(907,337,2,2,1228991656,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:313:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry, help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up,but lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13694:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry &ndash; help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up -&ndash; but lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(908,337,2,2,1228991745,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:323:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up, but lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13694:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry &ndash; help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up -&ndash; but lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(909,337,2,2,1228991796,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:323:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up, but lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13688:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help cleaning up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(910,337,2,2,1229016115,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:320:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc. showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help cleani up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13685:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(911,338,4,2,1229019209,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-11 06:32 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:64:\"Credit is Toughest Challenge, Sustainability Big AGC Members Say\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:63:\"credit_is_toughest_challenge_sustainability_big_agc_members_say\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:66:\"Credit is Toughest Challenge, Sustainability Big,  AGC Members Say\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:1:\"4\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:200:\"The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 is the biggest challenge facing  the members of  the Associated General Contractors of America, according to  a survey AGC conducted of its members. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:33:\"AGC, credit, sustainability, boom\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1959:\"<p>The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 is the biggest challenge facing&nbsp; the members of&nbsp; the Associated General Contractors of America, according to&nbsp; a survey AGC conducted of its members.</p>\n<p>Credit far surpassed any other impediments in front of AGC members, with 83 percent responding&nbsp; that they saw it as their biggest challenge. The next closest was labor at eight percent, followed by fuel prices (four percent) and global warming (three percent).</p>\n<p>Two-thirds predicted growth&nbsp; in sustainability work, with forty-one percent saying that \\\"sustainable practices will be big\\\" in the next year and 25 percent predicting that sustainability would be moderate. Less than half 19 percent the same as this year and 12 percent said it&nbsp; would be minimal.</p>\n<p>Forty-one percent said that it would be three to five years before construction would boom again, while&nbsp; 36% said it would take another one to two years for things to rebound. Thirteen percent&nbsp; said&nbsp; it would take more than five years and only nine percent&nbsp; said&nbsp; that a recovery would happen&nbsp; in less than a year.</p>\n<p>\\\"The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 will likely remain an issue in 2009, according to financial experts, but AGC won\\\'t let that defeat them,\\\" wrote Jennifer Hicks, lead editor of AGC\\\'s <em>Smartbrief</em> enewsletter. \\\"They\\\'re dedicated to continuing their 90-year history of legislative work across the aisle to promote the needs of the nation\\\'s construction industry. More than likely this will include work on pensions, immigration and long-term programs to invest in America\\\'s infrastructure, such as the transportation reauthorization, clean water infrastructure and investment in federal buildings.</p>\n<p><br />\\\"Another positive note is the growing interest in sustainable building and retrofitting of large complexes to save on overall costs,\\\" Hicks wrote.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(912,338,4,2,1229019265,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"338\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-11 06:32 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:64:\"Credit is Toughest Challenge, Sustainability Big AGC Members Say\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:63:\"credit_is_toughest_challenge_sustainability_big_agc_members_say\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:66:\"Credit is Toughest Challenge, Sustainability Big,  AGC Members Say\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:1:\"4\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:200:\"The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 is the biggest challenge facing  the members of  the Associated General Contractors of America, according to  a survey AGC conducted of its members. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:33:\"AGC, credit, sustainability, boom\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1953:\"<p>The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 is the biggest challenge facing&nbsp; the members of&nbsp; the Associated General Contractors of America, according to&nbsp; a survey AGC conducted of its members.</p>\n<p>Credit far surpassed any other impediments in front of AGC members, with 83 percent responding&nbsp; that they saw it as their biggest challenge. The next closest was labor at eight percent, followed by fuel prices (four percent) and global warming (three percent).</p>\n<p>Two-thirds predicted growth&nbsp; in sustainability work, with forty-one percent saying that \\\"sustainable practices will be big\\\" in the next year and 25 percent predicting that sustainability would be moderate. Less than half 19 percent the same as this year and 12 percent said it&nbsp; would be minimal.</p>\n<p>Forty-one percent said that it would be three to five years before construction would boom again, while&nbsp; 36% said it would take another one to two years for things to rebound. Thirteen percent&nbsp; said&nbsp; it would take more than five years and only nine percent&nbsp; said&nbsp; that a recovery would happen&nbsp; in less than a year.</p>\n<p>\\\"The credit crisis that mired many projects in 2008 will likely remain an issue in 2009, according to financial experts, but AGC won\\\'t let that defeat them,\\\" wrote Jennifer Hicks, lead editor of AGC\\\'s <em>Smartbrief</em> enewsletter. \\\"They\\\'re dedicated to continuing their 90-year history of legislative work across the aisle to promote the needs of the nation\\\'s construction industry. More than likely this will include work on pensions, immigration and long-term programs to invest in America\\\'s infrastructure, such as the transportation reauthorization, clean water infrastructure and investment in federal buildings.</p>\n<p>\\\"Another positive note is the growing interest in sustainable building and retrofitting of large complexes to save on overall costs,\\\" Hicks wrote.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(913,337,2,2,1229104256,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:319:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc. showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13685:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(914,339,4,2,1229104557,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 06:51 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:59:\"Town & Country Votes to Rezone Westminster Christian Campus\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:57:\"town_country_votes_to_rezone_westminster_christian_campus\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:59:\"Town & Country Votes to Rezone Westminster Christian Campus\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:183:\"With unanimous support from the city of Town & Country, Westminster Christian Academy is one step closer to building its new campus at Maryville Centre Drive and S. Outer Forty Drive.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:37:\"Westminster Christian, Town & Country\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:3453:\"<p>With unanimous support from the city of Town &amp; Country, Westminster Christian Academy is one step closer to building its new campus at Maryville Centre Drive and S. Outer Forty Drive.<br />&nbsp;The Town &amp; Country Board of Aldermen unanimously approved the rezoning of the 70-acre site to \\\"Major Educational Campus.\\\" In addition, the city approved Westminster Christian Academy\\\'s<a href=\\\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3153/3096422618_4af37c5b9a_b.jpg\\\" title=\\\"Westminster Christian Site  Plan\\\"> preliminary site plan (rendering)</a>&nbsp; and authorized the issuance of a building permit once the requirements of all applicable codes and ordinances have been met.<br />&nbsp;<br />\\\"Throughout this process, Westminster has demonstrated its enduring commitment to serving not only its students with a first-class educational experience, but also its future neighbors in Town &amp; Country by its willingness to take into consideration community concerns and suggestions,\\\" said Mayor Jon Dalton, Town &amp; Country. \\\"Westminster is a welcome addition to our community, which is home to a number of outstanding educational institutions recognized locally, nationally and internationally. We look forward to the realization of Westminster\\\'s plans for a new campus as it will make our community an even better place.\\\"<br />&nbsp;<br />Westminster created an initial site plan and then gathered feedback from the city, neighborhood trustees and nearby businesses before submitting a modified plan to Town &amp; Country. Developed by Zwick and Gandt, the final site plan includes a main school building, a fine arts center with a 600-seat theater and 200-seat black box theater, two gyms, an eight-lane swimming pool and a media production center. The new school will accommodate 1,200 students and incorporates a \\\"school within a school\\\" design, with neighborhoods of 200 students. Additional athletic facilities will include a football/soccer/track stadium; a performance soccer field; 10 tennis courts; and game and practice fields for softball, baseball, lacrosse and field hockey. <br />&nbsp;<br />\\\"We are grateful for the opportunity to relocate our campus to a location that will be a blessing to Westminster Christian Academy and the community for years to come,\\\" said Jim Marsh, head of school. \\\"We will strive to be an asset to the city of Town &amp; Country as both a neighbor and resident.\\\"<br />&nbsp;<br />Marsh said the very earliest Westminster would break ground in Town &amp; Country is 2009, with the campus completed for the 2010-2011 school year.<br />&nbsp;<br />Marsh explained, \\\"We are committed to being responsible financial stewards and will not begin construction until we are confident in the sale of our current building and in meeting our capital campaign goals.\\\"<br />&nbsp;<br />CB Richard Ellis is the exclusive leasing agent for the Creve Coeur campus. For more details on the property, please contact Marc Cacciarelli or Tripp Hardin at 314-655-6000.<br />&nbsp;<br />Westminster Christian Academy is an independent, coeducational, college preparatory school serving grades 7-12. Westminster provides an academically diverse student body with knowledge in the traditional liberal arts and the skills and wisdom to apply that knowledge, encouraging students to embrace a Biblical world view and integrate it into every area of life. For more information, visit www.wcastl.org. <br />&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(915,340,10,2,1229105951,'a:32:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 07:05 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:44:\"Construction Consumers Best Practices Awards\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:44:\"construction_consumers_best_practices_awards\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:44:\"Construction Consumers Best Practices Awards\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:169:\"The St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers will present its  annual best practices awards from 7-10:30 a.m. Dec. 18 at the Sheraton Westport Hotel  Lakeside Chalet.\";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:39:\"Construction  Consumers, Best Practices\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:37:\"Sheraton Westport Inn Lakeside Chalet\";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:19:\"2008-12-18  7:00 AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:0:\"\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:10:\"7-10:30 AM\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:987:\"<p>The St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers will present its&nbsp; annual best practices awards from 7-10:30 a.m. Dec. 18 at the Sheraton Westport Hotel&nbsp; Lakeside Chalet.</p>\n<p>This years award winners will be recognized for their contributions in&nbsp; Zero-Accident Technques (Pfizer,&nbsp; Inc.);&nbsp; Pre-Project Planning (St. Anthony\\\'s Medical Center);Planning for Startup (Covidien); Constructability (University of Missouri Columbia); and&nbsp; Design Effectiveness (St. Louis Community College). Dr. John&nbsp; Gaal of the Carpenters District Council will be recognized as a diversity champion; Arcturis wins for minority/woman business&nbsp; enterprise; and PRIDE/Operation Excel Preapprentice&nbsp; Program will be recognized as organization of the year.</p>\n<p>For&nbsp; more information&nbsp; and registration, call&nbsp; 636.394.6200, or visit <a href=\\\"http://www.slccc.net/\\\" title=\\\"Council of Construction Consumers\\\">www.stlccc.net</a>.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(916,341,4,2,1229106689,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 07:25 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:35:\"Clayco-Legacy Awarded BJC  Projects\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:34:\"clayco_legacy_awarded_bjc_projects\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:35:\"Clayco-Legacy Awarded BJC  Projects\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:194:\" Clayco Inc. and its joint-venture partner, Legacy Building Group, were recently awarded new project work for BJC HealthCare and member hospital Progress West HealthCare Center in O\\\'Fallon, Mo.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:19:\"Clayco, Legacy, BJC\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:3770:\"<p>&nbsp;Clayco Inc. and its joint-venture partner, Legacy Building Group, were recently awarded new project work for BJC HealthCare and member hospital Progress West HealthCare Center in O\\\'Fallon, Mo. The team will construct a 40,000-square-foot data center for BJC that will be built to achieve LEED Gold certification with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and a 60,000-square-foot medical office building for Progress West that will achieve LEED Core and Shell certification. <br /><br />\\\"We look forward to working on another project with Legacy Building Group, which consistently produces the highest quality customer-oriented construction,\\\" said Kirk Warden, senior vice president and partner at Clayco. \\\"Our team was selected because we have a successful track record working together and we offered an expertise in mission-critical data centers and collaborative management style.\\\" &nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;The Clayco/Legacy team aligns with BJC\\\'s diversity initiatives by proposing to split the project management between companies for each of the projects. Clayco will oversee both projects and will manage data center construction, while Legacy will manage construction of the medical office building. <br />&nbsp;<br />Another important advantage this team offers is Clayco\\\'s commitment to sustainability, Warden adds. \\\"Clayco has close to 50 projects registered or certified with the USGBC and over 75 staff with LEED accreditation,\\\" he said.&nbsp; \\\"As a company we understand and promote the benefits that sustainable designs and construction techniques have in today\\\'s world and our goal is to incorporate that understanding into every building we build.\\\"&nbsp; All of these assets will play an active role in the successful outcome of the project.<br />&nbsp;<br />The $30 million project will include a significant investment for the BJC data center, which will encompass infrastructure equipment and a hardened energy center to support Tier III - N+1 data center requirements. The structural design will be critical and will be built to withstand F-3 tornado conditions. <br />&nbsp;<br />Progress West agreed to provide three of its 48 acres for the data center and anticipates efficiency gains in the process. <br />&nbsp;<br />The medical office building is part of a larger plan to bring more primary care and specialty physicians to the southern part of St. Charles County. <br />&nbsp;<br />\\\"The community has responded favorably to having easier access to physicians who are on our campus,\\\" said John Antes president, Progress West HealthCare Center.&nbsp; \\\"We currently have 20,000 square feet of office space leased to multiple specialty practices.&nbsp; Meeting physician and consumer demand for office space will help St. Charles County residents find the specialty health care services they need closer to home.\\\"<br />&nbsp;<br />Construction is expected to begin in February 2009 with an anticipated completion date of early 2010.<br />&nbsp;<br />The Clayco-Legacy team joins St. Louis-based Arcturis, as the architect of record; Pittsburgh-based CJL Engineering, as the mechanical engineer of record; Bick Group, as the data center consultant; KJWW, as the structural engineer of record; and e2 Energy &amp; Environmental Solutions Inc., as the sustainability consultant.<br />&nbsp;<br /><a href=\\\"http://www.claycorp.com\\\">Clayco Inc.</a> is a full-service real estate development, design and construction firm with annual revenues of over $750 million.www.claycorp.com <br /><a href=\\\"http://www.legacybg.com\\\">Legacy Building Group</a>, a general contractor that also provides design/build services, is a certified MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) company located in St. Louis. <br />&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(917,342,4,2,1229107256,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 07:35 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:52:\"Electrical Connection Wraps Best-Ever Habitat Effort\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:52:\"electrical_connection_wraps_best_ever_habitat_effort\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:52:\"Electrical Connection Wraps Best-Ever Habitat Effort\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:257:\"With a 50 percent increase in its annual donation, The Electrical Connection has made this year’s Habitat for Humanity St. Louis house building blitz the most successful ever – not only for disadvantaged families, but for out-of-work union electricians.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:34:\"Electrical Connection, Doug Martin\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2335:\"<p>With a 50 percent increase in its annual donation, The Electrical Connection has made this year&rsquo;s Habitat for Humanity St. Louis house building blitz the most successful ever &ndash; not only for disadvantaged families, but for out-of-work union electricians.&nbsp; The labor-management organization donated $190,000 in material and services to safely wire a record 27 Habitat homes. House-building this year began in June and wrapped-up in early December. Families received keys to the new homes at a ceremony December 6, 2008.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;It has been a rough year for many area families, so we increased our commitment to help Habitat&nbsp; build more homes and provide full-time pay and fringe benefits to jobless union electricians,&rdquo; said Douglas R. Martin, executive vice president of the St. Louis Chapter, National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). St. Louis Chapter NECA partners with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local One to form the Electrical Connection.</p>\n<p>The homes are located in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood of North St. Louis, most of them on Sheridan Avenue and Thomas Street. All are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified &ndash; a first for Habitat for Humanity St. Louis. .<br /><br />&ldquo;The slumping economy has put many electricians out of work,&rdquo; added Steve Schoemehl, IBEW Local One business manager. &ldquo;In our fifth year partnering with Habitat, we are delighted to have provided work for 50-plus electricians while bringing 27 disadvantaged families home just in time for the holidays.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;Since 2004, the Electrical Connection has donated more than $500,000 to wire more than 140 Habitat homes.<br /><br />Participating union electrical contractors included: Dickherber Electric, Inc., J. Bathe Electric Co., M.R. Bathe Electric, Northwest Electric Co., Inc., Superb Electric, L.C., Schaeffer Electric Co., Inc. and Wentzel Electric.<br /><br /><a href=\\\"http://www.electricalconnection.org\\\">The Electrical Connection</a> has also donated services to Rebuilding Together to improve homes for low-income, elderly persons in the area, and for 12 years has donated skills and material in support of St. Louis City&rsquo;s &ldquo;National Night Out&rdquo; anti-crime program.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(918,343,2,2,1229135460,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:40:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:475:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale’s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire belching “Wizardâ€, to reveal a “humbugâ€ patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of “greenâ€ building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3716:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were lso discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}');
INSERT INTO `exp_entry_versioning` VALUES (919,337,2,2,1229135490,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:319:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc. showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13685:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";}'),(920,343,2,2,1229135575,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:463:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale’s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching Wizard, to reveal a humbug patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of “greenâ€ building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3716:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were lso discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(921,343,2,2,1229135613,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:457:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale’s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching Wizard, to reveal a humbug patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of green building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3716:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were lso discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(922,343,2,2,1229135667,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:456:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale\\\'s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching Wizard, to reveal a humbug patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of green building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3716:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were lso discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(923,337,2,2,1229135780,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"337\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-10 06:15 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:30:\"seeing_you_through_tough_times\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:30:\"Seeing You Through Tough Times\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:319:\"The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc. showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:21:\"lawyers, accountants \";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13685:\"<p><img alt=\\\"Tough Times\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" /></p>\n<p>The collapse of Demand Electric, Inc., showcases one type of service that lawyers and accountants provide in the construction industry. They can help clean up the mess when a company blows up. But lawyers and accountants can also help forestall business failures and even help to grow businesses in tough economic times.<br /><br />Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical Company, founded Demand Electric in August 2003, near the peak of the boom. He reported revenues of $22 million in 2007, earning Demand Electric sixty-ninth place in Midwest Construction&rsquo;s August 2008 list of the largest specialty contractors in the Midwest. Even as the list appeared, however, the company was in the final stages of collapse.<br /><br />Two dozen plus court filings outline the final stages of the demise of Demand Electric. On April 21, 2008, Demand Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against JFK Construction, Forever 21 stores, and Chesterfield Mall. That probably was not the only job to go bad, however, for soon Demand Electric was buried underneath claims from its suppliers and vendors.<br /><br />Access Courier filed suit against Demand Electric for breach of contract on July 2. Two weeks later, the Demand Electric&rsquo;s landlord sued for possession of the property. In August, City Lighting Products filed a suit on account and Graybar Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien against Demand Electric, Duke Construction, and 625 Building LLC.<br /><br />The pace of claims picked up in September. IBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against Demand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence Counseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical industry trust funds. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s lien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach of contract.<br /><br />The avalanche of claims picked up strength in October with more mechanic&rsquo;s liens filings against the company, now from Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, and multiple liens from Butler Supply Co. and Warren Sign Co. On top of that, an eviction order was served on the Demand on October 6. Butler Supply and Western Extralite followed their mechanic&rsquo;s liens with breach of contract suits in November.<br /><br />Lawyers clearly had been busy, while behind the scenes accountants toiled to get all the numbers right for all the liens and other claims.<br /><br />&ldquo;Going forward, we&rsquo;re going to see a lot more disputes where one party cannot pay,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC, and that is where mechanics&rsquo; liens, and properly documenting costs covered by liens, are important.<br /><br />Manuel said he is seeing legal work in the construction industry unfold in two ways. &ldquo;The first thing we&rsquo;re seeing is more mechanic&rsquo;s liens and bond claims and the type of payment dispute where money has stopped flowing. That is something going on right now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The other area we&rsquo;re seeing is suspension or termination of projects. Those raise issues of how to suspend or terminate a contract. We&rsquo;re seeing questions about that up and down the whole business chain. And then with those, we are seeing issues around bankruptcy and reorganization and pension fund liabilities,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Walt Bazan, from Bazan Painting and the American Subcontractors Association Midwest Council, said worries about getting paid have rapidly moved up the list of subcontractor concerns. &ldquo;We now have to find out how projects are financed and underwritten to see if there is enough cash,&rdquo; he said, and that means getting the right in a contract to look at the developer&rsquo;s financial information.<br /><br />&ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure my clients are more aggressive on protecting themselves on payment issues,&rdquo; said Len Ruzicka, a partner in Stinson Morrison Hecker, who represents large general contractors. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m making sure they have the right to suspend work for nonpayment, the right to terminate a contract for nonpayment, and the right for a financial audit of the owner at any time on job, so if they get a change order they can say &lsquo;show me the money.&rsquo; I also encourage them to have negotiations up front with the owner on cost escalations on certain items,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Raising Your Game</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;A good lawyer can help a party be more competitive, no doubt,&rdquo; Manuel said. &ldquo;We do some of our best work up front in helping clients get projects and understand the roles and risks so they can manage them and go forward,&rdquo; he said. Greensfelder clients, he said, &ldquo;are getting pretty creative on how to pursue contracts. We&rsquo;re seeing more joint ventures, more teaming, and more collaborative contracts.&rdquo;<br /><br />Bill Wilbrand, a partner in Brown Smith Wallace LLC, said a good accountant can help a company be more competitive, too.<br /><br />&ldquo;If everyone is in sync, if everyone in the company knows its objectives, its vision, and its goals, this is just a bump in the road, an opportunity for weeding out the opposition,&rdquo; Wilbrand said. &ldquo;If the company knows its goals, we can put the proper management tools in place to measure progress towards those goals. That will help a company come out dramatically better, stronger, and probably more profitable when things do change,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Wilbrand said one of the biggest areas in which he sees contractor clients needing help from the outside now is in rightsizing their companies. &ldquo;They need to know what is the break even point, what are their goals, what are the company&rsquo;s sweet spots, what should they be targeting, and what are the critical success factors and key indicators they need to manage,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dave Winkler, director of the business intelligence group at BSW, called the firm&rsquo;s methodology &ldquo;balanced scorecarding.&rdquo;<br /><br />&ldquo;It allows you to align the activities of the organization with the goals of the organization,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You want to get everyone on task,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We put the tools in place that help an organization measure how well employee activities align with objectives,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Cutting Wages</strong><br /><br />Productivity always is important, but right now, cutting costs is critical to a lot of companies, said John Wunderlich, head of the consulting group at BSW, and the only way to make meaningful cuts is to cut payroll costs, he said. The dilemma for contractors is how to do that while retaining key people for when things turn better. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re talking to a lot of companies about dropping back to four-day work weeks with employees taking a commensurate drop in pay, or in some cases asking for volunteers to go part time,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re also helping companies look at suspending the employer match to 401k plans. When times are this tough, you have to be getting to wages,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Gerry Richardson, an attorney with Evans &amp; Dixon, L.L.C., who specializes in employment and labor law, said, &ldquo;many companies are facing difficult decisions about reductions in force and closing certain businesses.&rdquo; Discrimination laws and the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act add layer of complexity to what are already difficult decisions.<br /><br />WARN, which applies to layoffs of at least 100 employees or a plant closing that affects at least 50 workers, is one of the issues in the plant occupation of a building components manufacturer in Chicago. In general, a company that fails to give the required notice &ldquo;is liable for wages equivalent to 60 days of work,&rdquo; Richardson said. The exception, he said, is if a company that thought it had financing suddenly and unexpectedly lost it&rsquo;s financing and had no money to operate. Republic Windows and Doors put 250 people out of work when it closed its factory on December 5 after giving the workers only three days notice.&nbsp; The workers immediately occupied the factory to keep the finished products from being shipped out to customers until they received the vacation pay they said was owed them and the severance pay they said was due them under WARN. <br /><br />&ldquo;If doing a reduction in force (as opposed to a layoff, where you expect to call people back in less than six months) an employer needs to take a systematic approach to how layoffs are done to avoid claims of discrimination from older workers, or claims based on gender or race,&rdquo; Richardson said. &ldquo;Ideally, you try and keep the best employees and let go of the weak ones, but if you don&rsquo;t have documentation in the form of say performance appraisals that prove your determination of who is best, you will have a hard time defending against claims of discrimination if women or workers over 40 or another protected class tended to be laid-off more than other people,&rdquo; he explained.<br /><br />&ldquo;To avoid liability, employers want to use criteria that means they are not picking by protected class. A lawyer can help select criteria and do an analysis to see how it would work &ndash; how it affects people in protected classes. If there is a disproportionate result, you have to reevaluate that selection criteria,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />There are other hoops, too, but the important point is to &ldquo;exercise caution on the front end,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you end up in court, remember that almost everyone in the jury pool has lost a job at some point. So if there is any doubt, their sympathy goes with the employee,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Looking for Work</strong><br /><br />Some contractors are actively seeking new markets so they can avoid laying off employees. &ldquo;Our proactive clients are aggressively pursuing projects outside of Missouri and Illinois,&rdquo; said Manuel.<br /><br />&ldquo;I see a move to more work in the public sector,&rdquo; Ruzicka said. &ldquo;There is a lot of public work out there, Obama has announced there is going to be even more, and there is a general sense that the way we will move out of this recession is more public work,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />In federal work, however, &ldquo;the bidding structure is much different,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Most often there is no opportunity to negotiate; you can&rsquo;t even take exception to the bid package,&rdquo; he said. He helps guide clients through the differences in bidding structures, prevailing wage requirements, bonding requirements, &ldquo;and more importantly,&rdquo; he said, new ethics requirements.