ConstructionForum 🕸

From St. Louis Record:  Several employee benefit plans and labor organizations have filed a complaint against a Missouri demolition company alleging it failed to make contributions as required in a collective bargaining agreement. The plaintiffs, which include Greater St. Louis Construction Laborers Welfare Fund, Construction Laborers Pension Trust of Greater St. Louis, St. Louis Vacation […]

From Korte:  As a kid, Curt Horstmann was never a big fan of school — or libraries. “I just didn’t like books.” The irony isn’t lost on him, a member of The Korte Company’s Diversified Operations Group and the man in charge of an ongoing renovation of the Louis Latzer Memorial Public Library in Highland. […]

Reed Burkett Lighting Design (RBLD) has completed a transformational lighting design project to illuminate the interior of the historic Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Previously, 83,000 square feet of stunning mosaic artwork throughout the walls and ceiling of the Cathedral Basilica was muted in darkness. The functional light levels were so low that parishioners struggled […]

A 17-year-old union construction industry business support program for minority- and women-owned contractors is fortifying operations to ensure its continued success. The Regional Union Construction Center (RUCC) is now a division of the St. Louis Small Business Empowerment Center tapping its resources to grow its capacity to serve more companies. Launched in 2006 by the […]

by Dr. John Gaal Editor’s Note: Each week, Dr. John Gaal, director of worker wellness for the Missouri Works Initiative, a non-profit workforce formed by the Missouri AFL-CIO, collects and comments on news and trends in workforce wellness and life balance. Construction Forum carries the Worker Wellness & Well-Being Blog as a regular feature. The […]

From Gensler:  Gensler has been active in advancing policy discussions that minimize roadblocks for office-to-residential conversions, including our participation in President Biden’s office-to-residential advisory committee and our work with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on the White House Commercial to Residential Federal Resources Guidebook. As we forge ahead with that important work, it’s important to […]

From Chicago Defender:  Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) has secured $500,000 in funding for Illinois’s Revolution Workshop. The money, obtained through a Fiscal Year 2023 Congressionally Directed Spending Request, will be sent by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. This financial support aims to bolster the workshop’s 12-week pre-apprenticeship construction job training program. […]

From Leader Publications:  The Festus City Council recently awarded a $1,233,710 contract to Kimes Contracting in Hillsboro for street, sidewalk and lighting upgrades and water main replacement along a section of West Main Street from Park Avenue to North Mill Street. Construction is expected to begin in December and take about five months to complete, […]

From St. Louis Post-Dispatch:  Local apartment developer Lux Living has sold its row of vacant South Kingshighway houses after a yearlong struggle with the city over the site’s future. Property records show a limited liability company called DAZII LLC, led by Derek Zimmermann, bought the seven buildings in the 1000 block of Kingshighway on Wednesday […]

From Bluebeam:  If you’ve ever gotten lost somewhere, chances are you’ll have whipped out your smartphone, checked where you are and, using an app such as Google Maps, worked out how to get to where you need to be. The ability to navigate your way to that make-or-break gathering at La Maison de Boeuf will […]

From Construction Dive:  In February, JE Dunn, a Kansas City, Missouri-based construction firm, broke ground on a 677-foot-tall office tower in downtown Omaha, Nebraska. The $600 million project, which will be the new corporate headquarters for insurance company Mutual of Omaha, includes 800,000 square feet of office, meeting and amenity space. Once complete, the skyscraper […]

Area Development:  It has been a continuous refrain since the pandemic upended many understandings about how the American economy is supposed to work: Across widely varying fields of work, there just aren’t enough people to fill all the available jobs. The reality, though, is that while the pandemic may have exacerbated the problem and called […]

From Gensler:  It is clear that our cities’ downtowns are suffering. As we emerged from the pandemic, the common assumption was that once we could safely return to the office, the problems associated with limited office occupancy would be solved. That has not proved to be the case. Office work has shifted, and business and […]

From Construction Business Owner:  Millions of miles of pavements are placed or rehabilitated across the globe every year. Nearly 2.8 million lane-miles of pavement are in the U.S. and are a focus in the effort to lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), according to a February 2023 study from the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub (CSHub). […]

From ENR:  The U.S. Dept. of Transportation has opened the competition for $1.5 billion in federal funds in its latest round of Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, or RAISE, surface transportation grants. In its Nov. 30 announcement, DOT said it would accept applications for the funding through Feb. 28 and added that it […]

Mental health, substance mis-use, and suicide are three leading issues threatening the safety of of workers in the construction industry. Dr. John Gaal is director for the MO AFL-CIO’s Missouri Works Initiative’s Worker Wellness Program. A far-ranging video with Dr. Gaal was edited by the Construction Forum team into short segments for use on the […]

From Construction Dive:  A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver demonstrated how its collection of robots could work autonomously on an actual jobsite, per a UBC news release, a preview that one professor called a glimpse into the future. The team at UBC’s Smart Structures Lab showed the tech off at […]

Bags and boxes of winter coats for children were delivered to the Hazelwood School District on Nov. 28, 2023 by the IBEW Electrical Workers Minority Caucus’ (EWMC) for its annual coat drive. In all, 200 coats were delivered to the school, part of more than 600 coats given away regionwide this year in the 19th […]

The National Bio & Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas, earned top recognition in the 2023 Best Projects program, sponsored by ENR Midwest, the regional edition of national construction publication Engineering News-Record (ENR). Constructed by a McCarthy Mortenson Joint Venture team, this 48-acre science campus is adjacent to Kansas State University and will replace the […]

Tarlton, St. Louis’ largest women-owned general contracting and construction management firm, has promoted Nick Eshelman to senior project manager. Eshelman, who has 13 years of experience in the construction industry, joined Tarlton in early 2014 as a project engineer. He was promoted to senior project engineer in 2018 and project manager in 2019. During his […]