islands in Dubai

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The Palm Island, Dubai UAE - Megastructure Development

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Time Lapse of Residential Home

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Time lapse of home constructed start to finish

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PCL Construction has done more than 100 projects spanning many different areas of construction. Such as sport arenas and even San Diego international airport.

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Welcome to PCL. The PCL family of construction companies are general construction contractors in the buildings, civil, and heavy industrial markets. Sharing your vision. Building success.

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Mercedes-Benz Stadium

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Atlanta Super Bowl Official Bid Committee Video

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Official Minnesota Vikings U.S. Bank Stadium Construction Time-Lapse

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Mercedes-Benz Stadium Construction Time-Lapse - June, 2016

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For the past 25 months, Mercedes-Benz Stadium has risen from the Georgia clay on the corner of Northside Drive and MLK Boulevard. View the remarkable transformation of Atlanta's iconic new sports and entertainment venue.

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Kiewit has range of different projects that they have completed. Some of these projects are bridges and high way construction. Since I have an interest in both Kiewit is a company that I am very interested in.

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What began in 1884 with two hardworking brothers has grown into a construction, mining and engineering powerhouse.

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McCarthy works on project ranging from overpasses and bridges to barge docks. They currently have projects across the US and even in New York.

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McCarthy | The Right Builders for Superior, Lasting Results

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McCarthy is a national construction company known for operational excellence and maximizing client outcomes with lasting results and superior value.

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Since I have an interest in heavy civil Barnard would be a good company because of how big and known they are. I have seen a few presentations on Barnard which have gotten me interested in heavy civil.

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That's what we do at Barnard. Whether we're raising a dam in Alaska, constructing a reservoir in Florida, tunneling under downtown San Francisco, redirecting a river while building a complex hydropower plant in northern Manitoba, or strengthening and improving the integrity of a natural gas pipeline in a Sacramento suburb, our people arrive at our projects with a determination to do the best for their communities and be the best in the industry.

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Whiting-Turner is a company I have heard a lot about since coming to Delhi. Since they have been around for so long they have the experience and knowledge that can help me become successful.

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Since 1909, the firm has been guided by the principles of integrity, excellence and customer delight in the delivery of construction services.

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Bridge construction is another field of construction that I am interested in. It intrigues me how we are able to build over such a long open span.

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Mackinac Bridge

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Aparelho Movel Facebook Movel Meu Movel De Madeira 2 via Oi Movel Movel Jenny Entrar No Facebook Movel Internet Movel Movel Vivo Oi Internet Movel Aparelho Movel Antes E Depois Aparelho Movel Transparente Vivo Internet Movel Livro Movel CV Movel Aparelho Movel De Baixo Aparelho De Sony Moveis Em Madeira Aparelho Celular

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3D Home Architect.

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3D Home Architect 4.0 Framing 3D Home Architect 3D Home Architect Tutorial Floor Plan 3D Home Architect 3D Home Architect Demo 3D Design Suite Home No Color 3D Home Architect 3D Home Architect Ceiling Fans Easy Home Design Software 3D Livecad 3D Home Design Home Best 3D Home Design Software Free 3D Building Design Home Architect Software

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During my first two years of high school I took a hand drafting class. I learned  how to read residential drawings and do some residential floor plans.

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Monster Machine Building Bridges.

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National Geographic Megastructures China 's Mega Bridges

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Monster Machine Building Bridges with SLJ900

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Building bridges in China with SLJ900 bridge erector.

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Modern Marvels: Building a Sky Scraper.

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When I was very young I use to watch Bob The Builder all the time. This was the first show I started watching that had anything to do with building or construction.

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Ever since I picked up a power tool I've enjoyed using them. Going into construction gives me the opportunity to use these tools once in awhile.

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Knex are almost like building with steel in a sense. This got me interested in working with steel.

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My cousin, who graduated from the CM program at Delhi, played a major role in why i chose construction as my major. He talked to me about all the labs and how helpful all the classes are in the real world.

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Time-lapse of building

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Official 11 Year Time-Lapse Movie of One World Trade Center

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Building with legos is what started my interest in construction. I enjoyed seeing what i could create from a pile of pieces.

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I have always wanted to one day build my own development.

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I have always heard great things about Turner from prior students at Delhi who have worked for Turner on their internship. I know i would gain a lot of knowledge and experience if i went there for my internship.

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Turner has a culture of innovation and promotes advances in technology, sustainability, lean practices, building information modeling, safety, community involvement, learning and development, and knowledge sharing.

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The Modern crane Tower.

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Take a climb to the top of the 360-foot tower crane used to build the 30-story Moderne apartment high-rise at W. Juneau Ave. and N. Old World 3rd St. Video by Mike De Sisti

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For some strange reason i have always enjoyed heights and once i found out about the iron workers union it has always interested me.

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When I was younger I went to NYC very often and all the high buildings would interest me. I always wondered how they did it and how the building didn't come falling down.

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After watching a former students intern presentation I realized T.G. Nickel is a company that interest me. It interests me because I enjoy some residential but I would rather do it on a large scale, such as a high rise.

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T.G. Nickel & Associates is an experienced construction management and general contracting firm serving clients in the academic, corporate interiors, healthcare, landmark restoration and residential markets. For nearly two decades, our clients have depended on us to provide the honest, straightforward solutions needed to successfully guide a project from concept to completion. On every project-no matter the size-we make decisions with our clients' best interest in mind, always striving to provide the highest standards in quality, schedule and cost.

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About Nickel T.G. Nickel & Associates is an experienced construction management and general contracting firm serving clients in the academic, corporate interiors, healthcare, landmark restoration and residential markets. For nearly two decades, our clients have depended on us to provide the honest, straightforward solutions needed to