<br /><br />&ldquo;Regulations passed a year ago, and regulations just approved, are very much more demanding in terms of documentation. Any contractor or subcontractor who is getting over $5 million has to demonstrate that he has an ethics program in place and has to document certain things,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done three presentation in the last month to six weeks on ethics compliance,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just last month, another four regulations were published with more requirements. The underlying requirements are the same, it is the reporting that has become the issue and there are some pretty sophisticated contractors out there who don&rsquo;t know about it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Ruzicka said he thinks the new reporting requirements started because of problems in Iraq, &ldquo;because of that there has been a lot,&rdquo; and although they may seem a burden, he said he thinks they will end up being good for contractors.<br /><strong><br />Change Is Coming</strong><br /><br />A potent emerging issue is the Employee Free Choice Act, which Richardson said is very likely to pass Congress next year. This year it passed the House, but the Senate held it up. Richardson does not think the new Senate will do the same. &ldquo;If you went to a bookie to get odds on the Employee Free Choice Act passing, he would tell you it is a poor bet to bet against it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The Employee Free Choice Act would make it much easier for private sector employees to join unions, he said. In the version that passed the House, &ldquo;all it would take would be for a union to have signed authorization cards from 50 percent of a recognized group of employees, then the employer would have to negotiate and if they didn&rsquo;t reach agreement within 120 days, the law would require interest arbitration to set the terms of the first contract.&rdquo; <br /><br />Currently a union has to have at least 1/3 of the employees sign cards and then it can get an election. There is a minimum of 42 days between a union request and when an election occurs, which gives the employer six weeks to get its message out, he said. If a union does win an election, currently there is no time limit for reaching agreement on a first contract. &ldquo;It could take 5 years as long as everyone is bargaining in good faith, or they may never reach an agreement,&rdquo; said Richardson.<br /><br />If either provision of the Employee Free Choice Act passes, unionization by signed authorization cards instead of election or interest arbitration after 120 days, &ldquo;it would radically change labor relations,&rdquo; Richardson said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:31:\"/images/uploads/tough-times.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(924,344,5,2,1229136899,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:51 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"12\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:31:\"Waiting for the Phone to Ring? \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:29:\"waiting_for_the_phone_to_ring\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:30:\"Waiting for the Phone to Ring?\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:1:\"7\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:460:\"Is this your corporate sales policy? Staring at a phone that used to ring regularly and now wondering if there\\\'s a problem with the line. I honestly can\\\'t tell you how many times sales managers and company owners tell me this is the posture of most of their sales personnel. Estimators, sales reps and project managers have developed this sales technique as a reflection of a strong business climate for quite a few years. Guess what? Not gonna work anymore.\";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:4919:\"<p>Is this your corporate sales policy? Staring at a phone that used to ring regularly and now wondering if there\\\'s a problem with the line. I honestly can\\\'t tell you how many times sales managers and company owners tell me this is the posture of most of their sales personnel. Estimators, sales reps and project managers have developed this sales technique as a reflection of a strong business climate for quite a few years. Guess what? Not gonna work anymore.</p>\n<p>Even well established companies with years of presence in the marketplace are finding out there are no customers in their office. The first response is usually to start with a little telemarketing and then schedule meetings to figure out what the heck is going on.&nbsp; Let me give you a strong piece of consulting advice for free, get off your behind! <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Trying to figure this whole economy out, sitting waiting for your bailout or wondering what the new President is going to do for you is a colossal waste of time. You need to take control of your company\\\'s sales effort and begin to generate activity.&nbsp; Get moving and start the ball rolling. Stop having meetings to schedule meetings. Get your focus off all your internal issues and realize your biggest need in this climate is to go out and MAKE the phone ring. I find little customer insensitivity mistakes everywhere. Why would you not have your name and greeting on your voicemail? Sure seems arrogant to me. If your phone answers \\\"you have reached 314-123-1234\\\" how do I know it\\\'s your number? Maybe I dialed a wrong number. I\\\'ll just call someone who\\\'ll let me know who he or she is.&nbsp; AND quit having someone else record your greeting you lazy bum! I want to hear your voice not your secretary\\\'s or the phone services computer.&nbsp; Maybe it\\\'s just me .... Nope!<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Another thing, why wouldn\\\'t you have your cell number on your business card? Certainly wouldn\\\'t want to be accessible to your customers now would you?&nbsp; Did you skip Christmas cards this year? I\\\'m sure your clients appreciated your non-wish of Season\\\'s Greetings.&nbsp; Have you cut out lunches, tickets, giveaways or happy hours? Sure the customers haven\\\'t noticed. I recently did a seminar in New York City where I spoke on selling through tough economic climates. You know what seminar topic that preceded me? \\\"How to cut your costs to the bone.\\\" Wow! Raise the white flag. That\\\'s okay, I\\\'m sure your customers will understand your corner cutting and will go right back to where they were when things get better. <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>If it sounds like I\\\'m being sarcastic, you\\\'re right. Unless you\\\'re in line for a government bailout, you\\\'re going to need to generate your OWN revenue. This means expanding your customer base, diversifying your offerings to the clients and focusing on their needs not your own.&nbsp; I don\\\'t care what size your business is you need to be firing on all your sales cylinders. ALL your personnel need to understand every order, job or opportunity is crucial. Customers are the most valuable commodity we have. They need to be cultivated, respected and listened too.&nbsp; Attitudes, laziness and arrogance have no place in anyone\\\'s company at this point.</p>\n<p>I\\\'m really not sure when they really ever are acceptable.&nbsp; I see countless examples of half efforts, lack of improvement and no sense of urgency prevalent amongst contractors, suppliers and service organizations. This business climate has changed, you must as well.&nbsp; Sitting in the office waiting for opportunities to come to you from your \\\"established\\\" clients will guarantee a drop in business.&nbsp; This is not rocket science but you will need to develop a course of action. Just throwing money at the problem doesn\\\'t work either. The good news is the cost of making a splash in sales has actually gone down with the advent of technology, if used properly in conjunction with good ol\\\' sales tactics. Do you know how to enact the plan? Do your people understand it? Do you have a great mission statement or catchy tagline? Which of those grabs your customer\\\'s interest? Have you spent more time on employee engagement as opposed to customer engagement? (Reference US automobile manufacturers) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Take this as an alarm sounding if you are still sitting by the phone.&nbsp; I\\\'m trying to help you here. Get out with your clients and let them know you love and appreciate them. You value their business and want any opportunity they have. You want to prove your loyalty to them instead of your expectation of them keeping your company in business. That\\\'s your job! Make that phone ring!<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<br /><br />&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"12\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(925,343,2,2,1229191348,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:456:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale\\\'s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching Wizard, to reveal a humbug patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of green building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3717:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were also discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(926,345,4,2,1229242069,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:06 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:63:\"Construction Starts on St. Charles County Memory Care Facility \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:61:\"construction_starts_on_st_charles_county_memory_care_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:62:\"Construction Starts on St. Charles County Memory Care Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:195:\"A group of local investors has given the signal to proceed with the most extensive and advanced assisted living and memory care facility in St. Charles County, Assisted Living at the Meadowlands.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:38:\"Meadwowlands, memory care, St. Charles\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1525:\"<p>A group of local investors has given the signal to proceed with the most extensive and advanced assisted living and memory care facility in St. Charles County, Assisted Living at the Meadowlands. <br /><br />The Meadowlands, which will be located near the intersection of T.R. Hughes Blvd. and Tom Ginnever Blvd. in North O&rsquo;Fallon, will be the only facility in St. Charles County to offer Alzheimer&rsquo;s patients an assisted living option instead of nursing home care.<br /><br />Owner/Managing Partner Kevin Kast said the idea for Assisted Living at the Meadowlands &ldquo;began five years ago as a vision between Tom Hughes and myself.&rdquo; Since they assembled 18 more prominent residents of St. Charles to back that vision. Those investors are looking for more than financial returns, he said. &ldquo;The investors who came together to build this facility are looking for an ROI that is measured in exceptional, compassionate care to the residents,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />The first phase of the project will consist of an 86-bed, 53,000-square-foot facility to provide specialized care to elderly and memory care patients. Future phases, which will include congregate independent living, senior villas, and physician offices, will increase the capacity of the facility to 500 residents and grow the campus to more than 30 acres. The total cost of Phase 1 is estimated at $10-12 million.<br /><br />The general contractor and builder of the Assisted Living at the Meadowlands is TRH Commercial Group.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(927,346,4,2,1229242250,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:08 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"6\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:45:\"Midwest Block & Brick Gobbles Up Competition \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"midwest_block_brick_gobbles_up_competition\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:44:\"Midwest Block & Brick Gobbles Up Competition\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:65:\"The economy may be tough, but Midwest Block & Brick is expanding.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:59:\"Midwest Block & Brick, Hill Thomas, Glenstone Block Company\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2736:\"<p>The economy may be tough, but Midwest Block &amp; Brick is expanding.<br /><br />Midwest Block &amp; Brick, a division of Midwest Products Group, recently acquired Hill Thomas, based in East St. Louis, IL and Glenstone Block Company in Springfield, Branson, and Camdenton, MO. Both acquisitions took place in October.<br /><br />Along with the acquisition of Glenstone Block Company, Nattinger Block &amp; Brick, a Midwest Products Group company, will be changing their name to Midwest Block &amp; Brick as a part of a consolidation strategy. <br /><br />The Hill Thomas company headquarters includes 3.5 acres located in East St. Louis, Illinois, complete with a rail spur. Their accompanying retail showroom, approximately 2,000 square feet in size, is located in Shiloh, IL.<br /><br />The Glenstone Block Company headquarters includes 5.5 acres located on Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, MO. The facility features a 4,000 square foot showroom, with block manufacturing plant, shop, and warehouse included. The Glenstone Block Company acquisition also includes their Branson retail outlet located on approximately 2 to 3 acres. Glenstone&rsquo;s Camdenton location will merge with Midwest Block &amp; Brick&rsquo;s current facility in Osage Beach.<br /><br />According to a statement from Midwest Block &amp; Brick, the immediate benefits of the Hill Thomas acquisition include a broader range of products available for Midwest Block &amp; Brick customers to choose from; additional experienced salespeople for the Metro East; customers in the St. Louis area; and a showroom facility in Shiloh, Illinois.<br /><br />&ldquo;The acquisition of Hill Thomas by Midwest Block &amp; Brick gives us a presence in the expanding areas of Edwardsville, O\\\'Fallon and Belleville, Illinois,&rdquo; said Darryl Winegar, vice president of Midwest Block &amp; Brick. <br /><br />Similarly, Mike Ankrom, another vice president, said, &ldquo;The acquisition of Glenstone Block Company by Midwest Block &amp; Brick gives us an increased market penetration in the crucial trade areas of Branson and Joplin, as well as a bigger presence in Springfield, MO.&rdquo;<br /><br />Midwest Block &amp; Brick already had multiple manufacturing and showroom facilities across Missouri, including the Kansas City region; Columbia, Jefferson City and Osage Beach in mid-Missouri; the Hannibal area; and throughout the St. Louis Metro region. Midwest Block &amp; Brick also operates in Quincy and Springfield, IL; Paducah, KY; and Union City, TN.<br /><br />Besides Midwest Block &amp; Brick, Midwest Products Group has several other divisions headquartered in the St. Louis region, including Kirchner Block &amp; Brick and St. Louis Retaining Wall Company.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"6\";}'),(928,347,4,2,1229242374,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:56:\" Clayco Builds “Blue Waterâ€ Supercomputing Facility \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:55:\" Clayco Builds “Blue Waterâ€ Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:235:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world’s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(929,348,4,2,1229242516,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:14 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:65:\" 1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:61:\"12_million_sf_mixed_use_development_breaks_ground_in_st_chuck\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:64:\" 1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:211:\"The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for “The Streets of St. Charles,â€ a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah’s Ark restaurant and motel.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:31:\"Durrant, Streets of St. Charles\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:684:\"<p>The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for &ldquo;The Streets of St. Charles,&rdquo; a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah&rsquo;s Ark restaurant and motel. The &lsquo;new urbanism&rsquo; mixed-use development, located just south of I-70 at Fifth Street, will contain 170,000 square feet of retail space, 280,000 square feet of office space, 540 residential units, two hotels and a theatre. Phase I of the development is estimated to be completed in 2010.<br /><br />Durrant is the architect and engineer of record. Cullinan Properties, Ltd., is the developer. Brinkmann Constructors is the general contractor.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(930,347,4,2,1229242547,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"347\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:48:\"Clayco Builds Blue Water Supercomputing Facility\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:55:\" Clayco Builds “Blue Waterâ€ Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:235:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world’s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(931,347,4,2,1229242581,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"347\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:48:\"Clayco Builds Blue Water Supercomputing Facility\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:49:\" Clayco Builds Blue Water Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:235:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world’s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(932,347,4,2,1229242629,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"347\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:50:\" Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:235:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world’s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(933,349,4,2,1229242726,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:63:\"Air Products to Put Facility at Fountain Lakes Commerce Center \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:62:\"air_products_to_put_facility_at_fountain_lakes_commerce_center\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:62:\"Air Products to Put Facility at Fountain Lakes Commerce Center\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:301:\"Following a region-wide competition, Air Products has selected Fountain Lakes Commerce Center at I-370 and Elm Street in St. Charles, MO, as the site for a new 269,837-square-foot production facility. The 475-acre Fountain Lakes Commerce Center project is owned and developed by The Millstone Company.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:28:\"Air Products, Fountain Lakes\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2476:\"<p>Following a region-wide competition, Air Products has selected Fountain Lakes Commerce Center at I-370 and Elm Street in St. Charles, MO, as the site for a new 269,837-square-foot production facility. The 475-acre Fountain Lakes Commerce Center project is owned and developed by The Millstone Company. <br /><br />The new facility, which has a projected completion value of $54 million, will enable Air Products to increase output of its sophisticated membrane products by more than 50 percent and is being built by Korte Construction in two phases on a 12-acre site. Phase I will consist of a 98,047-square-foot building that will be completed by mid-2009. Phase II, a 171,790-square-foot facility, is slated to open in early 2010. <br /><br />Geoff Orf and Kevin Gallagher with Gateway Commercial/Cushman Wakefield represented Millstone in the transaction. Tom Erman and Kevin McKeon with NAI DESCO represented Air Products.<br /><br />Gallagher said Air Products looked at multiple sites in St. Charles and St. Louis counties before choosing Fountain Lakes. <br /><br />&ldquo;The fact that Fountain Lakes Commerce Center and the roads leading to it rest on ground that is above the 500-year flood plain was a key factor in the decision of Air Products to invest here,&rdquo; said Paul Chesterton, director of real estate development for Millstone. &ldquo;St. Louis experienced two floods in 2008 and the development stayed dry through both without needing a levee to protect it.&rdquo; <br /><br />&ldquo;The comparatively low tax rate in the City of St. Charles plus the willingness of the city to expedite the approval process &ndash; it was shortened by four months &ndash; were other important factors,&rdquo; he added. <br /><br />Air Products currently operates a membrane production facility that employs more than 100 people at 11444 Lackland Ave. in St. Louis County. Open since 1984, the company has expanded the plant several times, most recently by 25,000 square feet in 2007. The Lackland plant will continue to operate after the Fountain Lakes plant opens. <br /><br />&ldquo;Locating near our existing facility will allow us to leverage our skilled workforce and know-how to bring the facility into full production more quickly and efficiently,&rdquo; said George Lewis, global business manager, equipment sales at Air Products. &ldquo;This new facility will ensure our ability to meet strong demand for high performance membranes.&rdquo;<br /><br /></p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(934,350,4,2,1229242794,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:18 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"second_phase_of_wood_river_commons_gets_underway\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:48:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:357:\"Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen’s and McDonald’s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:25:\"Koman, Wood River Commons\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1436:\"<p>Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen&rsquo;s and McDonald&rsquo;s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties. <br /><br />A full-service health club with existing locations in Granite City and Alton, Club Fitness will be taking 8,000 square feet of space in the expanded development and is set to open its doors to the public in the spring of 2009. Upon completion of Phase II, the overall Wood River Commons development will encompass a total of 33,000-square feet and feature an expanded selection of national and local retailers, specialty shops, services and restaurants. <br /><br />&ldquo;The Interstate 255 extension and Wal-Mart Supercenter are helping to draw more customers to the area and positioning it as a convenient shopping destination for people in the surrounding communities,&rdquo; stated Terry Barnes, who is overseeing the development of Wood River Commons for Koman Properties. &ldquo;The demand for the goods and services available in this commercial district will only grow as work underway at ConocoPhillips brings additional laborers to the area, making this an ideal time to proceed with the next phase of this project.&rdquo; <br /><br /><br /></p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(935,351,2,2,1229242934,'a:28:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:20 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:57:\"MRB design team prequalifies contractor teams for bridge \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"mrb_design_team_prequalifies_contractor_teams_for_bridge\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:56:\"MRB design team prequalifies contractor teams for bridge\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:179:\"The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:55:\"Misssisspii River Bridge, contractor, Massman, Alberici\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:2315:\"<p>The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.<br /><br />Contractor teams prequalified to bid on the four-lane bridge are: Kiewit Western Co.; American Bridge Co; a joint venture between Walsh Construction and PCL; and a joint venture between Massman Construction Co., Traylor Brothers and Alberici Enterprises.<br /><br />By prequalifying, these contractors will be able to work with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop confidential and individualized proposals using the latest advances in construction technology. Each contractor has the opportunity to make cost-saving suggestions to reduce the final cost of the river bridge. These contractor teams will submit bids for bridge construction at the end of 2009 using plans that include their confidential concepts.<br /><br />Contractors must prequalify to bid to verify that the company has the experience, leadership and capability available to complete the complex work required in constructing the Mississippi River Bridge.<br /><br />There will be another opportunity for contractor teams to prequalify in August 2009 for the bridge. These contractor teams will bid on the project using base plans that the Mississippi River Bridge design team will develop. The contractor team with the lowest bid on the bridge will win the bridge construction contract when it is awarded. The construction cost of the cable-stayed section of the bridge has been estimated at $160 million.<br /><br />Walsh Construction also is among eight contractors that have indicated that they were interested in working with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop potentially cheaper construction alternatives on the bridge approaches - the section of the roadway on either side of the bridge leading to the bridge. For the MRB, this section ranges from approximately Route 3 on the Illinois side to just before Broadway on the Missouri side. Those contractors who have indicated they are interested in developing alternatives for the approaches are Fred Weber Inc., KCI Construction Co., Keeley and Sons, Keller Construction Inc., Kozeny-Wagner, Millstone-Bangert Inc., St. Louis Bridge Construction Co. and Walsh Construction.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";}'),(936,351,2,2,1229242999,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"351\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:20 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:50:\"MRB Team Prequalifies Contractor Teams for Bridge \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"mrb_design_team_prequalifies_contractor_teams_for_bridge\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:50:\"MRB Team Prequalifies Contractor Teams for Bridge \";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:179:\"The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:55:\"Misssisspii River Bridge, contractor, Massman, Alberici\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:2315:\"<p>The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.<br /><br />Contractor teams prequalified to bid on the four-lane bridge are: Kiewit Western Co.; American Bridge Co; a joint venture between Walsh Construction and PCL; and a joint venture between Massman Construction Co., Traylor Brothers and Alberici Enterprises.<br /><br />By prequalifying, these contractors will be able to work with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop confidential and individualized proposals using the latest advances in construction technology. Each contractor has the opportunity to make cost-saving suggestions to reduce the final cost of the river bridge. These contractor teams will submit bids for bridge construction at the end of 2009 using plans that include their confidential concepts.<br /><br />Contractors must prequalify to bid to verify that the company has the experience, leadership and capability available to complete the complex work required in constructing the Mississippi River Bridge.<br /><br />There will be another opportunity for contractor teams to prequalify in August 2009 for the bridge. These contractor teams will bid on the project using base plans that the Mississippi River Bridge design team will develop. The contractor team with the lowest bid on the bridge will win the bridge construction contract when it is awarded. The construction cost of the cable-stayed section of the bridge has been estimated at $160 million.<br /><br />Walsh Construction also is among eight contractors that have indicated that they were interested in working with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop potentially cheaper construction alternatives on the bridge approaches - the section of the roadway on either side of the bridge leading to the bridge. For the MRB, this section ranges from approximately Route 3 on the Illinois side to just before Broadway on the Missouri side. Those contractors who have indicated they are interested in developing alternatives for the approaches are Fred Weber Inc., KCI Construction Co., Keeley and Sons, Keller Construction Inc., Kozeny-Wagner, Millstone-Bangert Inc., St. Louis Bridge Construction Co. and Walsh Construction.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";}'),(937,348,4,2,1229318508,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"348\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:14 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:63:\"1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:61:\"12_million_sf_mixed_use_development_breaks_ground_in_st_chuck\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:64:\" 1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:209:\"The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for \\\"The Streets of St. Charles,\\\"  a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah\\\'s Ark restaurant and motel.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:31:\"Durrant, Streets of St. Charles\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:684:\"<p>The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for &ldquo;The Streets of St. Charles,&rdquo; a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah&rsquo;s Ark restaurant and motel. The &lsquo;new urbanism&rsquo; mixed-use development, located just south of I-70 at Fifth Street, will contain 170,000 square feet of retail space, 280,000 square feet of office space, 540 residential units, two hotels and a theatre. Phase I of the development is estimated to be completed in 2010.<br /><br />Durrant is the architect and engineer of record. Cullinan Properties, Ltd., is the developer. Brinkmann Constructors is the general contractor.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(938,350,4,2,1229318606,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"350\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:18 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:48:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"second_phase_of_wood_river_commons_gets_underway\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:48:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:355:\"Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen\\\'s and McDonald\\\'s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:25:\"Koman, Wood River Commons\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1430:\"<p>Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen&rsquo;s and McDonald&rsquo;s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties. <br /><br />A full-service health club with existing locations in Granite City and Alton, Club Fitness will be taking 8,000 square feet of space in the expanded development and is set to open its doors to the public in the spring of 2009. Upon completion of Phase II, the overall Wood River Commons development will encompass a total of 33,000-square feet and feature an expanded selection of national and local retailers, specialty shops, services and restaurants. <br /><br />&ldquo;The Interstate 255 extension and Wal-Mart Supercenter are helping to draw more customers to the area and positioning it as a convenient shopping destination for people in the surrounding communities,&rdquo; stated Terry Barnes, who is overseeing the development of Wood River Commons for Koman Properties. &ldquo;The demand for the goods and services available in this commercial district will only grow as work underway at ConocoPhillips brings additional laborers to the area, making this an ideal time to proceed with the next phase of this project.&rdquo; <br /><br /></p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(939,347,4,2,1229318662,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"347\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:50:\" Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:234:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world\\\'s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(940,341,4,2,1229319141,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"341\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 07:25 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:35:\"Clayco-Legacy Awarded BJC  Projects\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:34:\"clayco_legacy_awarded_bjc_projects\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:35:\"Clayco-Legacy Awarded BJC  Projects\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:194:\" Clayco Inc. and its joint-venture partner, Legacy Building Group, were recently awarded new project work for BJC HealthCare and member hospital Progress West HealthCare Center in O\\\'Fallon, Mo.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:19:\"Clayco, Legacy, BJC\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:3807:\"<p>&nbsp;Clayco Inc. and its joint-venture partner, Legacy Building Group, were recently awarded new project work for BJC HealthCare and member hospital Progress West HealthCare Center in O\\\'Fallon, Mo. The team will construct a 40,000-square-foot data center for BJC that will be built to achieve LEED Gold certification with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and a 60,000-square-foot medical office building for Progress West that will achieve LEED Core and Shell certification. <br /><br />\\\"We look forward to working on another project with Legacy Building Group, which consistently produces the highest quality customer-oriented construction,\\\" said Kirk Warden, senior vice president and partner at Clayco. \\\"Our team was selected because we have a successful track record working together and we offered an expertise in mission-critical data centers and collaborative management style.\\\" &nbsp;<br />&nbsp;<br />&nbsp;The Clayco/Legacy team aligns with BJC\\\'s diversity initiatives by proposing to split the project management between companies for each of the projects. Clayco will oversee both projects and will manage data center construction, while Legacy will manage construction of the medical office building. <br />&nbsp;<br />Another important advantage this team offers is Clayco\\\'s commitment to sustainability, Warden adds. \\\"Clayco has close to 50 projects registered or certified with the USGBC and over 75 staff with LEED accreditation,\\\" he said.&nbsp; \\\"As a company we understand and promote the benefits that sustainable designs and construction techniques have in today\\\'s world and our goal is to incorporate that understanding into every building we build.\\\"&nbsp; All of these assets will play an active role in the successful outcome of the project.<br />&nbsp;<br />The $30 million project will include a significant investment for the BJC data center, which will encompass infrastructure equipment and a hardened energy center to support Tier III - N+1 data center requirements. The structural design will be critical and will be built to withstand F-3 tornado conditions. <br />&nbsp;<br />Progress West agreed to provide three of its 48 acres for the data center and anticipates efficiency gains in the process. <br />&nbsp;<br />The medical office building is part of a larger plan to bring more primary care and specialty physicians to the southern part of St. Charles County. <br />&nbsp;<br />\\\"The community has responded favorably to having easier access to physicians who are on our campus,\\\" said John Antes president, Progress West HealthCare Center.&nbsp; \\\"We currently have 20,000 square feet of office space leased to multiple specialty practices.&nbsp; Meeting physician and consumer demand for office space will help St. Charles County residents find the specialty health care services they need closer to home.\\\"<br />&nbsp;<br />Construction is expected to begin in February 2009 with an anticipated completion date of early 2010.<br />&nbsp;<br />The Clayco-Legacy team joins St. Louis-based Arcturis, as the architect of record; Pittsburgh-based CJL Engineering, as the mechanical engineer of record; Bick Group, as the data center consultant; KJWW, as the structural engineer of record; PSI was the geotechnical consultant; and e2 Energy &amp; Environmental Solutions Inc., as the sustainability consultant.<br />&nbsp;<br /><a href=\\\"http://www.claycorp.com\\\">Clayco Inc.</a> is a full-service real estate development, design and construction firm with annual revenues of over $750 million.www.claycorp.com <br /><a href=\\\"http://www.legacybg.com\\\">Legacy Building Group</a>, a general contractor that also provides design/build services, is a certified MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) company located in St. Louis. <br />&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(941,342,4,2,1229319345,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"342\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 07:35 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:52:\"Electrical Connection Wraps Best-Ever Habitat Effort\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:52:\"electrical_connection_wraps_best_ever_habitat_effort\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:52:\"Electrical Connection Wraps Best-Ever Habitat Effort\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:256:\"With a 50 percent increase in its annual donation, The Electrical Connection has made this year\\\'s Habitat for Humanity St. Louis house building blitz the most successful ever – not only for disadvantaged families, but for out-of-work union electricians.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:34:\"Electrical Connection, Doug Martin\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2335:\"<p>With a 50 percent increase in its annual donation, The Electrical Connection has made this year&rsquo;s Habitat for Humanity St. Louis house building blitz the most successful ever &ndash; not only for disadvantaged families, but for out-of-work union electricians.&nbsp; The labor-management organization donated $190,000 in material and services to safely wire a record 27 Habitat homes. House-building this year began in June and wrapped-up in early December. Families received keys to the new homes at a ceremony December 6, 2008.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;It has been a rough year for many area families, so we increased our commitment to help Habitat&nbsp; build more homes and provide full-time pay and fringe benefits to jobless union electricians,&rdquo; said Douglas R. Martin, executive vice president of the St. Louis Chapter, National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA). St. Louis Chapter NECA partners with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local One to form the Electrical Connection.</p>\n<p>The homes are located in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood of North St. Louis, most of them on Sheridan Avenue and Thomas Street. All are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified &ndash; a first for Habitat for Humanity St. Louis. .<br /><br />&ldquo;The slumping economy has put many electricians out of work,&rdquo; added Steve Schoemehl, IBEW Local One business manager. &ldquo;In our fifth year partnering with Habitat, we are delighted to have provided work for 50-plus electricians while bringing 27 disadvantaged families home just in time for the holidays.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;Since 2004, the Electrical Connection has donated more than $500,000 to wire more than 140 Habitat homes.<br /><br />Participating union electrical contractors included: Dickherber Electric, Inc., J. Bathe Electric Co., M.R. Bathe Electric, Northwest Electric Co., Inc., Superb Electric, L.C., Schaeffer Electric Co., Inc. and Wentzel Electric.<br /><br /><a href=\\\"http://www.electricalconnection.org\\\">The Electrical Connection</a> has also donated services to Rebuilding Together to improve homes for low-income, elderly persons in the area, and for 12 years has donated skills and material in support of St. Louis City&rsquo;s &ldquo;National Night Out&rdquo; anti-crime program.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(942,343,2,2,1229325741,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:464:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale\\\'s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching \\\"Wizard\\\", to reveal a \\\"humbug\\\" patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of green building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3717:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were also discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";}'),(943,351,2,2,1229666650,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"351\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:20 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"MRB Team Prequalifies Contractor Teams for Bridge\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"mrb_design_team_prequalifies_contractor_teams_for_bridge\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:50:\"MRB Team Prequalifies Contractor Teams for Bridge \";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:179:\"The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:0:\"\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:55:\"Misssisspii River Bridge, contractor, Massman, Alberici\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:2315:\"<p>The Mississippi River Bridge design team has prequalified four contractor teams to bid on the cable-stay portion of the new bridge between East St. Louis, Ill., and St. Louis, Mo.<br /><br />Contractor teams prequalified to bid on the four-lane bridge are: Kiewit Western Co.; American Bridge Co; a joint venture between Walsh Construction and PCL; and a joint venture between Massman Construction Co., Traylor Brothers and Alberici Enterprises.<br /><br />By prequalifying, these contractors will be able to work with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop confidential and individualized proposals using the latest advances in construction technology. Each contractor has the opportunity to make cost-saving suggestions to reduce the final cost of the river bridge. These contractor teams will submit bids for bridge construction at the end of 2009 using plans that include their confidential concepts.<br /><br />Contractors must prequalify to bid to verify that the company has the experience, leadership and capability available to complete the complex work required in constructing the Mississippi River Bridge.<br /><br />There will be another opportunity for contractor teams to prequalify in August 2009 for the bridge. These contractor teams will bid on the project using base plans that the Mississippi River Bridge design team will develop. The contractor team with the lowest bid on the bridge will win the bridge construction contract when it is awarded. The construction cost of the cable-stayed section of the bridge has been estimated at $160 million.<br /><br />Walsh Construction also is among eight contractors that have indicated that they were interested in working with the Mississippi River Bridge team to develop potentially cheaper construction alternatives on the bridge approaches - the section of the roadway on either side of the bridge leading to the bridge. For the MRB, this section ranges from approximately Route 3 on the Illinois side to just before Broadway on the Missouri side. Those contractors who have indicated they are interested in developing alternatives for the approaches are Fred Weber Inc., KCI Construction Co., Keeley and Sons, Keller Construction Inc., Kozeny-Wagner, Millstone-Bangert Inc., St. Louis Bridge Construction Co. and Walsh Construction.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(944,350,4,2,1229666682,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"350\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:18 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:48:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"second_phase_of_wood_river_commons_gets_underway\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:48:\"Second Phase of Wood River Commons Gets Underway\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:355:\"Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen\\\'s and McDonald\\\'s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:25:\"Koman, Wood River Commons\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1424:\"<p>Koman Properties has announced that work is officially underway on Phase II of its Wood River Commons retail development, which is already home to Walgreen&rsquo;s and McDonald&rsquo;s. Club Fitness has signed on as the anchor tenant for the 13,500-square-foot second phase, which represents an additional $2 million investment in the community by Koman Properties. <br /><br />A full-service health club with existing locations in Granite City and Alton, Club Fitness will be taking 8,000 square feet of space in the expanded development and is set to open its doors to the public in the spring of 2009. Upon completion of Phase II, the overall Wood River Commons development will encompass a total of 33,000-square feet and feature an expanded selection of national and local retailers, specialty shops, services and restaurants. <br /><br />&ldquo;The Interstate 255 extension and Wal-Mart Supercenter are helping to draw more customers to the area and positioning it as a convenient shopping destination for people in the surrounding communities,&rdquo; stated Terry Barnes, who is overseeing the development of Wood River Commons for Koman Properties. &ldquo;The demand for the goods and services available in this commercial district will only grow as work underway at ConocoPhillips brings additional laborers to the area, making this an ideal time to proceed with the next phase of this project.&rdquo; <br /></p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(945,348,4,2,1229666708,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"348\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:14 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:63:\"1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:61:\"12_million_sf_mixed_use_development_breaks_ground_in_st_chuck\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:64:\" 1.2 Million SF Mixed-Use Development Breaks Ground in St. Chuck\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:209:\"The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for \\\"The Streets of St. Charles,\\\"  a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah\\\'s Ark restaurant and motel.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:31:\"Durrant, Streets of St. Charles\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:684:\"<p>The Durrant Group, Inc., recently celebrated the official groundbreaking for &ldquo;The Streets of St. Charles,&rdquo; a 1.2 million square foot mixed-use development on former site of Noah&rsquo;s Ark restaurant and motel. The &lsquo;new urbanism&rsquo; mixed-use development, located just south of I-70 at Fifth Street, will contain 170,000 square feet of retail space, 280,000 square feet of office space, 540 residential units, two hotels and a theatre. Phase I of the development is estimated to be completed in 2010.<br /><br />Durrant is the architect and engineer of record. Cullinan Properties, Ltd., is the developer. Brinkmann Constructors is the general contractor.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(946,346,4,2,1229666752,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"346\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:08 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"6\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:44:\"Midwest Block & Brick Gobbles Up Competition\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"midwest_block_brick_gobbles_up_competition\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:44:\"Midwest Block & Brick Gobbles Up Competition\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:65:\"The economy may be tough, but Midwest Block & Brick is expanding.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:59:\"Midwest Block & Brick, Hill Thomas, Glenstone Block Company\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2736:\"<p>The economy may be tough, but Midwest Block &amp; Brick is expanding.<br /><br />Midwest Block &amp; Brick, a division of Midwest Products Group, recently acquired Hill Thomas, based in East St. Louis, IL and Glenstone Block Company in Springfield, Branson, and Camdenton, MO. Both acquisitions took place in October.<br /><br />Along with the acquisition of Glenstone Block Company, Nattinger Block &amp; Brick, a Midwest Products Group company, will be changing their name to Midwest Block &amp; Brick as a part of a consolidation strategy. <br /><br />The Hill Thomas company headquarters includes 3.5 acres located in East St. Louis, Illinois, complete with a rail spur. Their accompanying retail showroom, approximately 2,000 square feet in size, is located in Shiloh, IL.<br /><br />The Glenstone Block Company headquarters includes 5.5 acres located on Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, MO. The facility features a 4,000 square foot showroom, with block manufacturing plant, shop, and warehouse included. The Glenstone Block Company acquisition also includes their Branson retail outlet located on approximately 2 to 3 acres. Glenstone&rsquo;s Camdenton location will merge with Midwest Block &amp; Brick&rsquo;s current facility in Osage Beach.<br /><br />According to a statement from Midwest Block &amp; Brick, the immediate benefits of the Hill Thomas acquisition include a broader range of products available for Midwest Block &amp; Brick customers to choose from; additional experienced salespeople for the Metro East; customers in the St. Louis area; and a showroom facility in Shiloh, Illinois.<br /><br />&ldquo;The acquisition of Hill Thomas by Midwest Block &amp; Brick gives us a presence in the expanding areas of Edwardsville, O\\\'Fallon and Belleville, Illinois,&rdquo; said Darryl Winegar, vice president of Midwest Block &amp; Brick. <br /><br />Similarly, Mike Ankrom, another vice president, said, &ldquo;The acquisition of Glenstone Block Company by Midwest Block &amp; Brick gives us an increased market penetration in the crucial trade areas of Branson and Joplin, as well as a bigger presence in Springfield, MO.&rdquo;<br /><br />Midwest Block &amp; Brick already had multiple manufacturing and showroom facilities across Missouri, including the Kansas City region; Columbia, Jefferson City and Osage Beach in mid-Missouri; the Hannibal area; and throughout the St. Louis Metro region. Midwest Block &amp; Brick also operates in Quincy and Springfield, IL; Paducah, KY; and Union City, TN.<br /><br />Besides Midwest Block &amp; Brick, Midwest Products Group has several other divisions headquartered in the St. Louis region, including Kirchner Block &amp; Brick and St. Louis Retaining Wall Company.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"6\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(947,347,4,2,1229666782,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"347\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-13 09:11 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"clayco_builds_blue_water_supercomputing_facility\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:50:\" Clayco Builds Blue Waters Supercomputing Facility\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:234:\"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world\\\'s newest and fastest supercomputer.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:45:\"Clayco, University of Illinois, supercomputer\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2173:\"<p>The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Super Computing Applications (NCSA) have turned to Clayco Inc. to manage construction of a new facility to house the world&rsquo;s newest and fastest supercomputer.<br /><br />Located in at the northwest corner of Oak Street and St. Mary\\\'s Road in Champaign, the 90,000-square-foot Petascale Computing Facility (PCF) will house Blue Waters, a new supercomputer currently in development, that will be 500 times more powerful than supercomputers currently in use.<br /><br />The PCF will feature a command center, system administration center and office space for 50 staff members. It will also contain a 20,000-square-foot machine room with a six-foot raised floor large enough to house Blue Waters, as well as other systems. Current plans also call for 24 MW electrical capacity and 5,400 tons of water cooling capacity from the University&rsquo;s chilled water distribution loop. <br /><br />Energy efficiency and sustainability are pivotal to the design and construction of this project. The PCF will achieve LEED certification, with LEED Silver certification as the goal.<br /><br />Environmental efforts include building three on-site cooling towers to provide water that has been naturally chilled by the cold outdoor air, rather than electrically cooled and eliminating the installation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply to minimize floor space required and increase energy efficiency. Since Illinois is ranked among the top states in tornado frequency, the building is also designed to withstand an F3 tornado and winds of 165 mph.<br />&nbsp;<br />Clayco&rsquo;s project team includes Steve Street, project executive; Frank Baum, project estimator; Chad Derus, project manager; Frank Wiza, project superintendent; Scott Murnick, project director; and Kevin McKenna, Regional Vice President. The engineering firm is EYP Mission Critical Facilities and the architect is Gensler. The civil engineer is the Terra Technologies, Inc., the structural engineer is Rubinos and Mesia Engineers. Also joining Clayco on the project is Nova, a Mission Critical Contractor based in New York, NY.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(1281,467,4,2,1236063430,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"467\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2009-03-02 05:48 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"43\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:50:\"Construction Materials Prices Drop 0.3% in January\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:48:\"construction_materials_prices_drop_03_in_january\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:50:\"Construction Materials Prices Drop 0.3% in January\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:384:\"The construction materials price index fell 0.3% in January while the price index for the whole economy rose for the second month, Reed Construction Data reported. This was the fourth consecutive monthly decline. Sources for the data in Reed\\\'s price index include the Producer Price Index, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, Federal Reserve Board, and Census Bureau.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:42:\"construction materials price index, Reed, \";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2122:\"<p>The construction materials price index fell 0.3% in January while\nthe price index for the whole economy rose for the second month, Reed Construction Data reported. This\nwas the fourth consecutive monthly decline. Sources for the data in Reed\\\'s price index include the Producer Price Index, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor, Federal Reserve Board, and Census Bureau.</p>\n<p>\\\"The index is now at the\nyear ago level before the world wide commodity boom spiked prices in\nthe middle of 2008. Further declines in the overall construction price\nindex are possible but the expected trend into the fall is for a very\nmodest rise in the index. This will be a combination of further drops\nin energy and metal based products but progressive price firming in\nproducts that include more manufacturing labor,\\\" Reed reported.</p>\n<p>According to the report, energy prices have been stable and metal prices fell further from\nmid-January to mid-February when the survey for the next PPI report was\ntaken. Declining energy and metal prices have not yet fully been passed\nthrough to the prices of products manufactured from these commodities.\nThe final pass through, including into freight rates, will be the key\ndriver of weak materials pricing in the next few months.</p>\n<p>The most significant declines last month were 34% for copper ore,\n23% for asphalt (at the refinery), 7% for extruded aluminum, 5% for\nsteel pipe and 4% for plastic resins and structural steel. The asphalt\nprice drop will partially reverse when the additional $30 B for\nhighways begins to be spent later this year. &ldquo;Paving&rdquo; is the most\nshovel ready of any road project.</p>\n<p>There most significant price increases in January was 2.3% for\nready-mix concrete. Aggregates prices continue to increase, rising 1.3%\nin January. Also steel scrap prices rose 22% in January on top of a\nJanuary increase.</p>\n<p>\\\"But this is random noise in an extremely volatile\nmarket,\\\" Reed stated. \\\"Steel product prices are still declining. Recent scrap price\ntrends probably signal that the drop in steel product prices will be\nending soon.\\\"</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"43\";}'),(1219,447,2,2,1235122226,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2009-02-19 10:26 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";i:1;s:2:\"41\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:43:\"Electrical Contractors Beef Up Engineering \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"electrical_contractors_beef_up_engineering\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:42:\"Electrical Contractors Beef Up Engineering\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:232:\"Whether it is because they want projects completed more quickly or they want to cut energy costs, more owners are calling on electrical contractors to get involved early during project design, and some contractors like it that way.\n\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:30:\"electrical, engineering, green\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:10483:\"<p>Whether it is because they want projects completed more quickly or they want to cut energy costs, more owners are calling on electrical contractors to get involved early during project design, and some contractors like it that way.<br /><br />PayneCrest Electric is one contractor that is doing a lot more electrical engineering as a basic part of its business. In eight years, PayneCrest&rsquo;s total business grew 30 percent, but the engineering staff grew eight-fold, from two engineers to 16, &ldquo;and we like it that way,&rdquo; aid David Payne, president of PayneCrest Electric. &ldquo;We get to control our own destiny and we get to make the drawings the way we like them,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />PayneCrest devoted seven engineers to the Lumiere Hotel and Casino project in downtown St. Louis. The company set up a 1,300-square-foot Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) center on-site and churned out more than 1,500 drawings to provide detailed coordination and accelerate the installation of complex, ever changing, electrical systems, which, in addition to basic electrical wiring, emergency back-up power, and fire alarm systems, also included data, surveillance and advanced video advertising systems.<br /><br />In preparation for its 35-day overhaul of the RT body shop at Chrysler&rsquo;s Fenton Plant to prepare it to make new minivan models, PayneCrest sent four engineers and field supervisors to Detroit for six weeks to the plant where the tool cells were manufactured, assembled and tested.&nbsp; The PayneCrest team recorded digital images of every linear foot of the new cells &ndash; inside and out, assisted in coding assembly and created an assembly package for each cell to ensure accurate assembly in Fenton. The company also performed pre-job engineering and planning to optimize demolition and installation efficiency. Because of the around-the-clock construction schedule involving other trades and contractors, power shutdowns were extremely complex and had to be precisely sequenced to accommodate all work.&nbsp; The schedule changed almost hourly, requiring PayneCrest to constantly redirect resources not only for demolition and installation but to coordinate temporary power and lighting to keep the project moving. <br /><br />At the Pfizer CV SUMP Generator and Power Distribution project in Chesterfield, MO, intense pre-planning also was necessary to comply with Pfizer&rsquo;s insistence on minimizing power outages coordinating them closely with other work to avoid disrupting on-going pharmaceutical research and development.<br /><br />&ldquo;We believe in doing our engineering on the site,&rdquo; Payne said. &ldquo;When we do that, we get to become the nerve center of the job and other trades huddle around our on-site engineering center to solve conflicts. Instead of having someone in Granite City and someone in South County and someone in Olivette trying to figure out how to get something built, we can walk out on the job and solve it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Early Involvement for Faster Construction</strong><br /><br />In Payne&rsquo;s view, owners increasingly are embracing design/build in order move faster and pay less for engineering. &ldquo;Even if they are calling it design assist or they are saying they want you to bid on 70 percent complete drawings, it is really design/build,&rdquo; he said, and that is a trend that he sees growing. &ldquo;Look at InBev,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve greatly reduced Anheuser-Busch&rsquo;s engineering staff. I would bet that because of those cuts they are going to have to shift to design/build,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dan Schaeffer, president of Schaeffer Electric Co., estimated that design/build projects have grown to represent half of his business, and their still growing, even though Schaeffer is not going out on the market as a design/build contractor, he said. Schaeffer Electric is under contract to BJC HealthCare, for example, to provide design/build services to power and install lighting and distribution equipment on four floors of the new Meridian development, located at Hanley Road and Highway 40 in Brentwood, MO.&nbsp; <br /><br />Schaeffer said the chief benefits of design/build are:<br /><br />&bull; Faster project completion.&nbsp; Because building owners are in direct communications with the electrical contractor, the design/build process offers a more streamlined approach to resolving design questions and issues.<br />&nbsp;<br />&bull; Cost savings.&nbsp; The design/build method passes a &ldquo;shell&rdquo; design of a building to electrical contractors who then use their expertise to implement the most energy and cost saving electrical design.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s a savings that is passed directly to the owner because the services are handled directly between the two parties.<br /><br />&bull; Owner options and better end results.&nbsp; The design/build process lends itself to greater communication between the owner and electrical contractor.&nbsp; In talks, both parties can discuss different options to best meet the needs of the owner &ndash; including energy efficient solutions.<br /><br />Schaeffer emphasized that effective design means bringing the electrical contractor in early to work with the architect and engineers, not in place of them. &ldquo;They will design around daylighting or task lighting, for example, and then we might say we can give them the same illumination (from lamps) for less or we can cut the cost of operating that system of illumination. If they are working with daylight harvesting, we can suggest the most effective controls for dimming artificial lighting on a bright day or brightening it on a dark day,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;It is important to get us involved early to avoid conflicts, especially with the HVAC,&rdquo; Schaeffer said. &ldquo;We need to know the electrical loads they will furnish so that we can coordinate and design the electrical system correctly. We have to get power to their system &ndash; it makes a big difference whether it is a big chiller or 10 rooftop units. And what might be more economical to install from the HVAC end, might be more expensive from the electrical end, so we can give the owner different options.&rdquo;<br /><br />Schaeffer&rsquo;s goal is to participate on &ldquo;win/win teams&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When the owner picks a compatible team, it turns out a smooth project,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br /><strong>Early Involvement for a &ldquo;Greener&rdquo; Project</strong><br /><br />Charles Pavalec, president of Bell Electrical Contractors, said owners interested in sustainability and not just speed definitely would get a better project if they involve the electrical contractor early on. &ldquo;In the LEED certification process there is a myriad of points for the different ratings, but in many cases there are tradeoffs between electrical, mechanical or plumbing. For example, you can get points for saving energy a certain amount above an ASHRAE standard or for the number of outside air changes, but those might be in conflict and you have to determine which you want. Having all of the professionals at the table in the beginning gives you a better idea of the costs associated with one path or another,&rdquo; he said. <br /><br />Pavalec knows whereof he speaks. Bell Electrical Contractors has been the electrical contractor on a number of &ldquo;green&rdquo; projects in the St. Louis area, including Washington University&rsquo;s Danforth Student Center, Solae Company&rsquo;s headquarters, the redevelopment of St. Louis Centre, and the John Burroughs Sports and Performing Arts Center. All are LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified projects.<br /><br />Pavalec said that he thinks the future of construction is going to be &ldquo;green.&rdquo; Bell is a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, which is the sponsor of the LEED program. In addition to taking on &ldquo;green&rdquo; projects, Bell incorporates energy-saving concepts and practices into other areas of its business. Bell recycles all of the worn-out florescent light bulbs and exterior lamps collected during the execution of the company&rsquo;s lighting maintenance contracts at an approved facility. The company also participates in Ameren UE&rsquo;s Pure Power program on the Leader Level. Pure Power is a voluntary program that gives AmerenUE electric customers the opportunity to support wind farms and other renewable energy facilities in the Midwest. &ldquo;That currently costs me more money, but in the long run using that renewable resource is good for the community and a good strategic move for Bell. This is not a fad from our end. We&rsquo;ve made a strategic initiative to work on green buildings,&rdquo; Pavalec said.<br /><br />Energy efficiency will be the number one thing that people look for in green buildings, he said. Some of the energy-saving concepts Bell incorporates into its &ldquo;green&rdquo; projects include designing lighting systems in a creative way so that the client will use less wattage per square foot, and the use of occupancy sensors. &ldquo;The architect and the whole team work together to make a green building happen,&rdquo; Pavalec said.<br /><br />Between federal leadership in the public sector and increasing pressures to cut costs in the private sector, the drive for more energy efficient buildings may be what pulls the United States out of recession, he said. On the private side, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve seen the Home Depots, Lowes, and Targets get ahead of the curve and start doing energy retrofits 18 months to 2 years ago, and continue to improve upon them,&rdquo; Pavalec said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve seen a lot of RFPs from owners looking for green building knowledge and wanting to know what we can help them do to save energy,&rdquo; he said. On the public side, from former President George W. Bush&rsquo;s order to all federal agencies to reduce energy use by at least 30 percent from 2003 levels by 2015, to stimulus money for energy efficient retrofits to public buildings, to the new efficiency standards for lighting due out in June, government actions will create demand not just for installation services, but also for value-added consulting services to help building owners sort out their best options. Together, they foreshadow another wave of work for electrical contractors staffed to offer owners early advice on energy efficiency.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"41\";}'),(949,352,2,2,1229671779,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 07:09 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"Land of Lincoln Forecasts Full Tilt Growth\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"land_of_lincoln_forecasts_full_tilt_growth\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:42:\"Land of Lincoln Forccasts Full Tilt Growth\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:234:\"After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:56:\"Southwestern Illinois, Leadership Council, Market Review\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:5625:\"<p>After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois. The organization&rsquo;s 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update shows the total value of projects announced, under construction, or completed during the reporting period ending September 30, 2008 up more than half a billion dollars over the prior year. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Illinois Lincoln\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />The record total includes some highly speculative proposals, such as the $1 billion Martin Aviation luxury office proposal for the Cahokia airport. Nonetheless, the council suggests the metro east has escaped the national economic downturn.<br /><br />&ldquo;In the midst of all the pessimistic news about the slow down in the economy, we&rsquo;re pleased to report that developments were still moving full steam ahead in Southwestern Illinois during the past year,&rdquo; said Suzanne Butler, president of the Leadership Council, the member-based, economic development corporation that compiles the economic data for Madison and St. Clair counties. &ldquo;The continuing investments across so many sectors of our economy reaffirm Southwestern Illinois&rsquo; position as a prime midwestern development location.&rdquo; <br /><br />Among the highlights from this year&rsquo;s report:<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; $2.5 billion in projects were already under construction as of the end of September 2008, and $6.1 billion in additional announced projects included the multi-billion dollar investment at ConocoPhillips, which moved forward later in the fall. In one note of caution, the reports notes that continuing to move projects through the pipeline will be dependent upon solid support from and cooperation with local, national and international funding sources.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; At $6.46 billion, industrial investments represented the largest chunk of the development pipeline.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Commercial investments topped $1.3 billion for the second year in a row, with 87 different projects contributing to the total. Approximately $164 million of the total represents projects already completed, while two thirds of the total consists of projects under construction. Although the pipeline includes over a quarter billion dollars in projects announced, that number is down $60 million from the year prior, an indication that the commercial sector may be slowing a little as the nation&rsquo;s economy continues to struggle. Collinsville and O&rsquo;Fallon remain the two cities with the largest number of projects, 13 and 15 respectively, while the top five projects in terms of investment size can be found in Dupo, Collinsville, Belleville (2) and Shiloh.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Totaling $331.3 million, institutional investments posted a 63 percent increase over the prior year, the largest percentage increase among all the sectors. This sector includes hospitals, medical centers, non-profits and senior housing facilities. Over $200 million in healthcare projects alone drove the impressive increases in the institutional sector, which has seen three years of back-to-back growth.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Office investments totaled $217.7 million, climbing almost 23 percent over the prior year&rsquo;s record total and representing the third consecutive year of investment growth. Almost $62 million in new office projects were delivered during the 12-month reporting period, a 33 percent increase in projects completed compared to the prior year. Collinsville serves as home to one-fourth of all the new office projects moving through the pipeline. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Topping out at $439 million, total investments in the educational sector remained steady over the past year. While the overall investment numbers remain strong in the educational arena, the total value of announced projects decreased by 33 percent compared to the prior period. $262 million of the projects on this year&rsquo;s list are K-12 facilities, while $177 million represents investments in higher education projects. The three largest projects under construction, totaling $93 million, are K-12 projects. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Public investments (excluding transportation) soared to $648.7 million, up 56 percent from last year. This 56 percent gain was on the heels of a 45.5 percent increase the year prior, with projects again ranging from basic infrastructure improvements to recreational amenities to public safety projects. Projects at Scott Air Force Base accounted for $180 million, or more than one-quarter of the total. With over $600 million of the public projects under construction or yet to break ground, investments in this sector should continue to positively impact the local economy for years to come.<br /><br />While the numbers paint a very positive picture for the region, Butler said that sustaining the high level of economic activity will require that new challenges brought on by this growth and the current financial and economic conditions of the country continue to be addressed. &ldquo;The Leadership Council remains confident that individuals from business, industry, government, education and labor will collaboratively address those challenges in a way that moves our region forward,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />The 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update is available online at www.siteselection-il.com<br /></p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:36:\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(950,343,2,2,1229671804,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"343\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-12 03:21 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:37:\"the_man_behind_the_green_leed_curtain\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"The Man Behind the Green (LEED) Curtain\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:464:\"The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale\\\'s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching \\\"Wizard\\\", to reveal a \\\"humbug\\\" patent medicine salesman.  A similar situation exists in the world of green building,  LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings & New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:24:\"LEED, Sammartano, Salian\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:3717:\"<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz comes when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman.&nbsp; A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building,&nbsp; LEED consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP, general manager, Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on Thursday, Nov. 11. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Man Behind the Curtain\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building. While LEED standards have accomplished a lot in terms of establishing a baseline of performance and legitimizing sustainable construction, the unpredictability of quantifiable data on energy savings predicted in LEED models puts the program&rsquo;s credibility at risk, Sammartano said. <br /><br />&ldquo;A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is bringing to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.&nbsp; &ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were also discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED&reg; certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample. <br /><br />&ldquo;One study concluded that the ratio between predicted and measured results were all over the chart, pointing to an unreliability that should make any LEED&reg; practitioner or owner worry.&nbsp; Now government regulations are appearing which require true benchmarking of energy use through Energy Star Portfolio Manager for commercial buildings. <br /><br />&ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED&reg; may not.&nbsp; If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then LEED stands the risk of being passed by these benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.<br /><br />Other speakers included Michael Clark of Green Street Properties, LLC, who said that his company is still seeing strong demand for green construction, even as the economy tanks. &ldquo;Boardrooms are filled with people who are not sophisticated at all about green building but are asking their people, the questions,&rdquo; Clark said. He said that his company has thrived by focusing on marketing to the growing segment of business that is embracing sustainability, and by partnering with governmental entities to make the numbers work on the existing buildings that Green Street redevelops.<br /><br />Other speakers included a panel of attorneys who discussed the potential liabilities and innovative leases needed for green projects and accountant Teri Samples, CPA, shareholder in MPP&amp;W, who presented models for financing, cost accounting, and structuring deals on sustainable projects.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:42:\"/images/uploads/man-behind-the-curtain.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";}'),(951,352,2,2,1229671892,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"352\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 07:09 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"land_of_lincoln_forecasts_full_tilt_growth\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:234:\"After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:56:\"Southwestern Illinois, Leadership Council, Market Review\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:5619:\"<p>After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois. The organization&rsquo;s 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update shows the total value of projects announced, under construction, or completed during the reporting period ending September 30, 2008 up more than half a billion dollars over the prior year. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Illinois Lincoln\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />The record total includes some highly speculative proposals, such as the $1 billion Martin Aviation luxury office proposal for the Cahokia airport. Nonetheless, the council suggests the metro east has escaped the national economic downturn.<br /><br />&ldquo;In the midst of all the pessimistic news about the slow down in the economy, we&rsquo;re pleased to report that developments were still moving full steam ahead in Southwestern Illinois during the past year,&rdquo; said Suzanne Butler, president of the Leadership Council, the member-based, economic development corporation that compiles the economic data for Madison and St. Clair counties. &ldquo;The continuing investments across so many sectors of our economy reaffirm Southwestern Illinois&rsquo; position as a prime midwestern development location.&rdquo; <br /><br />Among the highlights from this year&rsquo;s report:<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; $2.5 billion in projects were already under construction as of the end of September 2008, and $6.1 billion in additional announced projects included the multi-billion dollar investment at ConocoPhillips, which moved forward later in the fall. In one note of caution, the reports notes that continuing to move projects through the pipeline will be dependent upon solid support from and cooperation with local, national and international funding sources.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; At $6.46 billion, industrial investments represented the largest chunk of the development pipeline.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Commercial investments topped $1.3 billion for the second year in a row, with 87 different projects contributing to the total. Approximately $164 million of the total represents projects already completed, while two thirds of the total consists of projects under construction. Although the pipeline includes over a quarter billion dollars in projects announced, that number is down $60 million from the year prior, an indication that the commercial sector may be slowing a little as the nation&rsquo;s economy continues to struggle. Collinsville and O&rsquo;Fallon remain the two cities with the largest number of projects, 13 and 15 respectively, while the top five projects in terms of investment size can be found in Dupo, Collinsville, Belleville (2) and Shiloh.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Totaling $331.3 million, institutional investments posted a 63 percent increase over the prior year, the largest percentage increase among all the sectors. This sector includes hospitals, medical centers, non-profits and senior housing facilities. Over $200 million in healthcare projects alone drove the impressive increases in the institutional sector, which has seen three years of back-to-back growth.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Office investments totaled $217.7 million, climbing almost 23 percent over the prior year&rsquo;s record total and representing the third consecutive year of investment growth. Almost $62 million in new office projects were delivered during the 12-month reporting period, a 33 percent increase in projects completed compared to the prior year. Collinsville serves as home to one-fourth of all the new office projects moving through the pipeline. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Topping out at $439 million, total investments in the educational sector remained steady over the past year. While the overall investment numbers remain strong in the educational arena, the total value of announced projects decreased by 33 percent compared to the prior period. $262 million of the projects on this year&rsquo;s list are K-12 facilities, while $177 million represents investments in higher education projects. The three largest projects under construction, totaling $93 million, are K-12 projects. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Public investments (excluding transportation) soared to $648.7 million, up 56 percent from last year. This 56 percent gain was on the heels of a 45.5 percent increase the year prior, with projects again ranging from basic infrastructure improvements to recreational amenities to public safety projects. Projects at Scott Air Force Base accounted for $180 million, or more than one-quarter of the total. With over $600 million of the public projects under construction or yet to break ground, investments in this sector should continue to positively impact the local economy for years to come.<br /><br />While the numbers paint a very positive picture for the region, Butler said that sustaining the high level of economic activity will require that new challenges brought on by this growth and the current financial and economic conditions of the country continue to be addressed. &ldquo;The Leadership Council remains confident that individuals from business, industry, government, education and labor will collaboratively address those challenges in a way that moves our region forward,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />The 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update is available online at www.siteselection-il.com</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:36:\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(952,353,5,2,1229674463,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 08:52 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"11\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:22:\"Climbing Out Together \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:21:\"climbing_out_together\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:21:\"Climbing Out Together\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:1:\"4\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:307:\"“I can’t believe we got to where we are so fast,â€ Bill Mitchell, general manager of Roland Machinery said to me at the recent Construction Equipment Dealers Association (CEDA) dinner. “Where we areâ€ is, of course, all anyone inside or outside the construction industry is talking about these days.\";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:29:\"recession, green construction\";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:4675:\"<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t believe we got to where we are so fast,&rdquo; Bill Mitchell, general manager of Roland Machinery said to me at the recent Construction Equipment Dealers Association (CEDA) dinner. &ldquo;Where we are&rdquo; is, of course, all anyone inside or outside the construction industry is talking about these days.</p>\n<p>The mood at the dinner was, if anything, even more convivial than in past years (misery loves company). Bill Mitchell was passing out some lapel buttons he had produced with a red circle and slash through the word &ldquo;Recession.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>This certainly isn&rsquo;t our first recession at CNR. January begins the 40th year of CNR as the &ldquo;Voice for the St. Louis Construction Industry&rdquo;. My Dad, who was second-generation construction industry, started the magazine in the middle of an Ironworkers strike. The photo on the first issue\\\'s cover is a collage of shut down projects with the word \\\"Standstill\\\" overprinted on them.</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Tom Mountain Climber\\\" class=\\\"image-right\\\" height=\\\"416\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tom-mountain-climber.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: right;\\\" width=\\\"168\\\" />I came on board as the magazine first broke even following the recession of 1973-75. Since then we\\\'ve weathered the downturns in 1980-82; 1990-91; and 2001-2003.<br />It has been our role through all of those recessions to walk alongside you on the long climb out. Part of that walking alongside is accomplished by giving you information and tools you can use.</p>\n<p>One of the greatest strengths of our local construction industry is the same thing that we complain about in good times: our conservatism and risk aversion. Because the highs here never ascend into the stratosphere, our lows are not as low as many other areas of the country.</p>\n<p>Many contractors and designers I&rsquo;ve talked to have work lined up into the third quarter of next year. The key issue, of course, is financing. &ldquo;I have eight projects,&rdquo; one general told me, &ldquo;not stuff I&rsquo;ve bid on, but stuff with my name on it, that I can&rsquo;t get moving because of money.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>Credit far surpassed any other impediments to recovery in a recent national survey of AGC members, with 83 percent responding that they saw it as their biggest challenge. The next closest was labor at eight percent, followed by fuel prices (four percent).</p>\n<p>Two-thirds predicted growth in sustainability work, with 41 percent saying that \\\"sustainable practices will be big\\\" in the next year and 25 percent predicting that sustainability would be \\\"moderate\\\". Less than 19 percent said \\\"the same as this year\\\" and 12 percent said it would be minimal.<br />While &ldquo;green&rdquo; construction holds promise, one of our town&rsquo;s leaders in this field warns about charging down the sustainable construction path with green-colored spectacles.</p>\n<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz happens when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman. A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building, consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP and general manager of Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on November 11.</p>\n<p>Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building.&ldquo; A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is adding to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were also discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then it stands the risk of being passed by (other) benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"11\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(953,353,5,2,1229674524,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"353\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 08:52 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"11\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"5\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:21:\"Climbing Out Together\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:21:\"climbing_out_together\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:21:\"Climbing Out Together\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:1:\"4\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:307:\"“I can’t believe we got to where we are so fast,â€ Bill Mitchell, general manager of Roland Machinery said to me at the recent Construction Equipment Dealers Association (CEDA) dinner. “Where we areâ€ is, of course, all anyone inside or outside the construction industry is talking about these days.\";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:29:\"recession, green construction\";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:4677:\"<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t believe we got to where we are so fast,&rdquo; Bill Mitchell, general manager of Roland Machinery said to me at the recent Construction Equipment Dealers Association (CEDA) dinner. &ldquo;Where we are&rdquo; is, of course, all anyone inside or outside the construction industry is talking about these days.</p>\n<p>The mood at the dinner was, if anything, even more convivial than in past years (misery loves company). Bill Mitchell was passing out some lapel buttons he had produced with a red circle and slash through the word &ldquo;Recession.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>This certainly isn&rsquo;t our first recession at CNR. January begins the 40th year of CNR as the &ldquo;Voice for the St. Louis Construction Industry&rdquo;. My Dad, who was second-generation construction industry, started the magazine in the middle of an Ironworkers strike. The photo on the first issue\\\'s cover is a collage of shut down projects with the word \\\"Standstill\\\" overprinted on them.</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Tom Mountain Climber\\\" class=\\\"image-right\\\" height=\\\"416\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/tom-mountain-climber.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: right;\\\" width=\\\"168\\\" />I came on board as the magazine first broke even following the recession of 1973-75. Since then we\\\'ve weathered the downturns in 1980-82; 1990-91; and 2001-2003.</p>\n<p>It has been our role through all of those recessions to walk alongside you on the long climb out. Part of that walking alongside is accomplished by giving you information and tools you can use.</p>\n<p>One of the greatest strengths of our local construction industry is the same thing that we complain about in good times: our conservatism and risk aversion. Because the highs here never ascend into the stratosphere, our lows are not as low as many other areas of the country.</p>\n<p>Many contractors and designers I&rsquo;ve talked to have work lined up into the third quarter of next year. The key issue, of course, is financing. &ldquo;I have eight projects,&rdquo; one general told me, &ldquo;not stuff I&rsquo;ve bid on, but stuff with my name on it, that I can&rsquo;t get moving because of money.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>Credit far surpassed any other impediments to recovery in a recent national survey of AGC members, with 83 percent responding that they saw it as their biggest challenge. The next closest was labor at eight percent, followed by fuel prices (four percent).</p>\n<p>Two-thirds predicted growth in sustainability work, with 41 percent saying that \\\"sustainable practices will be big\\\" in the next year and 25 percent predicting that sustainability would be \\\"moderate\\\". Less than 19 percent said \\\"the same as this year\\\" and 12 percent said it would be minimal.<br />While &ldquo;green&rdquo; construction holds promise, one of our town&rsquo;s leaders in this field warns about charging down the sustainable construction path with green-colored spectacles.</p>\n<p>The pivotal scene in the movie The Wizard of Oz happens when Dorothy Gale&rsquo;s dog Toto pulls back a green curtain behind the fire-belching &ldquo;Wizard&rdquo;, to reveal a &ldquo;humbug&rdquo; patent medicine salesman. A similar situation exists in the world of &ldquo;green&rdquo; building, consultant Dan Sammartano, LEED AP and general manager of Salian Commercial Construction Services, told the attendees at the Green Buildings &amp; New Technology Conference held in Clayton on November 11.</p>\n<p>Sammartano, who has consulted on many LEED projects around the country, including the Platinum LEED Alberici building, expressed concern with the current state of LEED building.&ldquo; A recurring theme at the conference was the premium LEED is adding to the value of commercial buildings,&rdquo; Sammartano said.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;This is evidenced by a growing interest in these buildings even during this economic downturn. Preferred lending and increased valuations were also discussed. If we are to put a premium on a building&rsquo;s LEED certification believing they are energy efficient, than the system should assure delivery of the intended efficiencies.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;As a LEED practitioner, I am concerned about the effectiveness of the LEED certification system. If we are to believe LEED brings a premium to owners, lenders and tenants, then we&rsquo;d better make sure it has true value. What has been shown in recent studies is that the energy savings portion of that value cannot be counted on in that sample.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;If LEED doesn&rsquo;t solve the problem of predictive energy use by requiring actual energy use data for certification, then it stands the risk of being passed by (other) benchmarking efforts,&rdquo; Sammartano stated.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"11\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(954,354,10,2,1229675332,'a:32:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:33:\"mo_tools_than_any_other_yard_sale\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:42:\"MOWIT offers tools, art, and tradeswomen. \";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:20:\"MOWIT, tool exchange\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:51:\"MOWIT Offices, 8300 Manchester Road, Brentwood, MO \";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:20:\"2009-04-25  7:00  AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:0:\"\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:15:\"7 a.m. - 5 p.m.\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:1199:\"<p>Missouri Women In Trades (MOWIT) is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes women who work in or are interested in working in the construction building trades is planning a community event and tool sale called Tool Turnaround to be held on Saturday, April 25, 2009.&nbsp; <br /><br />The Tool Turnaround combines great prices on a wide variety of new and used tools with food, knowledge, and fun, free activities.&nbsp; The event will feature: Attendance prizes and raffles; Orientations to careers in the trades; Tradeswoman Challenges; Kids activities; and an Auction of Construction Art, special tools, and Tradeswomen\\\'s Labor.&nbsp; <br /><br />EarlyBird ($10 donation) and VIP Sponsors welcome from 7 a.m. - 9 a.m., and the Tool Turnaround is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., rain or shine.&nbsp; Get a tax deduction for 2008 by donating your new and used tools by December 31, 2008!&nbsp; To arrange tool drop off or pick-up of your tools call Ashley Raineri at 314-335-9956.&nbsp; <br /><br />All proceeds will benefit MOWIT and will further it&rsquo;s mission of promoting the personal and professional empowerment of women in the construction industry.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(955,355,10,2,1229677363,'a:32:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:47 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:31:\"new_concrete_parking_lot_course\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:192:\"The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:28:\"Concrete, Parking Lot, Class\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:29:\"Sheraton Wesport Chalet Hotel\";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:20:\"2009-01-20  8:00  AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:19:\"2009-01-21  5:00 PM\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:27:\"8:00 AM - 5:00 PM both days\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:715:\"<p>The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\" to be held Jan. 20-21 in ST. Louis.</p>\n<p><br />The course is intended for concrete contractors and concrete producers. It provides features and benefits of concrete and asphalt for paved parking areas. It presents the imporantance of marketing and effective presentation skills in the succesfful promotion of concrete parking lots.</p>\n<p><br />For more information and registeration<a href=\\\"http://www.ascconline.org/eventscalendar.asp\\\"> visit the ASCC website</a> or call 314.962-0210 (toll free 866.788.ASCC)</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(956,354,10,2,1229677431,'a:38:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"354\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:6:{i:0;s:2:\"28\";i:1;s:2:\"30\";i:2;s:2:\"23\";i:3;s:2:\"25\";i:4;s:2:\"26\";i:5;s:2:\"24\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:2:\"10\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:33:\"mo_tools_than_any_other_yard_sale\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:42:\"MOWIT offers tools, art, and tradeswomen. \";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:20:\"MOWIT, tool exchange\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:51:\"MOWIT Offices, 8300 Manchester Road, Brentwood, MO \";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:19:\"2009-04-25 07:00 AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:0:\"\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:15:\"7 a.m. - 5 p.m.\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:1199:\"<p>Missouri Women In Trades (MOWIT) is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes women who work in or are interested in working in the construction building trades is planning a community event and tool sale called Tool Turnaround to be held on Saturday, April 25, 2009.&nbsp; <br /><br />The Tool Turnaround combines great prices on a wide variety of new and used tools with food, knowledge, and fun, free activities.&nbsp; The event will feature: Attendance prizes and raffles; Orientations to careers in the trades; Tradeswoman Challenges; Kids activities; and an Auction of Construction Art, special tools, and Tradeswomen\\\'s Labor.&nbsp; <br /><br />EarlyBird ($10 donation) and VIP Sponsors welcome from 7 a.m. - 9 a.m., and the Tool Turnaround is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., rain or shine.&nbsp; Get a tax deduction for 2008 by donating your new and used tools by December 31, 2008!&nbsp; To arrange tool drop off or pick-up of your tools call Ashley Raineri at 314-335-9956.&nbsp; <br /><br />All proceeds will benefit MOWIT and will further it&rsquo;s mission of promoting the personal and professional empowerment of women in the construction industry.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"28\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"30\";s:10:\"category_2\";s:2:\"23\";s:10:\"category_3\";s:2:\"25\";s:10:\"category_4\";s:2:\"26\";s:10:\"category_5\";s:2:\"24\";}'),(957,354,10,2,1229677460,'a:33:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"354\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"24\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:2:\"10\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:33:\"mo_tools_than_any_other_yard_sale\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:33:\"MO Tools Than Any Other Yard Sale\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:42:\"MOWIT offers tools, art, and tradeswomen. \";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:20:\"MOWIT, tool exchange\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:51:\"MOWIT Offices, 8300 Manchester Road, Brentwood, MO \";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:19:\"2009-04-25 07:00 AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:0:\"\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:15:\"7 a.m. - 5 p.m.\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:1199:\"<p>Missouri Women In Trades (MOWIT) is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes women who work in or are interested in working in the construction building trades is planning a community event and tool sale called Tool Turnaround to be held on Saturday, April 25, 2009.&nbsp; <br /><br />The Tool Turnaround combines great prices on a wide variety of new and used tools with food, knowledge, and fun, free activities.&nbsp; The event will feature: Attendance prizes and raffles; Orientations to careers in the trades; Tradeswoman Challenges; Kids activities; and an Auction of Construction Art, special tools, and Tradeswomen\\\'s Labor.&nbsp; <br /><br />EarlyBird ($10 donation) and VIP Sponsors welcome from 7 a.m. - 9 a.m., and the Tool Turnaround is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., rain or shine.&nbsp; Get a tax deduction for 2008 by donating your new and used tools by December 31, 2008!&nbsp; To arrange tool drop off or pick-up of your tools call Ashley Raineri at 314-335-9956.&nbsp; <br /><br />All proceeds will benefit MOWIT and will further it&rsquo;s mission of promoting the personal and professional empowerment of women in the construction industry.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"24\";}'),(958,356,4,2,1229678607,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 10:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:50:\"MoDOT Ready to Go with Economic Stimulus Projects \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:49:\"modot_ready_to_go_with_economic_stimulus_projects\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:49:\"MoDOT Ready to Go with Economic Stimulus Projects\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:264:\"The Missouri Department of Transportation is ready to go with 34 transportation projects that could be awarded within 180 days of passage of an economic stimulus package that contains at least $25 billion for transportation infrastructure investments nationwide.  \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:29:\"MoDOT, Pete Rahn, Ready to Go\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:10607:\"<p>The Missouri Department of Transportation is ready to go with 34\ntransportation projects that could be awarded within 180 days of\npassage of an economic stimulus package that contains at least $25\nbillion for transportation infrastructure investments nationwide.&nbsp; The\nprojects, which would total about $510 million, would create about\n14,000 jobs and have a $2.4 billion impact on the state\\\'s economy.&nbsp;\nGiven additional funding beyond $510 million, significant portions of\nfour additional highway projects totaling roughly $290 million could be\nunder way in 2009.</p>\n<div id=\\\"contenttxt\\\">\n<div id=\\\"bodyArea\\\"><form action=\\\"/eMoDOTWeb/prepareNewsDisplay.do\\\" method=\\\"post\\\" name=\\\"newsDisplayForm\\\">\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"We stand ready to quickly deliver 34\ntransportation improvements that would mean jobs, increased safety and\na better quality of life for Missourians,\\\" MoDOT Director Pete Rahn\nsaid.&nbsp; \\\"These are much-needed projects that will benefit Missouri\ncitizens, and we urge Congress to act positively on an economic\nstimulus package that includes a minimum of $25 billion for\ntransportation infrastructure projects.\\\"</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Ready to Go\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"122\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/ReadytoGo.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"244\\\" />Rahn said federal\nfunding for infrastructure projects would have a vital ripple effect.&nbsp;\nIt would create jobs for road builders and designers and demand for\nrelated supplies and services, as well as further economic development\naround the improvements.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"The job creation will go beyond just\nthose building the projects,\\\" Rahn said. &nbsp;\\\"Suppliers, retailers,\nrestaurants, hotels and other businesses will benefit.\\\"</p>\n<p>MoDOT\nwould be ready to go with about $137 million of work on Interstates 70,\n44, 55, 35 and 29.&nbsp; Approximately $60 million would go toward fixing\nthe state\\\'s lettered routes in rural Missouri.&nbsp; The rest would be used\non a variety of transportation projects throughout the state.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"Under\nour proposed plan, all forms of travel would benefit, not just\nhighways, and projects would be spread throughout the state to ensure\nall regions reap some of the economic gain,\\\" Rahn said.</p>\n<p>Seventeen\nof the proposed projects are already included in the state\\\'s five-year\nconstruction program, but would be sped up, some by up to four years.&nbsp;\nProjects would then be added to the statewide construction program to\nreplace those that were accelerated.&nbsp; Seventeen are new projects that\nhave been identified as regional priorities and on which environmental\nwork and preliminary design are already under way.</p>\n<p>Rahn said\nCongress should not be concerned road and bridge improvements couldn\\\'t\nbe put into place fast enough to provide the desired economic relief.</p>\n<p>\\\"We\nknow we can award $510 million worth of work or more within 180 days of\nthe stimulus bill\\\'s passage, with a considerable amount in less time,\\\"\nRahn said.&nbsp; \\\"Investing in our infrastructure is the best course of\naction Congress could take.&nbsp; Not only would it provide an immediate\neconomic shot in the arm, but it would yield the long-term benefits of\nsafer highways and enhanced quality of life.\\\"</p>\n<p>Rahn said any\nstimulus package couldn\\\'t come too soon.&nbsp; He noted many states have had\nto delay projects because of the decline in revenue generated by fuel\nuse and motor vehicle sales.&nbsp; While MoDOT has not yet had to postpone\nor cancel projects, state revenues are down almost 5 percent for the\nfirst four months of the fiscal year - about an $18 million decline.&nbsp;\nIf the trend continues, the state could face a $73 million shortfall by\nthe end of the fiscal year.</p>\n<p><strong>MoDOT\\\'s Ready-to-Go Transportation Projects</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Adair County, Route 63 </strong>-\nConstruct 6 miles of new two-lane roadway on four-lane right of way on\neast side of Kirksville from Benton Way to southern Route 6\nconnection.&nbsp; <strong>$18 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Atchison County, Route 136</strong> - Painting, new deck and bridge repairs on Missouri River bridge at Brownville, NE.&nbsp; <strong>$9 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Barry/Lawrence/Christian/Greene Counties, Route 60 </strong>- Construct alternating/intermittent passing lanes from east of Chapell Drive in Monett to Kansas Avenue in Republic.&nbsp; <strong>$23 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Barton/Bates Counties, Route 71</strong> - Convert four at-grade intersections at Route 52, Route 126, Routes\nDD/EE and Routes V/C to interchanges as part of I-49 upgrade.&nbsp; <strong>$27 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Benton County, Routes 83/65/7</strong> - Painting and/or rehabilitation of bridges on Route 83 over Truman\nLake near Mockingbird Road; Route 65 over the Osage River near Warsaw;\nand Route 7 over Truman Lake (Osage Arm Bridge and Grand River Arm\nBridge).&nbsp; <strong>$19 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Boone County, Route 63/COLT Railroad</strong> - Build railroad bridge over Route 63 north of Route B in Columbia.&nbsp; <strong>$9 million </strong></p>\n<p><strong>Cape Girardeau County, SEMO Port</strong> - Construct new rail line above flood region.&nbsp; <strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 1 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Vivion Road to 72<sup>nd</sup> Street.&nbsp; <strong>$1.5 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 169 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Route 92 to Route KK.&nbsp; <strong>$1.5 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 210</strong> - Widen to four lanes from Eldon Road to Route 291.&nbsp; <strong>$32 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clinton County, Route 35 - </strong>Resurface north and southbound lanes from north of Shoal Creek to north of Route 116 near Lathrop.&nbsp; <strong>$18 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Cooper County, Route 70</strong> - Pavement improvements on westbound lanes from 0.3 mile east of Route B to Lamine River.&nbsp; <strong>$7 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Crawford County, Route 44</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on westbound lanes from 0.6 mile west of Route H to Phelps County line.&nbsp; <strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Franklin County, Route 44</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on eastbound and westbound lanes from Route 30 to east of Bourbeuse River. &nbsp;<strong>$44 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Greene County, Route 65</strong> - Widen to six lanes from I-44 to Route 60 (James River Freeway).<strong>$37 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Jackson County, Route 150</strong> - Widen from two lanes to four lanes from Horridge Road to Route 291.&nbsp; <strong>$17 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Johnson County, Knob Noster Rail Project</strong> - Construct 0.86 mile of parallel track near Knob Noster and Route 23.&nbsp; <strong>$7 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Johnson County, Skyhaven Airport</strong> - Construct new airport apron.&nbsp; <strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Lafayette County, Route 70</strong> - Pavement improvements on eastbound and westbound lanes from Jackson County line to Odessa.&nbsp; <strong>$8 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Miller County, Route 17</strong> - Replace Osage River bridge 1 mile east of Tuscumbia. <strong>$9 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>New Madrid County, New Madrid Port</strong> - Construct railroad extension and warehouse.<strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Pemiscot County, Route 55</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on northbound lanes from Arkansas state line to I-155.&nbsp; <strong>$11 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Pemiscot/New Madrid Counties, Route 55</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on northbound and southbound lanes from I-155 to Scott County.&nbsp; <strong>$22 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Phelps County, Route 44</strong> - Major pavement rehabilitation/reconstruction on westbound lanes from\nBusiness Loop 44 (Rolla) to Sugartree Road Interchange.&nbsp; <strong>$12 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Platte County, Route 29</strong> - Resurface pavement and shoulders on northbound and southbound lanes at various locations from Route 273 to Vivion Road.&nbsp; <strong>$12 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Charles County 364/94/Page Avenue</strong> - Extend Page Avenue from 0.4 mile east of Jungermann to 0.3 mile west of Central School Road.&nbsp; <strong>$49 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 67 </strong>- Pedestrian improvements from I-270 to Old St. Charles Road.<strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 141</strong> - Add turn and auxiliary lanes from Route 40/I-64 to St. Luke\\\'s Hospital Drive in Chesterfield, and Town and Country.&nbsp; <strong>$8 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route AC </strong>- Pedestrian improvements from Route 67 to I-270.&nbsp; <strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Scott County, Sikeston Memorial Municipal Airport</strong> - Overlay runway at Sikeston Airport.<strong>$3 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Statewide Minor Routes </strong>- Provide 700 to 1,400 miles of pavement improvements to statewide lettered rural routes.&nbsp; <strong>$30 - $60 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Statewide Transit </strong>- Purchase 200 public transit vehicles statewide.&nbsp; <strong>$10 - $20 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Taney County, Route 76 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Roark Valley Road to Gretna.<strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Wayne County, Route 34</strong> - Widen, build shoulders and straighten two locations between Route N and Piedmont.&nbsp; <strong>$16 million</strong></p>\n<p>Given\nadditional funding beyond $510 million, significant portions of these\nfour projects totaling $290 million could be awarded during calendar\nyear 2009.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Jackson County, Route 435/70 Interchange - </strong>Construct\nnew half diamond interchange at Route 40/I-435, replace Blue Ridge\nCut-off bridge over I-70, add lanes to I-70 and modify some ramps.&nbsp; <strong>$32 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Jefferson County, Route 55 </strong>- Add lanes, relocate existing weigh station, replace eight bridges and revise Route M interchange from Route M to Route Z.&nbsp; <strong>$68 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>McDonald County, Route 71</strong> - Construct freeway from Pineville to Arkansas state line.<strong>$74 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 141 </strong>- Construct Route 141 on relocation from Route 340 to St. Luke\\\'s Hospital Drive.&nbsp; <strong>$116 million</strong></p>\n</div>\n</form></div>\n</div>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(959,357,2,2,1229743777,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:232:\"A St. Louis architectural fi rm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation’s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects\nand the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:17:\"Fox, Data Centers\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13571:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural fi rm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects<br />and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009.<br />&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour<br />projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so?<br />Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the<br />data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data<br />center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><br />That energy use is the reason data centers<br />are getting so much attention not just from<br />businesses, which have formed such groups<br />as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save<br />Energy to research and promote energy saving<br />practices, but also from politicians in Congress,<br />who mandated the EPA study.<br />Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only</p>\n<p>one-half of the power consumed by data<br />centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is<br />consumed in power conversions, maintaining<br />the availability of backup power and<br />cooling. They estimated that the power and<br />cooling infrastructure needed to support<br />a server now costs more than the server<br />itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and<br />cooling are escalating so much that they are<br />crowding IT improvements out of budgets.<br />Why are power and cooling costs so high<br />at data centers? Because data center facilities<br />&ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo;<br />Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is<br />converted to heat.&rdquo;<br />The typical data center includes not just<br />racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible<br />power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery<br />backups to keep IT equipment running when<br />there is a temporary loss of power; power<br />distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).<br />Separate and Recycle<br />One of the fi rst things Fox Architects did in<br />their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was<br />to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units,<br />PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the<br />data fl oor. For Monsanto, they designed a twostory<br />building, assigning the electrical and<br />mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and<br />the IT equipment to the second.<br />That did two things: It keeps electrical<br />equipment from adding to the server fl oor<br />heat load and keeps maintenance workers<br />out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t<br />have to worry about dropping something or<br />accidentally hitting something when they turn<br />around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment<br />at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power<br />consumption on every circuit in the data center<br />and backup UPS and emergency generator<br />systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.<br />Moving electrical and cooling equipment<br />off the server fl oor also freed fl oor space for<br />servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take<br />up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center<br />fl oor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said.<br />&ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling<br />off the fl oor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo;<br />said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto<br />prepared to open its new data center, industry<br />publications were still touting software for<br />planning the best confi guration of CRAC units<br />as the cutting edge in cooling effi ciency.<br />Richard Janis, president of the St. Louisbased<br />mechanical and electrical engineering</p>\n<p>company William Tao Associates, has long<br />advocated separating mechanical and<br />electrical equipment from server rooms.<br />The role of the architect, however, is to provide<br />a building design that will do that efficiently<br />without hampering the operations of the<br />server room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded.<br />The next thing Fox Architects did was design<br />the air handling system to use recycled air to<br />cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor.<br />In cooperation with William Tao Associates,<br />they designed a system that supplies cold air<br />at the fl oor of the server room, at whatever<br />temperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust</p>\n<p>the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by<br />the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through<br />a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeter<br />walls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.<br />&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled<br />as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said.<br />&ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the<br />other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the<br />air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That<br />puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight<br />building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses<br />30 percent less energy than its old one.<br />Although not common, and not included in the<br />EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical<br />and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor<br />and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly<br />a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the<br />Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo;<br />Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was<br />that the layout of the building kept down the cost<br />of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and<br />fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.<br />Moving beyond energy savings to energy<br />production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s new<br />data center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will<br />gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from<br />the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";}'),(960,357,2,2,1229755652,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"357\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:231:\"A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation’s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects\nand the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:35:\"Fox, Data Centers, Monanto, Emerson\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13615:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects<br />and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Monsanto Data Center\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Fox Architects has&nbsp; developed an approach to corporate data center design that combines energy conservation with human resource considerations. George Osman, Monsanto\\\'s director of operations and engineering&nbsp; and Bob Dunn, principal, Fox Architects, in front of the Monsanto data center\\\'s hurricane-proof sunlight screen.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so? Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>That energy use is the reason data centers are getting so much attention not just from businesses, which have formed such groups as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save Energy to research and promote energy saving practices, but also from politicians in Congress, who mandated the EPA study.Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only one-half of the power consumed by data centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is consumed in power conversions, maintaining the availability of backup power and cooling. They estimated that the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support a server now costs more than the server itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and cooling are escalating so much that they are crowding IT improvements out of budgets.</p>\n<p>Why are power and cooling costs so high at data centers? Because data center facilities &ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo; Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is converted to heat.&rdquo; The typical data center includes not just racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery backups to keep IT equipment running when there is a temporary loss of power; power distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).</p>\n<p><strong>Separate and Recycle</strong></p>\n<p><br />One of the first things Fox Architects did in their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units, PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the data floor. For Monsanto, they designed a two story building, assigning the electrical and mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and the IT equipment to the second. That did two things: It keeps electricalequipment from adding to the server floor heat load and keeps maintenance workers out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t have to worry about dropping something or accidentally hitting something when they turn around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power consumption on every circuit in the data center and backup UPS and emergency generator systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.</p>\n<p>Moving electrical and cooling equipment off the server floor also freed fl oor space for servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center floor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling off the floor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo; said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto prepared to open its new data center, industry publications were still touting software for planning the best configuration of CRAC units as the cutting edge in cooling efficiency.</p>\n<p>Richard Janis, president of the St. Loui based mechanical and electrical engineering company William Tao Associates, has long advocated separating mechanical andelectrical equipment from server rooms. The role of the architect, however, is to provide a building design that will do that efficiently without hampering the operations of theserver room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded. The next thing Fox Architects did was design the air handling system to use recycled air to cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor. In cooperation with William Tao Associates, they designed a system that supplies cold air at the fl oor of the server room, at whatevertemperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeterwalls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said. &ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses 30 percent less energy than its old one.</p>\n<p>Although not common, and not included in the EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo; Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was that the layout of the building kept down the cost of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>Moving beyond energy savings to energy production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s newmdata center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:28:\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";}'),(961,352,2,2,1229755676,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"352\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 07:09 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"land_of_lincoln_forecasts_full_tilt_growth\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:234:\"After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:56:\"Southwestern Illinois, Leadership Council, Market Review\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:5619:\"<p>After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois. The organization&rsquo;s 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update shows the total value of projects announced, under construction, or completed during the reporting period ending September 30, 2008 up more than half a billion dollars over the prior year. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Illinois Lincoln\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />The record total includes some highly speculative proposals, such as the $1 billion Martin Aviation luxury office proposal for the Cahokia airport. Nonetheless, the council suggests the metro east has escaped the national economic downturn.<br /><br />&ldquo;In the midst of all the pessimistic news about the slow down in the economy, we&rsquo;re pleased to report that developments were still moving full steam ahead in Southwestern Illinois during the past year,&rdquo; said Suzanne Butler, president of the Leadership Council, the member-based, economic development corporation that compiles the economic data for Madison and St. Clair counties. &ldquo;The continuing investments across so many sectors of our economy reaffirm Southwestern Illinois&rsquo; position as a prime midwestern development location.&rdquo; <br /><br />Among the highlights from this year&rsquo;s report:<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; $2.5 billion in projects were already under construction as of the end of September 2008, and $6.1 billion in additional announced projects included the multi-billion dollar investment at ConocoPhillips, which moved forward later in the fall. In one note of caution, the reports notes that continuing to move projects through the pipeline will be dependent upon solid support from and cooperation with local, national and international funding sources.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; At $6.46 billion, industrial investments represented the largest chunk of the development pipeline.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Commercial investments topped $1.3 billion for the second year in a row, with 87 different projects contributing to the total. Approximately $164 million of the total represents projects already completed, while two thirds of the total consists of projects under construction. Although the pipeline includes over a quarter billion dollars in projects announced, that number is down $60 million from the year prior, an indication that the commercial sector may be slowing a little as the nation&rsquo;s economy continues to struggle. Collinsville and O&rsquo;Fallon remain the two cities with the largest number of projects, 13 and 15 respectively, while the top five projects in terms of investment size can be found in Dupo, Collinsville, Belleville (2) and Shiloh.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Totaling $331.3 million, institutional investments posted a 63 percent increase over the prior year, the largest percentage increase among all the sectors. This sector includes hospitals, medical centers, non-profits and senior housing facilities. Over $200 million in healthcare projects alone drove the impressive increases in the institutional sector, which has seen three years of back-to-back growth.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Office investments totaled $217.7 million, climbing almost 23 percent over the prior year&rsquo;s record total and representing the third consecutive year of investment growth. Almost $62 million in new office projects were delivered during the 12-month reporting period, a 33 percent increase in projects completed compared to the prior year. Collinsville serves as home to one-fourth of all the new office projects moving through the pipeline. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Topping out at $439 million, total investments in the educational sector remained steady over the past year. While the overall investment numbers remain strong in the educational arena, the total value of announced projects decreased by 33 percent compared to the prior period. $262 million of the projects on this year&rsquo;s list are K-12 facilities, while $177 million represents investments in higher education projects. The three largest projects under construction, totaling $93 million, are K-12 projects. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Public investments (excluding transportation) soared to $648.7 million, up 56 percent from last year. This 56 percent gain was on the heels of a 45.5 percent increase the year prior, with projects again ranging from basic infrastructure improvements to recreational amenities to public safety projects. Projects at Scott Air Force Base accounted for $180 million, or more than one-quarter of the total. With over $600 million of the public projects under construction or yet to break ground, investments in this sector should continue to positively impact the local economy for years to come.<br /><br />While the numbers paint a very positive picture for the region, Butler said that sustaining the high level of economic activity will require that new challenges brought on by this growth and the current financial and economic conditions of the country continue to be addressed. &ldquo;The Leadership Council remains confident that individuals from business, industry, government, education and labor will collaboratively address those challenges in a way that moves our region forward,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />The 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update is available online at www.siteselection-il.com</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:36:\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";}'),(962,357,2,2,1229755709,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"357\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:230:\"A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation\\\'s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects\nand the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:35:\"Fox, Data Centers, Monanto, Emerson\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13615:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects<br />and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Monsanto Data Center\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Fox Architects has&nbsp; developed an approach to corporate data center design that combines energy conservation with human resource considerations. George Osman, Monsanto\\\'s director of operations and engineering&nbsp; and Bob Dunn, principal, Fox Architects, in front of the Monsanto data center\\\'s hurricane-proof sunlight screen.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so? Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>That energy use is the reason data centers are getting so much attention not just from businesses, which have formed such groups as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save Energy to research and promote energy saving practices, but also from politicians in Congress, who mandated the EPA study.Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only one-half of the power consumed by data centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is consumed in power conversions, maintaining the availability of backup power and cooling. They estimated that the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support a server now costs more than the server itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and cooling are escalating so much that they are crowding IT improvements out of budgets.</p>\n<p>Why are power and cooling costs so high at data centers? Because data center facilities &ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo; Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is converted to heat.&rdquo; The typical data center includes not just racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery backups to keep IT equipment running when there is a temporary loss of power; power distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).</p>\n<p><strong>Separate and Recycle</strong></p>\n<p><br />One of the first things Fox Architects did in their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units, PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the data floor. For Monsanto, they designed a two story building, assigning the electrical and mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and the IT equipment to the second. That did two things: It keeps electricalequipment from adding to the server floor heat load and keeps maintenance workers out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t have to worry about dropping something or accidentally hitting something when they turn around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power consumption on every circuit in the data center and backup UPS and emergency generator systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.</p>\n<p>Moving electrical and cooling equipment off the server floor also freed fl oor space for servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center floor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling off the floor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo; said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto prepared to open its new data center, industry publications were still touting software for planning the best configuration of CRAC units as the cutting edge in cooling efficiency.</p>\n<p>Richard Janis, president of the St. Loui based mechanical and electrical engineering company William Tao Associates, has long advocated separating mechanical andelectrical equipment from server rooms. The role of the architect, however, is to provide a building design that will do that efficiently without hampering the operations of theserver room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded. The next thing Fox Architects did was design the air handling system to use recycled air to cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor. In cooperation with William Tao Associates, they designed a system that supplies cold air at the fl oor of the server room, at whatevertemperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeterwalls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said. &ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses 30 percent less energy than its old one.</p>\n<p>Although not common, and not included in the EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo; Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was that the layout of the building kept down the cost of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>Moving beyond energy savings to energy production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s newmdata center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:28:\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";}'),(963,357,2,2,1229756221,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"357\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:230:\"A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation\\\'s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects\nand the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:35:\"Fox, Data Centers, Monanto, Emerson\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13610:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Monsanto Data Center\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Fox Architects has&nbsp; developed an approach to corporate data center design that combines energy conservation with human resource considerations. George Osman, Monsanto\\\'s director of operations and engineering&nbsp; and Bob Dunn, principal, Fox Architects, in front of the Monsanto data center\\\'s hurricane-proof sunlight screen.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so? Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>That energy use is the reason data centers are getting so much attention not just from businesses, which have formed such groups as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save Energy to research and promote energy saving practices, but also from politicians in Congress, who mandated the EPA study.Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only one-half of the power consumed by data centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is consumed in power conversions, maintaining the availability of backup power and cooling. They estimated that the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support a server now costs more than the server itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and cooling are escalating so much that they are crowding IT improvements out of budgets.</p>\n<p>Why are power and cooling costs so high at data centers? Because data center facilities &ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo; Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is converted to heat.&rdquo; The typical data center includes not just racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery backups to keep IT equipment running when there is a temporary loss of power; power distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).</p>\n<p><strong>Separate and Recycle</strong></p>\n<p><br />One of the first things Fox Architects did in their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units, PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the data floor. For Monsanto, they designed a two story building, assigning the electrical and mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and the IT equipment to the second. That did two things: It keeps electricalequipment from adding to the server floor heat load and keeps maintenance workers out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t have to worry about dropping something or accidentally hitting something when they turn around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power consumption on every circuit in the data center and backup UPS and emergency generator systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.</p>\n<p>Moving electrical and cooling equipment off the server floor also freed fl oor space for servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center floor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling off the floor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo; said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto prepared to open its new data center, industry publications were still touting software for planning the best configuration of CRAC units as the cutting edge in cooling efficiency.</p>\n<p>Richard Janis, president of the St. Loui based mechanical and electrical engineering company William Tao Associates, has long advocated separating mechanical andelectrical equipment from server rooms. The role of the architect, however, is to provide a building design that will do that efficiently without hampering the operations of theserver room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded. The next thing Fox Architects did was design the air handling system to use recycled air to cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor. In cooperation with William Tao Associates, they designed a system that supplies cold air at the fl oor of the server room, at whatevertemperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeterwalls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said. &ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses 30 percent less energy than its old one.</p>\n<p>Although not common, and not included in the EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo; Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was that the layout of the building kept down the cost of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>Moving beyond energy savings to energy production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s newmdata center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:28:\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";}'),(964,357,2,2,1229756243,'a:29:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"357\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:230:\"A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation\\\'s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects and the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:35:\"Fox, Data Centers, Monanto, Emerson\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13610:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Monsanto Data Center\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Fox Architects has&nbsp; developed an approach to corporate data center design that combines energy conservation with human resource considerations. George Osman, Monsanto\\\'s director of operations and engineering&nbsp; and Bob Dunn, principal, Fox Architects, in front of the Monsanto data center\\\'s hurricane-proof sunlight screen.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so? Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>That energy use is the reason data centers are getting so much attention not just from businesses, which have formed such groups as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save Energy to research and promote energy saving practices, but also from politicians in Congress, who mandated the EPA study.Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only one-half of the power consumed by data centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is consumed in power conversions, maintaining the availability of backup power and cooling. They estimated that the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support a server now costs more than the server itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and cooling are escalating so much that they are crowding IT improvements out of budgets.</p>\n<p>Why are power and cooling costs so high at data centers? Because data center facilities &ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo; Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is converted to heat.&rdquo; The typical data center includes not just racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery backups to keep IT equipment running when there is a temporary loss of power; power distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).</p>\n<p><strong>Separate and Recycle</strong></p>\n<p><br />One of the first things Fox Architects did in their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units, PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the data floor. For Monsanto, they designed a two story building, assigning the electrical and mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and the IT equipment to the second. That did two things: It keeps electricalequipment from adding to the server floor heat load and keeps maintenance workers out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t have to worry about dropping something or accidentally hitting something when they turn around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power consumption on every circuit in the data center and backup UPS and emergency generator systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.</p>\n<p>Moving electrical and cooling equipment off the server floor also freed fl oor space for servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center floor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling off the floor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo; said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto prepared to open its new data center, industry publications were still touting software for planning the best configuration of CRAC units as the cutting edge in cooling efficiency.</p>\n<p>Richard Janis, president of the St. Loui based mechanical and electrical engineering company William Tao Associates, has long advocated separating mechanical andelectrical equipment from server rooms. The role of the architect, however, is to provide a building design that will do that efficiently without hampering the operations of theserver room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded. The next thing Fox Architects did was design the air handling system to use recycled air to cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor. In cooperation with William Tao Associates, they designed a system that supplies cold air at the fl oor of the server room, at whatevertemperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeterwalls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said. &ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses 30 percent less energy than its old one.</p>\n<p>Although not common, and not included in the EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo; Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was that the layout of the building kept down the cost of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>Moving beyond energy savings to energy production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s newmdata center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:28:\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";}'),(965,352,2,2,1229884575,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"352\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 07:09 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";i:1;s:2:\"31\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"land_of_lincoln_forecasts_full_tilt_growth\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:47:\"Land of Lincoln Posted Full Tilt Growth in 2008\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:234:\"After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:56:\"Southwestern Illinois, Leadership Council, Market Review\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:5619:\"<p>After shattering records in 2006-2007, the development pipeline for Southwestern Illinois continued to swell over the past year, reaching a new high of more than $9.4 billion, according to the Leadership Council Southwestern Illinois. The organization&rsquo;s 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update shows the total value of projects announced, under construction, or completed during the reporting period ending September 30, 2008 up more than half a billion dollars over the prior year. <br /><br /><img alt=\\\"Illinois Lincoln\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />The record total includes some highly speculative proposals, such as the $1 billion Martin Aviation luxury office proposal for the Cahokia airport. Nonetheless, the council suggests the metro east has escaped the national economic downturn.<br /><br />&ldquo;In the midst of all the pessimistic news about the slow down in the economy, we&rsquo;re pleased to report that developments were still moving full steam ahead in Southwestern Illinois during the past year,&rdquo; said Suzanne Butler, president of the Leadership Council, the member-based, economic development corporation that compiles the economic data for Madison and St. Clair counties. &ldquo;The continuing investments across so many sectors of our economy reaffirm Southwestern Illinois&rsquo; position as a prime midwestern development location.&rdquo; <br /><br />Among the highlights from this year&rsquo;s report:<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; $2.5 billion in projects were already under construction as of the end of September 2008, and $6.1 billion in additional announced projects included the multi-billion dollar investment at ConocoPhillips, which moved forward later in the fall. In one note of caution, the reports notes that continuing to move projects through the pipeline will be dependent upon solid support from and cooperation with local, national and international funding sources.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; At $6.46 billion, industrial investments represented the largest chunk of the development pipeline.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Commercial investments topped $1.3 billion for the second year in a row, with 87 different projects contributing to the total. Approximately $164 million of the total represents projects already completed, while two thirds of the total consists of projects under construction. Although the pipeline includes over a quarter billion dollars in projects announced, that number is down $60 million from the year prior, an indication that the commercial sector may be slowing a little as the nation&rsquo;s economy continues to struggle. Collinsville and O&rsquo;Fallon remain the two cities with the largest number of projects, 13 and 15 respectively, while the top five projects in terms of investment size can be found in Dupo, Collinsville, Belleville (2) and Shiloh.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Totaling $331.3 million, institutional investments posted a 63 percent increase over the prior year, the largest percentage increase among all the sectors. This sector includes hospitals, medical centers, non-profits and senior housing facilities. Over $200 million in healthcare projects alone drove the impressive increases in the institutional sector, which has seen three years of back-to-back growth.<br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Office investments totaled $217.7 million, climbing almost 23 percent over the prior year&rsquo;s record total and representing the third consecutive year of investment growth. Almost $62 million in new office projects were delivered during the 12-month reporting period, a 33 percent increase in projects completed compared to the prior year. Collinsville serves as home to one-fourth of all the new office projects moving through the pipeline. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Topping out at $439 million, total investments in the educational sector remained steady over the past year. While the overall investment numbers remain strong in the educational arena, the total value of announced projects decreased by 33 percent compared to the prior period. $262 million of the projects on this year&rsquo;s list are K-12 facilities, while $177 million represents investments in higher education projects. The three largest projects under construction, totaling $93 million, are K-12 projects. <br /><br />&bull;&nbsp; Public investments (excluding transportation) soared to $648.7 million, up 56 percent from last year. This 56 percent gain was on the heels of a 45.5 percent increase the year prior, with projects again ranging from basic infrastructure improvements to recreational amenities to public safety projects. Projects at Scott Air Force Base accounted for $180 million, or more than one-quarter of the total. With over $600 million of the public projects under construction or yet to break ground, investments in this sector should continue to positively impact the local economy for years to come.<br /><br />While the numbers paint a very positive picture for the region, Butler said that sustaining the high level of economic activity will require that new challenges brought on by this growth and the current financial and economic conditions of the country continue to be addressed. &ldquo;The Leadership Council remains confident that individuals from business, industry, government, education and labor will collaboratively address those challenges in a way that moves our region forward,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />The 2007-2008 Market Review and Investment Update is available online at www.siteselection-il.com</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:36:\"/images/uploads/illinois-lincoln.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"31\";}'),(966,358,4,2,1229977043,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-22 09:14 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"5\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:29:\"SITE Announces 2009 Officers \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:28:\"site_announces_2009_officers\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:28:\"SITE Announces 2009 Officers\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:134:\"SITE Improvement Association of St. Louis, celebrating its 42nd year, recently announced its new 2009 officers and board of directors.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:26:\"SITE Improvement, officers\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2297:\"<p><a href=\\\"ww.sitestl.org\\\">SITE Improvement Association of St. Louis,</a> celebrating its 42nd year, recently announced its new 2009 officers and board of directors. SITE represents contractors involved in jobsite preparation work, including concrete, earthmoving, landscaping, asphalt paving, highway/bridge, sewer/utility and various specialty trades. <br />&nbsp;<br />The newly elected 2009 board officers are Andy D. Ernst of Pace Construction Company serving as president; Tom Milne of Oreo &amp; Botta Concrete as vice president; and Peggy McGrath of TraMar Contracting as the secretary/treasurer. <br />&nbsp;<br />In addition to the officers, other board members for 2009, effective Jan. 1, include: Keith Ahal of Ahal Contracting and Milne representing the concrete division; Dave Bangert, Limited Leasing, and Brenda Mainer, J.D. Kutter Insurance, representing the associates; Terry Daub, Kirkwood Excavating, and Mike Steiniger, Kuesel Excavating, leading the earthmoving division; Andy Ernst, <br />&nbsp;<br />Pace Construction Co., and Jim Fitzgerald, N.B. West Contracting, representing the highway/bridge division; Mark Roden of Roden&rsquo;s Landscaping and Scott Rozier, Rosch Company, LLC, co-directing the landscaping division; Dan Lucas, Accurate Asphalt Paving, and Joe Leritz, Leritz Contracting, representing the asphalt paving division; and Bill Bollmeier, C.E. Bollmeier, and Frank Marchesi Sr., Bi-State Utilities, representing the sewer/utility division. Terry McDannold, Park Mark Inc., along with McGrath, will lead the specialty division. <br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;We are very pleased to see new emerging leadership within our organization,&rdquo; said Jay Schultehenrich, executive director of SITE. &ldquo;The leadership transition was minimal because we have several returning members as well. We welcome Peggy McGrath into her new position as she is the first elected female officer on the SITE board.&rdquo;<br />&nbsp;<br />Founded in 1966, SITE Improvement Association has 200 contractor and associate members. It offers legislative action, education and safety programs, labor relations and social networking opportunities. SITE was a leading supporter of Work Zone Safety legislation and continues to be a strong advocate of accident-free work zones.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"5\";}'),(967,359,2,2,1230223662,'a:28:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 05:43 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"House of Cards:  The Collapse of Demand Electric \";s:9:\"url_title\";s:46:\"house_of_cards_the_collapse_of_demand_electric\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:48:\"House of Cards:  The Collapse of Demand Electric\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:183:\"Fueled by a high octane credit line, Demand Electric was a bright, soaring star among St. Louis specialty contractors. But when the credit ran out, Demand came crashing back to earth.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:48:\"Demand Electric, The Business Bank, IBEW Local 1\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:6711:\"<p>Fueled by a high octane credit line, Demand Electric was a bright, soaring star among St. Louis specialty contractors. But when the credit ran out, Demand came crashing back to earth.</p>\n<p>Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical\nCompany, started Demand Electric in August 2003 with six employees. In\nan industry where it is rare for companies to more than double in size\nin five years, Demand Electric grew almost 20-fold in that time,\nreporting revenues of $22 million for 2007 and employing over 100\nworkers right before the company&rsquo;s sudden collapse in August 2008.&nbsp;\nIndustry watchers described the company&rsquo;s growth as &ldquo;astronomical&rdquo; or\n&ldquo;extraordinary.&rdquo; Demand&rsquo;s growth was so rapid that Demand made the St.\nLouis Business Journal&rsquo;s 2008 list of the 25 fastest growing private\ncompanies in St. Louis.<br /> <br /> <img alt=\\\"Demand Electric\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/demand-electric.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />CNR\nhas pieced together one version of Demand Electrics sudden ascent and\nsubsequent crash from sources familiar with the company, all of whom\ndemanded anonymity. The principals of the story &ndash; Dave Daugherty, his\nbank, and the leaders of Local 1 of the IBEW (International Brotherhood\nof Electrical Workers) &ndash; were unavailable for comment, as they had all\nagreed not to talk about the company.<br /> <br /> By all accounts Daugherty was a go-getter and a risk-taker. He had a\nnew vision of how to operate a commercial contracting business in St.\nLouis, a vision born of watching highly leveraged companies in other\nindustry sectors, and he worked hard to make it a reality. He also was\noutspokenly critical of what he saw as the timid or conservative\nbusiness practices of the local construction industry.<br /> <br /> What made Daugherty so outstanding, however, was not so much his\nattitude, as the confluence of his attitude with a credit bubble that\nallowed him to put his ideas into practice using other people&rsquo;s money.\nNew contractors typically have to put up everything they own in order\nto get a line of credit that isn&rsquo;t worth much more than their assets.\nContractors like to say, with just a bit of exaggeration, that banks\naren&rsquo;t lending them any money that the contractors don&rsquo;t already have.\nThe failure rate for new companies is quite high and lenders generally\nwant to make sure that there are sufficient physical assets pledged to\nthe loan that they can recover their money if a business fails.\nSimilarly, as contractors become established, they generally grow\nslowly because lenders still want to make sure there are sufficient\nassets pledged to cover the loan if the business fails. In effect,\nlenders are turning a contractor&rsquo;s fixed assets into cash so he can\noperate.<br /> <br /> Daugherty, however, found a banker during the inflationary period of\nthe credit bubble willing to lend him much more than he was worth so\nthat he could grow his business. That lender was The Business Bank of\nSt. Louis. The result was that Demand Electric was incredibly leveraged\nwith debt&nbsp;&mdash; observers say uniquely so.<br /> <br /> Daugherty used debt to fuel Demand&rsquo;s growth. His salesmanship convinced\nowners and general contractors to give him opportunities, but debt\nallowed him to take advantage of them. His growth was so rapid that\nincome from completed jobs was not enough to fund new work. He was\nrelying on his credit line to buy supplies and meet his ever expanding\npayroll.<br /> <br /> Earlier this year, Demand Electric reported that revenues in 2007\nreached $22 million. Times, however, were changing, and Demand Electric\nseemed unprepared for the backlash in the credit markets following the\ncollapse of speculative mortgage lending. Federal bank examiners began\ntelling banks to reduce their exposure in real estate and construction.\nWhether that is what prompted The Business Bank to take another look at\nDemand Electric&rsquo;s account, we don&rsquo;t know. In any event, the bank did\nlook again at Demand credit line and its collateral, and did not like\nwhat it saw.<br /> <br /> Some sources familiar with Demand Electric blame The Business Bank for\nDemand&rsquo;s sudden demise. They say the bank&rsquo;s decision in August 2008 to\ndeny Daugherty access to the remaining money in his line of credit is\nwhat did him in. <br /> <br /> But Demand was in trouble before that decision. A month before, Demand\nElectric&rsquo;s landlord had filed suit to evict the company from its\noffices at 1846 Craig Park Ct. for nonpayment of rent. The first vendor\nlawsuit against Demand Electric was filed in July, too.<br /> <br /> When The Business Bank told Daugherty that they were reducing his line\nof credit by one-third to the amount he had already borrowed, he\nreportedly told the bank that he needed the additional credit to meet\npayroll, and that he was relying on that line of credit exclusively for\nthe capital for the jobs he had undertaken, sources said. That is when\nthe bank became seriously concerned. They declined to give Daugherty\nany additional money. Daugherty reportedly shopped around for another\nloan, but could not find a willing lender. The following Monday The\nBusiness Bank took control of his office and all of his business\nrecords. In the meantime, he had laid-off all of his workers, because\nhe lacked any ability to pay them.<br /> <br /> &ldquo;It was one of the most disruptive closings the industry has ever\nexperienced,&rdquo; one source said. St. Louis Community College&rsquo;s\ndistrict-wide science lab renovation program was one of the building\nprograms affected by Demand&rsquo;s collapse. The construction manager, S.M.\nWilson &amp; Co., was able to get Aschinger Electric on board to\nreplace Demand in short order. Some of the other affected projects\ninvolved Peruque Station in St. Charles County, Duke Realty&rsquo;s Maryville\nCentre, Charter Development Group, and Christian Hospital Northeast.<br /> <br /> The bank&rsquo;s takeover set in motion an avalanche of work for lawyers.\nIBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against\nDemand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence\nCounseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical\nindustry trust funds. The settlement of that case included a gag order\non the principals involved. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s\nlien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach\nof contract. Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, Butler\nSupply Co., and Warren Sign Co. all followed with their own liens.<br /></p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:35:\"/images/uploads/demand-electric.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";}'),(968,360,4,2,1230224969,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:03 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest HIt in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"midwest_takes_biggest_hit_in_architectural_billings_drop\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest HIt in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:207:\"The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the lowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8 just one year prior. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:33:\"AIA, architectural billings, drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1419:\"<p>The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the\nlowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8\njust one year prior.</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Architectural Billlings\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"305\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/arch-billings.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"477\\\" />The inquiries score also hit a record low in November: 38.3,  down from 51 in September.</p>\n<p>The American Institute of Architects (AIA) compiles the index based\non surveys sent to mostly commercial architects. The index has fallen\nbelow 50 for 10 straight months (a number below 50 indicates a decrease\nin billings).</p>\n<p>The commercial sector has taken a steep dive, hitting 26.7 in\nNovember. Multi-family residential was also down, from October&rsquo;s 32.5\nto 30. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s just as troubling is that the institutional\nsector&mdash;schools, hospitals, and public buildings&mdash;is also beginning to\nreact to tighter credit conditions and a weakening economy,&rdquo; says\nKermit Baker, the AIA&rsquo;s chief economist. The institutional score dipped\nto 40.8 in November, down from 41.3 in October, and 44.4 in September.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>In terms of regions, all had record-low scores. The Midwest had the\nlowest: 31.4. The West dipped to 33.5; the South, 36.8; and the\nNortheast, 39.5.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<h4>Graph courtesy of AIA</h4>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(969,361,5,2,1230226241,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:25 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"21\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:53:\"data_centers_require_extraordinary_planning_expertise\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:232:\"The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities. \";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:24:\"data centers, planning, \";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:6163:\"<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<h4><strong>By Fred Jaeckle and Brian Nuehring</strong></h4>\n<p>The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities.&nbsp; While the end result for many organizations is a sleek new facility humming with machines and activity, none of it would be possible without an extraordinary level of upfront planning and teamwork involving many technical experts and a knowledgeable construction manager/general contractor (CM/GC)to lead the process.</p>\n<p>Most data centers today are designed and built to address tomorrow&rsquo;s information processing needs.&nbsp; Given the complexities and new technologies impacting most industries, anticipating the future needs of a new data center is no easy task.&nbsp; The healthcare industry provides an excellent example.</p>\n<p>Healthcare systems are among the fastest-growing users of data centers.&nbsp; Automated medical records keeping, electronic imaging, surgical robotics, advanced telecommunications, increasingly sophisticated medical procedures and multi-location facilities are just some of the recent developments that directly impact the IT support requirements of nearly every hospital and hospital system.</p>\n<p>No matter the industry involved, the first and most important step in building a new or expanded data center is a commitment to careful planning and collaboration among its many stakeholders.&nbsp; At the very least this should involve the organization&rsquo;s IT department leadership, its facilities management department, and the project&rsquo;s CM/GC, architect and data center planning consultants.</p>\n<p>The first step is to determine and clearly define the needs and goals of the data center, in both the short term and the longer term.&nbsp; There are many important and intertwining considerations to be determined in the pre-construction phase of a data center project, including:</p>\n<p>- Physical site selection (available site, affordable, convenience, access to power sources and landlines)</p>\n<p>- Anticipated computing load, data storage requirements and related equipment needs</p>\n<p>- Security requirements and tier ratings (vulnerability to natural disaster, terrorism acts, regulatory and legal requirements)</p>\n<p>- Number of years the data center will fulfill the organization&rsquo;s planned needs</p>\n<p>- Migration plan from current data facilities to the new/expanded facilities</p>\n<p>- Capability for future equipment and operational upgrades within the planned facility</p>\n<p>- Mechanical systems and physical plant requirements to support the planned facility.</p>\n<p>The planning team must make these and other important decisions, and resolve the competing (and often conflicting) situations that accompany these decisions.&nbsp; Once this is accomplished, the team&rsquo;s attention shifts to operational planning.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>As data centers become bigger and more sophisticated, they require more power and generate much more heat per square foot than today&rsquo;s facilities.&nbsp; There are &lsquo;green&rsquo; equipment choices now available to help mitigate the operating costs of data centers, such as higher voltage European-style equipment that operates on less amperage and requires less electricity than traditional American-made equipment.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Power needs and heat generation also has major implications for data floor design and usage, as well as cooling, electrical and power systems designs.&nbsp; Keeping data centers cooled is no easy task, particularly when the computing equipment and floor layout creates numerous &lsquo;hot spots&rsquo; that must be addressed.</p>\n<p>Air and water-based cooling systems are both available, although the water-based systems are now in greater demand due to their cooling efficiency and lower overall energy usage.&nbsp; Both options have &lsquo;green&rsquo; features, such as re-use and re-circulation of air and water.&nbsp; However, air-based cooling systems do require the use of chemical refrigerants. The design and implementation of these systems requires a contractor with a strong sense of mechanical, electrical and plumbing expertise.</p>\n<p>A knowledgeable and experienced CM/GC can play a vitally important role in the planning and construction of a successful data center.&nbsp; The planning team members can have a natural bias and expertise in their area of specialty, such as the IT gurus, but may lack the facilities or mechanical knowledge to make fully informed decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can help create the project&rsquo;s parameters, help each planning team member understand and connect with the needs of the other team members, and lead the client through all necessary and relevant issues and decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can also help tie-in the data center to future physical changes planned on the client&rsquo;s campus, thus creating a complete campus-wide interface process.</p>\n<p>Construction of a data center also requires the purchase of significant information technology hardware and equipment not found in most commercial construction projects.&nbsp; Many such components require long lead times.&nbsp; Understanding the very high level of sophistication and complexities involved in data centers can only come from experience.</p>\n<p>Only when all of the pre-construction planning and decisions have been made can the layout, design and construction of the new facility begin to move forward.</p>\n<p><em>Fred Jaeckle is vice president of pre-construction and estimating and Brian Nuehring is director of estimating for S. M. Wilson &amp; Co.&nbsp; S. M. Wilson has completed several new data center projects, including the Schneider Electric/APC &lsquo;Learning Center&rsquo; in O&rsquo;Fallon, Missouri.&nbsp; The company is currently involved in the development and construction of new data centers for the Sisters of Mercy Health System, and for the Community Health Network in Indianapolis.</em></p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"21\";}'),(970,361,5,2,1230226300,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"361\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:25 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"21\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"5\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:53:\"data_centers_require_extraordinary_planning_expertise\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:232:\"The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities. \";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:24:\"data centers, planning, \";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:6153:\"<p>&nbsp;<strong>By Fred Jaeckle and Brian Nuehring</strong></p>\n<p>The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities.&nbsp; While the end result for many organizations is a sleek new facility humming with machines and activity, none of it would be possible without an extraordinary level of upfront planning and teamwork involving many technical experts and a knowledgeable construction manager/general contractor (CM/GC)to lead the process.</p>\n<p>Most data centers today are designed and built to address tomorrow&rsquo;s information processing needs.&nbsp; Given the complexities and new technologies impacting most industries, anticipating the future needs of a new data center is no easy task.&nbsp; The healthcare industry provides an excellent example.</p>\n<p>Healthcare systems are among the fastest-growing users of data centers.&nbsp; Automated medical records keeping, electronic imaging, surgical robotics, advanced telecommunications, increasingly sophisticated medical procedures and multi-location facilities are just some of the recent developments that directly impact the IT support requirements of nearly every hospital and hospital system.</p>\n<p>No matter the industry involved, the first and most important step in building a new or expanded data center is a commitment to careful planning and collaboration among its many stakeholders.&nbsp; At the very least this should involve the organization&rsquo;s IT department leadership, its facilities management department, and the project&rsquo;s CM/GC, architect and data center planning consultants.</p>\n<p>The first step is to determine and clearly define the needs and goals of the data center, in both the short term and the longer term.&nbsp; There are many important and intertwining considerations to be determined in the pre-construction phase of a data center project, including:</p>\n<p>- Physical site selection (available site, affordable, convenience, access to power sources and landlines)</p>\n<p>- Anticipated computing load, data storage requirements and related equipment needs</p>\n<p>- Security requirements and tier ratings (vulnerability to natural disaster, terrorism acts, regulatory and legal requirements)</p>\n<p>- Number of years the data center will fulfill the organization&rsquo;s planned needs</p>\n<p>- Migration plan from current data facilities to the new/expanded facilities</p>\n<p>- Capability for future equipment and operational upgrades within the planned facility</p>\n<p>- Mechanical systems and physical plant requirements to support the planned facility.</p>\n<p>The planning team must make these and other important decisions, and resolve the competing (and often conflicting) situations that accompany these decisions.&nbsp; Once this is accomplished, the team&rsquo;s attention shifts to operational planning.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>As data centers become bigger and more sophisticated, they require more power and generate much more heat per square foot than today&rsquo;s facilities.&nbsp; There are &lsquo;green&rsquo; equipment choices now available to help mitigate the operating costs of data centers, such as higher voltage European-style equipment that operates on less amperage and requires less electricity than traditional American-made equipment.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Power needs and heat generation also has major implications for data floor design and usage, as well as cooling, electrical and power systems designs.&nbsp; Keeping data centers cooled is no easy task, particularly when the computing equipment and floor layout creates numerous &lsquo;hot spots&rsquo; that must be addressed.</p>\n<p>Air and water-based cooling systems are both available, although the water-based systems are now in greater demand due to their cooling efficiency and lower overall energy usage.&nbsp; Both options have &lsquo;green&rsquo; features, such as re-use and re-circulation of air and water.&nbsp; However, air-based cooling systems do require the use of chemical refrigerants. The design and implementation of these systems requires a contractor with a strong sense of mechanical, electrical and plumbing expertise.</p>\n<p>A knowledgeable and experienced CM/GC can play a vitally important role in the planning and construction of a successful data center.&nbsp; The planning team members can have a natural bias and expertise in their area of specialty, such as the IT gurus, but may lack the facilities or mechanical knowledge to make fully informed decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can help create the project&rsquo;s parameters, help each planning team member understand and connect with the needs of the other team members, and lead the client through all necessary and relevant issues and decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can also help tie-in the data center to future physical changes planned on the client&rsquo;s campus, thus creating a complete campus-wide interface process.</p>\n<p>Construction of a data center also requires the purchase of significant information technology hardware and equipment not found in most commercial construction projects.&nbsp; Many such components require long lead times.&nbsp; Understanding the very high level of sophistication and complexities involved in data centers can only come from experience.</p>\n<p>Only when all of the pre-construction planning and decisions have been made can the layout, design and construction of the new facility begin to move forward.</p>\n<p><em>Fred Jaeckle is vice president of pre-construction and estimating and Brian Nuehring is director of estimating for S. M. Wilson &amp; Co.&nbsp; S. M. Wilson has completed several new data center projects, including the Schneider Electric/APC &lsquo;Learning Center&rsquo; in O&rsquo;Fallon, Missouri.&nbsp; The company is currently involved in the development and construction of new data centers for the Sisters of Mercy Health System, and for the Community Health Network in Indianapolis.</em></p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"21\";}'),(971,362,4,2,1230227165,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:36 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"KAI, DLR and Dunn Complete Women\\\'s Prison\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:39:\"kai_dlr_and_dunn_complete_womens_prison\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:42:\"KAI, DLR and Dunn Complete Women\\\'s Prison\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:261:\"Female inmates have begun moving into the new state-of-the-art Chillicothe Correctional Center (CCC), designed by the design-build team of KAI Design & Build of St. Louis, Mo.; DLR Group of Overland Park, KS; and JE Dunn Construction Company of Kansas City, MO.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:30:\"Chillicothe, KAI, Dunn, prison\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:3611:\"<p>Female inmates have begun moving into the new state-of-the-art Chillicothe Correctional Center (CCC), designed by the design-build team of KAI Design &amp; Build of St. Louis, Mo.; DLR Group of Overland Park, KS; and JE Dunn Construction Company of Kansas City, MO.</p>\n<p>The City of Chillicothe, which claims to be the &ldquo;Home of Sliced Bread,&rdquo; made tremendous efforts to ensure that the prison, and its jobs, stayed in the community. The State of Missouri issued $120 million million dollars to keep the prison there.</p>\n<p>The Missouri Department of Corrections is hiring 175 additional corrections officers for the new facility, bringing its full-time employees to 560, with an annual payroll of $15.7 million.&nbsp;&nbsp; The new $120 million prison, the largest design-build project undertaken by the State of Missouri, will provide expanded services to female offenders in substance abuse treatment, academic education and re-entry services.</p>\n<p>The facility, which replaces an outdated prison constructed in 1887, will also improve safety and security for the public, staff and offenders. Non-conventional materials, such as vinyl tile and carpet, as well as ceramic tile in the showers create a softer environment for the female inmates. Additional amenities include a beauty shop, religious center, library, bakery, cosmetology lab, gymnasium and greenhouse.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>CCC, a 430,000-square-foot facility, consists of five butterfly-shaped housing units with future plans to add an additional housing unit. The five units have the capacity to hold a total of 1,636 inmates, more than triple the old institution&rsquo;s operating capacity of 525. According to the Missouri Department of Corrections, Missouri&rsquo;s female prison population has increased by 150 percent during the past 10 years.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;DLR Group is passionate about designing facilities that keep our communities safe,&rdquo; said Andy Anderson, principal with DLR Group. &ldquo;Our goal is to deliver functional buildings that are both environmentally friendly and responsive to users&rsquo; needs.\\\"</p>\n<p>A unique feature of the facility is the design of its central plant, which houses the HVAC equipment. To address the state&rsquo;s desire for an energy efficient system, KAI designed the state-of-the-art plant to include high-efficiency boilers and HVAC controls. The central utility loop was also designed 12 to 16 feet above grade, rather than underground. This type of design allows problems to be identified quickly and repairs to be made easily. The design also utilizes the building structures to support the loop, which helped to save on insulation and support for the main loop.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The main power plant, refrigeration, boiler plant and maintenance area was designed outside the secured perimeter of the facility and is totally self-sufficient,&rdquo; said KAI Project Architect Dwight Wyatt. &ldquo;The facility has its own emergency electrical generator should the power go out. We also designed the buildings&rsquo; roofs with limited equipment or clutter on top of them, to minimize areas where people may try to hide. When designing a correctional facility, safety and security, of course, is always critical.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>There are also 403 security cameras located throughout the campus. Another unique feature of the facility is its precast concrete, bearing-wall construction. Use of the pre-cast materials allowed the facility to be designed and built in less than two years, rather than the average estimated three years to complete.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(972,363,4,2,1230248074,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:27 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:29:\"Paric Tops Out Patients First\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:29:\"paric_tops_out_patients_first\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:29:\"Paric Tops Out Patients First\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:201:\"St. Louis-based Paric Corp. has reached a major construction milestone on expansion of Patients First Health Care in Washington.  Paric recently placed the final beam, topping out the steel structure.\n\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Paric, Patients First\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:3616:\"<p>St. Louis-based Paric Corp. has reached a major construction milestone on expansion of <a href=\\\"http://www.patientsfirsthc.com\\\" title=\\\"Patients First\\\">Patients First Health Care</a> in Washington.&nbsp; Paric recently placed the final beam, topping out the steel structure. <br /></p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Dr. Michael Rau signs final beam\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"225\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/Dr--Rau-final-beam2008.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"300\\\" />Dr. Michael Rau, Patients First Chairman and Project Manager for the expansion, was the last to sign the final beam.&nbsp; Employees and physicians from Patients First, construction workers, and Paric project managers participated in the topping out ceremony.</h4>\n<p><br />&ldquo;This is an exciting time for all of us who deliver care to our patients,&rdquo; said Dr. Rau.&nbsp; &ldquo;This $30.4 million expansion is the biggest commitment that Patients First Health Care has made to the Washington community.&nbsp; We look forward to providing more technically advanced outpatient services conveniently in one location for our patients.&rdquo;<br /><br />The $30.4 million expansion is on schedule to add 109,000 square feet in two, three-story wings to the current 85,000-square-foot health center. It is expected to complete by the end of next summer.&nbsp;&nbsp; Joe Gubbels, Patients First CEO, credits &ldquo;good weather, outstanding construction crews and project management skills of Paric Corporation&rdquo;&nbsp; with keeping the project on schedule:<br /><br />&ldquo;Our construction team has done an outstanding job keeping on schedule,&rdquo; said Gubbels.&nbsp; &ldquo;As the structure takes shape, the anticipation grows.&rdquo;&nbsp; <br /><br />Gubbels is pleased that the project will bring more outpatient options, including cancer services and ambulatory surgical treatment to the community.&nbsp; The new facilities and services will make it possible to add new physicians to serve the area.<br /><br />&ldquo;This project will also bring new physicians, which will enhance the medical care that patients can receive right in east central Missouri,&rdquo; said Gubbels.&nbsp; &ldquo;As an added bonus, as these new physicians and their families settle here, they will help to grow each of our communities.&rdquo;&nbsp; <br /><br />In addition to completing the steel, Paric has relocated an open storm water creek and added a surface parking lot.&nbsp; Workers are starting to place the exterior wall components, which will allow the closing of the building within the next few months. Grading, utility relocation and foundations have been completed on the three-story parking structure which will provide parking for approximately 675 cars.&nbsp; This multi-level parking structure, with pre-cast concrete and brick inlay, will be the first of its kind in Washington, Mo.&nbsp; <br /><br />This project has added to the original Patients First Health Care structure on both ends.&nbsp; When completed, the Patients First Washington Campus additions will include an ambulatory surgery center; a cancer treatment center that will provide medical oncology, radiation oncology and infusion therapy; additional physician offices; expanded retail space and meeting rooms.&nbsp; The new addition is expected to increase employment by more than 100 people.<br /><br />Paric manages the entire construction process for Patients First, working closely with Northstar Management, representative for Patients First.&nbsp; Lawrence Group provided the design and Bank of Washington is providing construction financing.&nbsp; <br /></p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(973,364,4,2,1230248572,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:40:\"gray_design_completes_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2980:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>A True Spa is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up. For more information, visit www.atruespa.com.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. For more information, visit www.graydesigngroup.com</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(974,364,4,2,1230248667,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:40:\"gray_design_completes_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2936:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>A True Spa is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up. For more information, visit www.atruespa.com.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(975,364,4,2,1230248747,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:40:\"gray_design_completes_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:40:\"Gray Design Completes True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2916:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><a href=\\\"http://www.atruespa.com\\\">A True Spa </a>is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(976,364,4,2,1230248785,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"gray_design_completes_a_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2916:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><a href=\\\"http://www.atruespa.com\\\">A True Spa </a>is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(977,364,4,2,1230248852,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"gray_design_completes_a_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2832:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p><a href=\\\"http://www.atruespa.com\\\">A True Spa </a>is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up.</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(978,364,4,2,1230248884,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"gray_design_completes_a_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2846:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p><a href=\\\"http://www.atruespa.com\\\">A True Spa </a>is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up.</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(979,361,5,2,1230266130,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"5\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"361\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:25 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"21\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"5\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:53:\"data_centers_require_extraordinary_planning_expertise\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_20\";s:54:\"Data Centers Require Extraordinary Planning, Expertise\";s:11:\"field_ft_20\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_25\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_45\";s:232:\"The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities. \";s:11:\"field_ft_45\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_22\";s:24:\"data centers, planning, \";s:11:\"field_ft_22\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_23\";s:6153:\"<p>&nbsp;<strong>By Fred Jaeckle and Brian Nuehring</strong></p>\n<p>The idea of creating a new data center or expanding an existing one brings to mind futuristic images of computer experts working with dazzling high tech equipment to feed their ever-increasing need for data processing capabilities.&nbsp; While the end result for many organizations is a sleek new facility humming with machines and activity, none of it would be possible without an extraordinary level of upfront planning and teamwork involving many technical experts and a knowledgeable construction manager/general contractor (CM/GC)to lead the process.</p>\n<p>Most data centers today are designed and built to address tomorrow&rsquo;s information processing needs.&nbsp; Given the complexities and new technologies impacting most industries, anticipating the future needs of a new data center is no easy task.&nbsp; The healthcare industry provides an excellent example.</p>\n<p>Healthcare systems are among the fastest-growing users of data centers.&nbsp; Automated medical records keeping, electronic imaging, surgical robotics, advanced telecommunications, increasingly sophisticated medical procedures and multi-location facilities are just some of the recent developments that directly impact the IT support requirements of nearly every hospital and hospital system.</p>\n<p>No matter the industry involved, the first and most important step in building a new or expanded data center is a commitment to careful planning and collaboration among its many stakeholders.&nbsp; At the very least this should involve the organization&rsquo;s IT department leadership, its facilities management department, and the project&rsquo;s CM/GC, architect and data center planning consultants.</p>\n<p>The first step is to determine and clearly define the needs and goals of the data center, in both the short term and the longer term.&nbsp; There are many important and intertwining considerations to be determined in the pre-construction phase of a data center project, including:</p>\n<p>- Physical site selection (available site, affordable, convenience, access to power sources and landlines)</p>\n<p>- Anticipated computing load, data storage requirements and related equipment needs</p>\n<p>- Security requirements and tier ratings (vulnerability to natural disaster, terrorism acts, regulatory and legal requirements)</p>\n<p>- Number of years the data center will fulfill the organization&rsquo;s planned needs</p>\n<p>- Migration plan from current data facilities to the new/expanded facilities</p>\n<p>- Capability for future equipment and operational upgrades within the planned facility</p>\n<p>- Mechanical systems and physical plant requirements to support the planned facility.</p>\n<p>The planning team must make these and other important decisions, and resolve the competing (and often conflicting) situations that accompany these decisions.&nbsp; Once this is accomplished, the team&rsquo;s attention shifts to operational planning.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>As data centers become bigger and more sophisticated, they require more power and generate much more heat per square foot than today&rsquo;s facilities.&nbsp; There are &lsquo;green&rsquo; equipment choices now available to help mitigate the operating costs of data centers, such as higher voltage European-style equipment that operates on less amperage and requires less electricity than traditional American-made equipment.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Power needs and heat generation also has major implications for data floor design and usage, as well as cooling, electrical and power systems designs.&nbsp; Keeping data centers cooled is no easy task, particularly when the computing equipment and floor layout creates numerous &lsquo;hot spots&rsquo; that must be addressed.</p>\n<p>Air and water-based cooling systems are both available, although the water-based systems are now in greater demand due to their cooling efficiency and lower overall energy usage.&nbsp; Both options have &lsquo;green&rsquo; features, such as re-use and re-circulation of air and water.&nbsp; However, air-based cooling systems do require the use of chemical refrigerants. The design and implementation of these systems requires a contractor with a strong sense of mechanical, electrical and plumbing expertise.</p>\n<p>A knowledgeable and experienced CM/GC can play a vitally important role in the planning and construction of a successful data center.&nbsp; The planning team members can have a natural bias and expertise in their area of specialty, such as the IT gurus, but may lack the facilities or mechanical knowledge to make fully informed decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can help create the project&rsquo;s parameters, help each planning team member understand and connect with the needs of the other team members, and lead the client through all necessary and relevant issues and decisions.&nbsp; An experienced general contractor can also help tie-in the data center to future physical changes planned on the client&rsquo;s campus, thus creating a complete campus-wide interface process.</p>\n<p>Construction of a data center also requires the purchase of significant information technology hardware and equipment not found in most commercial construction projects.&nbsp; Many such components require long lead times.&nbsp; Understanding the very high level of sophistication and complexities involved in data centers can only come from experience.</p>\n<p>Only when all of the pre-construction planning and decisions have been made can the layout, design and construction of the new facility begin to move forward.</p>\n<p><em>Fred Jaeckle is vice president of pre-construction and estimating and Brian Nuehring is director of estimating for S. M. Wilson &amp; Co.&nbsp; S. M. Wilson has completed several new data center projects, including the Schneider Electric/APC &lsquo;Learning Center&rsquo; in O&rsquo;Fallon, Missouri.&nbsp; The company is currently involved in the development and construction of new data centers for the Sisters of Mercy Health System, and for the Community Health Network in Indianapolis.</em></p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"21\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(980,359,2,2,1230266158,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"359\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 05:43 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"15\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:48:\"House of Cards:  The Collapse of Demand Electric\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:46:\"house_of_cards_the_collapse_of_demand_electric\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:48:\"House of Cards:  The Collapse of Demand Electric\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:183:\"Fueled by a high octane credit line, Demand Electric was a bright, soaring star among St. Louis specialty contractors. But when the credit ran out, Demand came crashing back to earth.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:48:\"Demand Electric, The Business Bank, IBEW Local 1\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:6705:\"<p>Fueled by a high octane credit line, Demand Electric was a bright, soaring star among St. Louis specialty contractors. But when the credit ran out, Demand came crashing back to earth.</p>\n<p>Dennis Daugherty, formerly a project manager at Guarantee Electrical\nCompany, started Demand Electric in August 2003 with six employees. In\nan industry where it is rare for companies to more than double in size\nin five years, Demand Electric grew almost 20-fold in that time,\nreporting revenues of $22 million for 2007 and employing over 100\nworkers right before the company&rsquo;s sudden collapse in August 2008.&nbsp;\nIndustry watchers described the company&rsquo;s growth as &ldquo;astronomical&rdquo; or\n&ldquo;extraordinary.&rdquo; Demand&rsquo;s growth was so rapid that Demand made the St.\nLouis Business Journal&rsquo;s 2008 list of the 25 fastest growing private\ncompanies in St. Louis.<br /> <br /> <img alt=\\\"Demand Electric\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/demand-electric.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />CNR\nhas pieced together one version of Demand Electrics sudden ascent and\nsubsequent crash from sources familiar with the company, all of whom\ndemanded anonymity. The principals of the story &ndash; Dave Daugherty, his\nbank, and the leaders of Local 1 of the IBEW (International Brotherhood\nof Electrical Workers) &ndash; were unavailable for comment, as they had all\nagreed not to talk about the company.<br /> <br /> By all accounts Daugherty was a go-getter and a risk-taker. He had a\nnew vision of how to operate a commercial contracting business in St.\nLouis, a vision born of watching highly leveraged companies in other\nindustry sectors, and he worked hard to make it a reality. He also was\noutspokenly critical of what he saw as the timid or conservative\nbusiness practices of the local construction industry.<br /> <br /> What made Daugherty so outstanding, however, was not so much his\nattitude, as the confluence of his attitude with a credit bubble that\nallowed him to put his ideas into practice using other people&rsquo;s money.\nNew contractors typically have to put up everything they own in order\nto get a line of credit that isn&rsquo;t worth much more than their assets.\nContractors like to say, with just a bit of exaggeration, that banks\naren&rsquo;t lending them any money that the contractors don&rsquo;t already have.\nThe failure rate for new companies is quite high and lenders generally\nwant to make sure that there are sufficient physical assets pledged to\nthe loan that they can recover their money if a business fails.\nSimilarly, as contractors become established, they generally grow\nslowly because lenders still want to make sure there are sufficient\nassets pledged to cover the loan if the business fails. In effect,\nlenders are turning a contractor&rsquo;s fixed assets into cash so he can\noperate.<br /> <br /> Daugherty, however, found a banker during the inflationary period of\nthe credit bubble willing to lend him much more than he was worth so\nthat he could grow his business. That lender was The Business Bank of\nSt. Louis. The result was that Demand Electric was incredibly leveraged\nwith debt&nbsp;&mdash; observers say uniquely so.<br /> <br /> Daugherty used debt to fuel Demand&rsquo;s growth. His salesmanship convinced\nowners and general contractors to give him opportunities, but debt\nallowed him to take advantage of them. His growth was so rapid that\nincome from completed jobs was not enough to fund new work. He was\nrelying on his credit line to buy supplies and meet his ever expanding\npayroll.<br /> <br /> Earlier this year, Demand Electric reported that revenues in 2007\nreached $22 million. Times, however, were changing, and Demand Electric\nseemed unprepared for the backlash in the credit markets following the\ncollapse of speculative mortgage lending. Federal bank examiners began\ntelling banks to reduce their exposure in real estate and construction.\nWhether that is what prompted The Business Bank to take another look at\nDemand Electric&rsquo;s account, we don&rsquo;t know. In any event, the bank did\nlook again at Demand credit line and its collateral, and did not like\nwhat it saw.<br /> <br /> Some sources familiar with Demand Electric blame The Business Bank for\nDemand&rsquo;s sudden demise. They say the bank&rsquo;s decision in August 2008 to\ndeny Daugherty access to the remaining money in his line of credit is\nwhat did him in. <br /> <br /> But Demand was in trouble before that decision. A month before, Demand\nElectric&rsquo;s landlord had filed suit to evict the company from its\noffices at 1846 Craig Park Ct. for nonpayment of rent. The first vendor\nlawsuit against Demand Electric was filed in July, too.<br /> <br /> When The Business Bank told Daugherty that they were reducing his line\nof credit by one-third to the amount he had already borrowed, he\nreportedly told the bank that he needed the additional credit to meet\npayroll, and that he was relying on that line of credit exclusively for\nthe capital for the jobs he had undertaken, sources said. That is when\nthe bank became seriously concerned. They declined to give Daugherty\nany additional money. Daugherty reportedly shopped around for another\nloan, but could not find a willing lender. The following Monday The\nBusiness Bank took control of his office and all of his business\nrecords. In the meantime, he had laid-off all of his workers, because\nhe lacked any ability to pay them.<br /> <br /> &ldquo;It was one of the most disruptive closings the industry has ever\nexperienced,&rdquo; one source said. St. Louis Community College&rsquo;s\ndistrict-wide science lab renovation program was one of the building\nprograms affected by Demand&rsquo;s collapse. The construction manager, S.M.\nWilson &amp; Co., was able to get Aschinger Electric on board to\nreplace Demand in short order. Some of the other affected projects\ninvolved Peruque Station in St. Charles County, Duke Realty&rsquo;s Maryville\nCentre, Charter Development Group, and Christian Hospital Northeast.<br /> <br /> The bank&rsquo;s takeover set in motion an avalanche of work for lawyers.\nIBEW Local 1 and NECA-St. Louis filed suit in federal court against\nDemand Electric, The Business Bank of St. Louis, and Providence\nCounseling, for contributions Demand Electric owed to electrical\nindustry trust funds. The settlement of that case included a gag order\non the principals involved. French-Gerleman Electric filed a mechanic&rsquo;s\nlien; Graybar and Colorado Electric Supply each sued Demand for breach\nof contract. Liebert, Western Extralite, Rexel Electric Supply, Butler\nSupply Co., and Warren Sign Co. all followed with their own liens.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:35:\"/images/uploads/demand-electric.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"15\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(981,360,4,2,1230266209,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"360\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:03 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest HIt in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"midwest_takes_biggest_hit_in_architectural_billings_drop\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest HIt in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:207:\"The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the lowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8 just one year prior. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:33:\"AIA, architectural billings, drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1419:\"<p>The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the\nlowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8\njust one year prior.</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Architectural Billlings\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"305\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/arch-billings.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"477\\\" />The inquiries score also hit a record low in November: 38.3,  down from 51 in September.</p>\n<p>The American Institute of Architects (AIA) compiles the index based\non surveys sent to mostly commercial architects. The index has fallen\nbelow 50 for 10 straight months (a number below 50 indicates a decrease\nin billings).</p>\n<p>The commercial sector has taken a steep dive, hitting 26.7 in\nNovember. Multi-family residential was also down, from October&rsquo;s 32.5\nto 30. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s just as troubling is that the institutional\nsector&mdash;schools, hospitals, and public buildings&mdash;is also beginning to\nreact to tighter credit conditions and a weakening economy,&rdquo; says\nKermit Baker, the AIA&rsquo;s chief economist. The institutional score dipped\nto 40.8 in November, down from 41.3 in October, and 44.4 in September.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>In terms of regions, all had record-low scores. The Midwest had the\nlowest: 31.4. The West dipped to 33.5; the South, 36.8; and the\nNortheast, 39.5.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<h4>Graph courtesy of AIA</h4>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(982,364,4,2,1230266293,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"364\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 12:35 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:42:\"gray_design_completes_a_true_spa_interiors\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:42:\"Gray Design Completes A True Spa Interiors\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:123:\"Gray Design Group has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:21:\"Gray Design, True Spa\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2846:\"<p><a href=\\\"http://www.graydesigngroup.com\\\">Gray Design Group</a> has completed interiors for A True Spa, a new 3,000-square-foot full-service spa in Chesterfield Valley.</p>\n<p>Gray utilized its extensive experience in spa environments to provide a functional layout with warm relaxing finishes that are able to evolve seasonally to keep the facility fresh and up to date. The design team aimed to create a classic space that felt residential and welcoming.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The combination of the soft lighting with the rich neutral gold color palette creates a soothing and nurturing feeling one hopes to experience while visiting a spa,&rdquo; said Wendy Gray, principal. &ldquo;The client wanted the customers to feel as if they are in the comfort of their own homes, and I think we accomplished that goal for them.&rdquo;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;<img alt=\\\"A True Spa\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"267\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/spa.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"400\\\" /></p>\n<h4>To accent the neutral colors, the receptionist&rsquo;s desk is made out of dark, cherry wood with ornate carved detailing.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>Similar wood is used for the cabinetry and lockers in the changing room, which are programmed to customers&rsquo; personal coded combinations. Retail products available for purchase are displayed on back-lit shelving created from decorative acrylic panels with a botanical motif.</p>\n<p>The multiple treatment rooms offer a variety of lighting options based on the type of treatment. To ensure customers have the ability to feel relaxed and rejuvenated, Gray created a relaxation area with comfortable built-in lounge seating and a full-height glass waterfall feature.</p>\n<p>Gray&rsquo;s team consisted of Don McAtee, senior project manager, and Ashley Smith, project manager. Interior Construction Services was the general contractor.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Gray fulfilled my vision of a beautiful, peaceful and tranquil place where clients can come and put themselves first,&rdquo; said Mikki Monger-Jones, owner of A True Spa. &ldquo;They combined all the wonderful aspects of the many worldwide spas I have traveled to into one very special place.&rdquo;</p>\n<p><a href=\\\"http://www.atruespa.com\\\">A True Spa </a>is an upscale day spa offering a full range of aesthetic services, including massage therapy, facials, body treatments and specialty services such as air-brush tanning and semi-permanent make-up.</p>\n<p>Founded in 1982, Gray Design Group provides architectural and interior design services, both locally and nationwide. Through its design studio, Gray offers state-of-the art 3-D modeling/video animation. Recent and current projects include corporate facilities for Monsanto and Elsevier, as well as institutional projects for the University of Missouri-Columbia and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(983,356,4,2,1230266316,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"356\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 10:17 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:49:\"MoDOT Ready to Go with Economic Stimulus Projects\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:49:\"modot_ready_to_go_with_economic_stimulus_projects\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:49:\"MoDOT Ready to Go with Economic Stimulus Projects\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:264:\"The Missouri Department of Transportation is ready to go with 34 transportation projects that could be awarded within 180 days of passage of an economic stimulus package that contains at least $25 billion for transportation infrastructure investments nationwide.  \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:29:\"MoDOT, Pete Rahn, Ready to Go\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:10607:\"<p>The Missouri Department of Transportation is ready to go with 34\ntransportation projects that could be awarded within 180 days of\npassage of an economic stimulus package that contains at least $25\nbillion for transportation infrastructure investments nationwide.&nbsp; The\nprojects, which would total about $510 million, would create about\n14,000 jobs and have a $2.4 billion impact on the state\\\'s economy.&nbsp;\nGiven additional funding beyond $510 million, significant portions of\nfour additional highway projects totaling roughly $290 million could be\nunder way in 2009.</p>\n<div id=\\\"contenttxt\\\">\n<div id=\\\"bodyArea\\\"><form action=\\\"/eMoDOTWeb/prepareNewsDisplay.do\\\" method=\\\"post\\\" name=\\\"newsDisplayForm\\\">\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"We stand ready to quickly deliver 34\ntransportation improvements that would mean jobs, increased safety and\na better quality of life for Missourians,\\\" MoDOT Director Pete Rahn\nsaid.&nbsp; \\\"These are much-needed projects that will benefit Missouri\ncitizens, and we urge Congress to act positively on an economic\nstimulus package that includes a minimum of $25 billion for\ntransportation infrastructure projects.\\\"</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Ready to Go\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"122\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/ReadytoGo.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"244\\\" />Rahn said federal\nfunding for infrastructure projects would have a vital ripple effect.&nbsp;\nIt would create jobs for road builders and designers and demand for\nrelated supplies and services, as well as further economic development\naround the improvements.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"The job creation will go beyond just\nthose building the projects,\\\" Rahn said. &nbsp;\\\"Suppliers, retailers,\nrestaurants, hotels and other businesses will benefit.\\\"</p>\n<p>MoDOT\nwould be ready to go with about $137 million of work on Interstates 70,\n44, 55, 35 and 29.&nbsp; Approximately $60 million would go toward fixing\nthe state\\\'s lettered routes in rural Missouri.&nbsp; The rest would be used\non a variety of transportation projects throughout the state.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p>\\\"Under\nour proposed plan, all forms of travel would benefit, not just\nhighways, and projects would be spread throughout the state to ensure\nall regions reap some of the economic gain,\\\" Rahn said.</p>\n<p>Seventeen\nof the proposed projects are already included in the state\\\'s five-year\nconstruction program, but would be sped up, some by up to four years.&nbsp;\nProjects would then be added to the statewide construction program to\nreplace those that were accelerated.&nbsp; Seventeen are new projects that\nhave been identified as regional priorities and on which environmental\nwork and preliminary design are already under way.</p>\n<p>Rahn said\nCongress should not be concerned road and bridge improvements couldn\\\'t\nbe put into place fast enough to provide the desired economic relief.</p>\n<p>\\\"We\nknow we can award $510 million worth of work or more within 180 days of\nthe stimulus bill\\\'s passage, with a considerable amount in less time,\\\"\nRahn said.&nbsp; \\\"Investing in our infrastructure is the best course of\naction Congress could take.&nbsp; Not only would it provide an immediate\neconomic shot in the arm, but it would yield the long-term benefits of\nsafer highways and enhanced quality of life.\\\"</p>\n<p>Rahn said any\nstimulus package couldn\\\'t come too soon.&nbsp; He noted many states have had\nto delay projects because of the decline in revenue generated by fuel\nuse and motor vehicle sales.&nbsp; While MoDOT has not yet had to postpone\nor cancel projects, state revenues are down almost 5 percent for the\nfirst four months of the fiscal year - about an $18 million decline.&nbsp;\nIf the trend continues, the state could face a $73 million shortfall by\nthe end of the fiscal year.</p>\n<p><strong>MoDOT\\\'s Ready-to-Go Transportation Projects</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Adair County, Route 63 </strong>-\nConstruct 6 miles of new two-lane roadway on four-lane right of way on\neast side of Kirksville from Benton Way to southern Route 6\nconnection.&nbsp; <strong>$18 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Atchison County, Route 136</strong> - Painting, new deck and bridge repairs on Missouri River bridge at Brownville, NE.&nbsp; <strong>$9 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Barry/Lawrence/Christian/Greene Counties, Route 60 </strong>- Construct alternating/intermittent passing lanes from east of Chapell Drive in Monett to Kansas Avenue in Republic.&nbsp; <strong>$23 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Barton/Bates Counties, Route 71</strong> - Convert four at-grade intersections at Route 52, Route 126, Routes\nDD/EE and Routes V/C to interchanges as part of I-49 upgrade.&nbsp; <strong>$27 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Benton County, Routes 83/65/7</strong> - Painting and/or rehabilitation of bridges on Route 83 over Truman\nLake near Mockingbird Road; Route 65 over the Osage River near Warsaw;\nand Route 7 over Truman Lake (Osage Arm Bridge and Grand River Arm\nBridge).&nbsp; <strong>$19 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Boone County, Route 63/COLT Railroad</strong> - Build railroad bridge over Route 63 north of Route B in Columbia.&nbsp; <strong>$9 million </strong></p>\n<p><strong>Cape Girardeau County, SEMO Port</strong> - Construct new rail line above flood region.&nbsp; <strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 1 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Vivion Road to 72<sup>nd</sup> Street.&nbsp; <strong>$1.5 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 169 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Route 92 to Route KK.&nbsp; <strong>$1.5 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clay County, Route 210</strong> - Widen to four lanes from Eldon Road to Route 291.&nbsp; <strong>$32 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Clinton County, Route 35 - </strong>Resurface north and southbound lanes from north of Shoal Creek to north of Route 116 near Lathrop.&nbsp; <strong>$18 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Cooper County, Route 70</strong> - Pavement improvements on westbound lanes from 0.3 mile east of Route B to Lamine River.&nbsp; <strong>$7 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Crawford County, Route 44</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on westbound lanes from 0.6 mile west of Route H to Phelps County line.&nbsp; <strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Franklin County, Route 44</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on eastbound and westbound lanes from Route 30 to east of Bourbeuse River. &nbsp;<strong>$44 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Greene County, Route 65</strong> - Widen to six lanes from I-44 to Route 60 (James River Freeway).<strong>$37 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Jackson County, Route 150</strong> - Widen from two lanes to four lanes from Horridge Road to Route 291.&nbsp; <strong>$17 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Johnson County, Knob Noster Rail Project</strong> - Construct 0.86 mile of parallel track near Knob Noster and Route 23.&nbsp; <strong>$7 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Johnson County, Skyhaven Airport</strong> - Construct new airport apron.&nbsp; <strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Lafayette County, Route 70</strong> - Pavement improvements on eastbound and westbound lanes from Jackson County line to Odessa.&nbsp; <strong>$8 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Miller County, Route 17</strong> - Replace Osage River bridge 1 mile east of Tuscumbia. <strong>$9 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>New Madrid County, New Madrid Port</strong> - Construct railroad extension and warehouse.<strong>$2 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Pemiscot County, Route 55</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on northbound lanes from Arkansas state line to I-155.&nbsp; <strong>$11 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Pemiscot/New Madrid Counties, Route 55</strong> - Pavement rehabilitation on northbound and southbound lanes from I-155 to Scott County.&nbsp; <strong>$22 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Phelps County, Route 44</strong> - Major pavement rehabilitation/reconstruction on westbound lanes from\nBusiness Loop 44 (Rolla) to Sugartree Road Interchange.&nbsp; <strong>$12 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Platte County, Route 29</strong> - Resurface pavement and shoulders on northbound and southbound lanes at various locations from Route 273 to Vivion Road.&nbsp; <strong>$12 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Charles County 364/94/Page Avenue</strong> - Extend Page Avenue from 0.4 mile east of Jungermann to 0.3 mile west of Central School Road.&nbsp; <strong>$49 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 67 </strong>- Pedestrian improvements from I-270 to Old St. Charles Road.<strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 141</strong> - Add turn and auxiliary lanes from Route 40/I-64 to St. Luke\\\'s Hospital Drive in Chesterfield, and Town and Country.&nbsp; <strong>$8 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route AC </strong>- Pedestrian improvements from Route 67 to I-270.&nbsp; <strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Scott County, Sikeston Memorial Municipal Airport</strong> - Overlay runway at Sikeston Airport.<strong>$3 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Statewide Minor Routes </strong>- Provide 700 to 1,400 miles of pavement improvements to statewide lettered rural routes.&nbsp; <strong>$30 - $60 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Statewide Transit </strong>- Purchase 200 public transit vehicles statewide.&nbsp; <strong>$10 - $20 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Taney County, Route 76 </strong>- Sidewalk improvements from Roark Valley Road to Gretna.<strong>$1 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Wayne County, Route 34</strong> - Widen, build shoulders and straighten two locations between Route N and Piedmont.&nbsp; <strong>$16 million</strong></p>\n<p>Given\nadditional funding beyond $510 million, significant portions of these\nfour projects totaling $290 million could be awarded during calendar\nyear 2009.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Jackson County, Route 435/70 Interchange - </strong>Construct\nnew half diamond interchange at Route 40/I-435, replace Blue Ridge\nCut-off bridge over I-70, add lanes to I-70 and modify some ramps.&nbsp; <strong>$32 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Jefferson County, Route 55 </strong>- Add lanes, relocate existing weigh station, replace eight bridges and revise Route M interchange from Route M to Route Z.&nbsp; <strong>$68 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>McDonald County, Route 71</strong> - Construct freeway from Pineville to Arkansas state line.<strong>$74 million</strong></p>\n<p><strong>St. Louis County, Route 141 </strong>- Construct Route 141 on relocation from Route 340 to St. Luke\\\'s Hospital Drive.&nbsp; <strong>$116 million</strong></p>\n</div>\n</form></div>\n</div>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(984,357,2,2,1230266380,'a:30:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"357\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-19 04:02 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"16\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:35:\"green_data_centers_crazy_like_a_fox\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:10:\"field_id_5\";s:39:\"Green Data Centers: Crazy... Like a Fox\";s:10:\"field_ft_5\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_9\";s:230:\"A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation\\\'s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects and the problems they are solving involve data centers.\";s:10:\"field_ft_9\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_13\";s:1:\"9\";s:10:\"field_id_7\";s:35:\"Fox, Data Centers, Monanto, Emerson\";s:10:\"field_ft_7\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"field_id_8\";s:13610:\"<p>A St. Louis architectural firm is moving into the vanguard of efforts to solve some of the nation&rsquo;s knottiest business and environmental problems. The firm is Fox Architects and the problems they are solving involve data centers.</p>\n<h4><img alt=\\\"Monsanto Data Center\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"303\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"266\\\" />Fox Architects has&nbsp; developed an approach to corporate data center design that combines energy conservation with human resource considerations. George Osman, Monsanto\\\'s director of operations and engineering&nbsp; and Bob Dunn, principal, Fox Architects, in front of the Monsanto data center\\\'s hurricane-proof sunlight screen.</h4>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p><strong>Data centers?</strong></p>\n<p>&ldquo;Data centers are infrastructure that no one really thinks about, but are a big part of what makes the world go round,&rdquo; said John<br />Berendzen, Principal, Fox Architects. &ldquo;Just as coal and steam technology were engines for the Industrial Revolution, data centers are the engines for today&rsquo;s technology dependent businesses, considering that just aboutevery transaction today ends up as bits and bytes passing through computer systems linked throughout the world,&rdquo; he added. Fox Architects has designed innovative data centers for Monsanto and Emerson, two<br />international companies based in St. Louis.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<p>The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines a data center as any facility that primarily contains electronic equipment used<br />for data processing (servers), data storage and communications (network equipment). That includes everything from a closet with a server<br />in it to a dedicated building with racks of tens of thousands of blade servers. Data centers are supposed to run all the time,</p>\n<p>24 hours a day, seven days a week. According to the 7x24 Exchange, when data centers don&rsquo;t run, &ldquo;businesses don&rsquo;t bring in revenue,&rdquo; and any unplanned &ldquo;downtime,&rdquo; or interruption in operations, &ldquo;can be disastrous.&rdquo; The 7x24 Exchange is a business association dedicated to spreading information that can help businesses keep their data centers and servers operating all the time. Another organization, the Uptime Institute, is devoted to the same goal. Joe Loper, Vice President of research and<br />analysis for the Alliance to Save Energy, said that in 2006 there were thousands of data centers across the country housing some 10 million servers. That is twice the number of<br />servers there were in 2000 and growth is accelerating, with the number of servers installed in the U.S. expected to hit 15.8 million in 2010. As<br />companies and institutions which use servers accumulate more and more of them, there is a growing tendency to concentrate them in large numbers in &ldquo;enterprise&rdquo; data centers<br />instead of scattering them around in data rooms and closets.<br /><strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Let the Light In</strong></p>\n<p><br />A major cause of &ldquo;downtime&rdquo; in data centers is human error, so Fox Architects has a simplesounding response: Design data centers for<br />people. Data centers typically are windowless bunkers. The thinking is that they are for computers, not people, and computers are<br />better protected by solid walls without windows.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;The mentality for building Tier 3 and Tier 4 data centers (data centers designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters<br />and keep operating) had been that windows are a hazard so no natural light should be allowed,&rdquo; said Steven Black, who has helped<br />build several enterprise data centers and high-tech buildings for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects took the view that eventhough data centers typically have small staffs, people still fi ll a vital role in keeping<br />data centers running. &ldquo;The U.S. Green Building Council has multiple studies linking access to daylight to better human productivity,&rdquo;<br />said Fox Architects&rsquo; Bob Dunn, so the design firm worked to let daylight into data centers without compromising their tier ratings.</p>\n<p>Two years ago, Fox Architects designed a bank of windows on the eastern elevation of the new data center they were designing for<br />Monsanto. They specifi ed a glazing system that had been certified to withstand hurricane force winds. It still took some convincing, but ultimately Monsanto opted for daylight. To add security, the windows are on a corridor, not a server floor wall. The partition wall between the corridor and the server floor is another<br />glass wall, and even glass doors, so that natural light from the corridor can fl ood into the server room. An architectural sunscreen on the<br />front of the building mitigates solar heat gain while letting light into the building.</p>\n<p>Incorporating the windows did not sacrifice security. &ldquo;The Monsanto Data Center&rsquo;s efficient design can withstand a tornado producing<br />winds in excess of 200 mph and an earthquake measuring up to 5 on the Richter scale&rdquo;, said Dipak Kapadia, Vice President of construction<br />and senior project manager for Guarantee Electrical Co., the project&rsquo;s electrical contractor.</p>\n<p>Fox Architects also included high performance windows in their design for Emerson&rsquo;s new data center, scheduled for completion in July 2009. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t ignore the advances in glazing technology,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;This glazing is certified by the code officials in Miami-Dade County, Florida to withstand 150 mile per hour projectiles. That is great.&rdquo; Black was the project manager on the Monsanto data center project for McCarthy.</p>\n<p>The windows &ldquo;are a big improvement for people in the data center,&rdquo; said John Buescher, project director for McCarthy. How much so? Lee Quarles, a Monsanto spokesman, said the company&rsquo;s experience with its old data center was that an average of two IT people in the data center would leave in every eight-month period. Since the Fox-designed data center opened nine months ago, no one has left. &ldquo;The amount of daylight in the new data center is one of the chief things that employees like about the new building, and it is a big<br />selling point to potential IT recruits,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p><strong>Grappling with Energy Use and Greenhouse Gases</strong></p>\n<p>In addition to tackling human error, Fox Architects also set its sights on energy use. Keeping data centers operating takes a lot of energy.<br />The EPA estimates that in 2006, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 1.5 percent of the electricity generated<br />in the nation&rsquo;s power plants. The EPA estimates that all that electricity cost the industry about $4.5 billion and is equivalent to all the energy<br />used by all the companies in the U.S. that are involved in making cars, trucks, buses, trains,<br />aircraft, boats, barges and ships.</p>\n<p>That energy use is growing rapidly. The EPA estimates that without major gains in efficiency, data centers will consume 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2011 at a cost of more than $7.4 billion. Depending on the source, estimates of the amount of generating capacity needed to supply to supply that energy ranges<br />from 30 baseline, coal-fi red power plants to 120 merchant power plants. Any cap or fee on carbon emissions could raise the cost of that<br />energy even more.</p>\n<p>William Tschudi, program manager for energy efficiency in high-tech buildings at the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s Lawrence<br />Berkeley Labs, worked on the EPA estimates, which are in a report the agency presented to Congress in August 2007. He put the energy<br />use into an enterprise reference frame. &ldquo;The typical rack of state-of-the-art servers draws 20 kilowatts of power. If you are paying 10<br />cents per kilowatt-hour, that one rack will use $17,000 worth of electricity in one year. Since a data center can have hundreds of such racks, any improvement in energy effi ciency can pay big dividends,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>That energy use is the reason data centers are getting so much attention not just from businesses, which have formed such groups as the Green Grid and the Alliance to Save Energy to research and promote energy saving practices, but also from politicians in Congress, who mandated the EPA study.Tschudi and the EPA estimate that only one-half of the power consumed by data centers is used by IT equipment. The rest is consumed in power conversions, maintaining the availability of backup power and cooling. They estimated that the power and cooling infrastructure needed to support a server now costs more than the server itself. McKinsey and Co., in a report for the<br />Uptime Institute, said the costs of power and cooling are escalating so much that they are crowding IT improvements out of budgets.</p>\n<p>Why are power and cooling costs so high at data centers? Because data center facilities &ldquo;are essentially refrigerators for space heaters,&rdquo; Dunn said. That, said Tschudi, is because<br />&ldquo;all the electric power used by servers is converted to heat.&rdquo; The typical data center includes not just racks of IT equipment, but also uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units, which act as battery backups to keep IT equipment running when there is a temporary loss of power; power distribution units (PDUs) and computer room<br />air conditioning units (often called CRAC units).</p>\n<p><strong>Separate and Recycle</strong></p>\n<p><br />One of the first things Fox Architects did in their designs for Monsanto and Emerson was to take electrical equipment, such as UPS units, PDUs and air conditioning equipment off the data floor. For Monsanto, they designed a two story building, assigning the electrical and mechanical equipment to the fi rst fl oor and the IT equipment to the second. That did two things: It keeps electricalequipment from adding to the server floor heat load and keeps maintenance workers out of the IT room, which means &ldquo;they don&rsquo;t have to worry about dropping something or accidentally hitting something when they turn around,&rdquo; said Dunn. The electrical equipment at Monsanto includes &ldquo;a breaker monitoring<br />system capable of remotely measuring power consumption on every circuit in the data center and backup UPS and emergency generator systems so it can continue to operate<br />throughout a power outage,&rdquo; Kapadia said.</p>\n<p>Moving electrical and cooling equipment off the server floor also freed fl oor space for servers. &ldquo;CRAC units are not small. They take up a lot of space on the fl oor and a data center floor is expensive real estate,&rdquo; Black said. &ldquo;What the Fox team did in taking the cooling off the floor is pretty innovative. It is great stuff ,&rdquo; said Black. How innovative was it? As Monsanto prepared to open its new data center, industry publications were still touting software for planning the best configuration of CRAC units as the cutting edge in cooling efficiency.</p>\n<p>Richard Janis, president of the St. Loui based mechanical and electrical engineering company William Tao Associates, has long advocated separating mechanical andelectrical equipment from server rooms. The role of the architect, however, is to provide a building design that will do that efficiently without hampering the operations of theserver room. By all accounts, Fox succeeded. The next thing Fox Architects did was design the air handling system to use recycled air to cool electrical equipment on the fi rst fl oor. In cooperation with William Tao Associates, they designed a system that supplies cold air at the fl oor of the server room, at whatevertemperature Monsanto desires. It exhaust the air at the ceiling after it has been warmed by the servers, but then pulls the warmer air through a plenum in the ceiling and down the perimeterwalls to condition the fi rst fl oor equipment rooms.</p>\n<p>&ldquo;Transformers and UPS units don&rsquo;t have to be cooled as much as servers,&rdquo; Dunn said. &ldquo;The big diff erence between Monsanto and the other data centers I&rsquo;ve seen is how they handle the air. At Monsanto they recycle it,&rdquo; said Black. That puts a premium on contractors constructing a tight building envelope, but it pays off . Quarles said that<br />Monsanto has found that the new data center uses 30 percent less energy than its old one.</p>\n<p>Although not common, and not included in the EPA&rsquo;s list of best practices, separating mechanical and electrical equipment from the computer fl oor and then cooling them with recycled air &ldquo;is certainly a good practice,&rdquo; Loper said. A representative of the Uptime Institute called it &ldquo;innovative&hellip;neat stuff .&rdquo; Fox&rsquo;s design also saved money on construction.<br />Buescher said the main cause of the savings was that the layout of the building kept down the cost of handling air. &ldquo;There was a lot less piping and fewer controls than is typical,&rdquo; he said.</p>\n<p>Moving beyond energy savings to energy production, Fox Architects designed Emerson&rsquo;s newmdata center with a photovoltaic (PV) array on the roof<br />to generate electricity from sunlight. &ldquo;Emerson will gain 13.6 percent of one day&rsquo;s electrical needs from the solar array, which will feed computer loads directly<br />through the main switchboard,&rdquo; Berendzen said.</p>\";s:11:\"field_id_42\";s:28:\"/images/uploads/monsanto.jpg\";s:11:\"field_id_43\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_43\";s:4:\"none\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"16\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(985,365,4,2,1230286816,'a:26:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 11:08 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:79:\"Plumbers and Pipefitters, Sheetmetal Workers Streamline Industrial Jurisdiction\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:78:\"plumbers_and_pipefitters_sheetmetal_workers_streamline_industrial_jurisdiction\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:79:\"Plumbers and Pipefitters, Sheetmetal Workers Streamline Industrial Jurisdiction\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:1:\"4\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:245:\"In what might be termed an early Christmas present to construction owners, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562 and Sheetmetal Workers Local 36 announced just before the holiday that they have reached an industrial jurisdiction agreement for 2009.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:51:\"Plumbers and Pipefitters 562, Sheetmetal Workers 36\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:2128:\"<p>In what might be termed an early Christmas present to construction owners, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 562 and Sheetmetal Workers Local 36 announced just before the holiday that they have reached an industrial jurisdiction agreement for 2009.</p>\n<p><br /> &ldquo;It\\\'s progressive for the work we all do,&rdquo; said Patrick\nKellett, Business Manager of Local 562. \\\"It streamlines the bidding process in the industrial market.\\\" The agreement covers jurisdictional rules, applications and materials, Kellett said. He said that the final language was being refined as of Christmas Eve and promised that it would be realeased as soon as it was in final form. \\\"This agreement is for the\nbetterment of the industry and will be an excellent tool in preventing\nfuture conflict between trades,&rdquo; Kellett said.</p>\n<p>The leadership of Local 36 echoed Kellett\\\'s sentiments. &ldquo;This is a historical event that is tremendously beneficial for both our organizations and the contractors utilizing our services,&rdquo; said Local 36 President David Zimmermann.<br />&nbsp;<br />In the past, contractors using workers from either labor organization have often been caught in the middle of disputes between Local 36 and Local 562 over which elements of a job should be the responsibility of which labor organization.&nbsp; Those disputes had the potential to complicate the job bidding process for contractors and even prevent some jobs from being awarded.&nbsp; The new agreement will eliminate those disputes and conflicts.<br />&nbsp;<br />&ldquo;The new agreement is a big step forward for both organizations and I applaud them for their efforts in getting this deal done,&rdquo; said Mike Corrigan of Lyon Sheet Metal Works.&nbsp; &ldquo;It will make bidding for future jobs much easier and much more likely of being successful, knowing there will be no more grey area and that we won&rsquo;t be caught in any arguments.&rdquo;<br />&nbsp;<br />Members of both organizations met on Dec. 16 and agreed in principle to the agreement which they hope to have finalized by the beginning of 2009.&nbsp; <br /><br />&nbsp;</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(987,355,10,2,1230287759,'a:34:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"355\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:47 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:2:\"31\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:2:\"10\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:31:\"new_concrete_parking_lot_course\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:192:\"The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:28:\"Concrete, Parking Lot, Class\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:29:\"Sheraton Wesport Chalet Hotel\";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:19:\"2009-01-20 08:00 AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:19:\"2009-01-21 05:00 PM\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:27:\"8:00 AM - 5:00 PM both days\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:715:\"<p>The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\" to be held Jan. 20-21 in ST. Louis.</p>\n<p><br />The course is intended for concrete contractors and concrete producers. It provides features and benefits of concrete and asphalt for paved parking areas. It presents the imporantance of marketing and effective presentation skills in the succesfful promotion of concrete parking lots.</p>\n<p><br />For more information and registeration<a href=\\\"http://www.ascconline.org/eventscalendar.asp\\\"> visit the ASCC website</a> or call 314.962-0210 (toll free 866.788.ASCC)</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"31\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(988,360,4,2,1230288144,'a:27:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"360\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-25 06:03 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:2:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";i:1;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:1:\"4\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest Hit in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:56:\"midwest_takes_biggest_hit_in_architectural_billings_drop\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:56:\"Midwest Takes Biggest Hit in Architectural Billings Drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:207:\"The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the lowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8 just one year prior. \";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:33:\"AIA, architectural billings, drop\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:1419:\"<p>The Midwest took the most severe hit when the AIA Architectural Billings Index (ABI) sunk to 34.7 in November, the\nlowest score in its 13-year history. In comparison, the score was 54.8\njust one year prior.</p>\n<p><img alt=\\\"Architectural Billlings\\\" class=\\\"image-left\\\" height=\\\"305\\\" src=\\\"/images/uploads/arch-billings.jpg\\\" style=\\\"float: left;\\\" width=\\\"477\\\" />The inquiries score also hit a record low in November: 38.3,  down from 51 in September.</p>\n<p>The American Institute of Architects (AIA) compiles the index based\non surveys sent to mostly commercial architects. The index has fallen\nbelow 50 for 10 straight months (a number below 50 indicates a decrease\nin billings).</p>\n<p>The commercial sector has taken a steep dive, hitting 26.7 in\nNovember. Multi-family residential was also down, from October&rsquo;s 32.5\nto 30. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s just as troubling is that the institutional\nsector&mdash;schools, hospitals, and public buildings&mdash;is also beginning to\nreact to tighter credit conditions and a weakening economy,&rdquo; says\nKermit Baker, the AIA&rsquo;s chief economist. The institutional score dipped\nto 40.8 in November, down from 41.3 in October, and 44.4 in September.&nbsp;</p>\n<p>In terms of regions, all had record-low scores. The Midwest had the\nlowest: 31.4. The West dipped to 33.5; the South, 36.8; and the\nNortheast, 39.5.</p>\n<p>&nbsp;</p>\n<h4>Graph courtesy of AIA</h4>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";s:10:\"category_1\";s:2:\"32\";}'),(989,366,4,2,1230312085,'a:25:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:1:\"4\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:0:\"\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:0:\"\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-26 06:19 AM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:1:\"4\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:38:\"Walton Completes Chesterfield Wal-Mart\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:38:\"walton_completes_chesterfield_wal_mart\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Submit\";s:11:\"field_id_26\";s:38:\"Walton Completes Chesterfield Wal-Mart\";s:11:\"field_ft_26\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_31\";s:0:\"\";s:11:\"field_id_44\";s:304:\"Walton Construction St. Louis has completed a 190,617-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter expansion in Chesterfield, Missouri. Renovations to the retail facility were completed in less than a year with a grand opening scheduled for October 29, 2008. The architect was LawKingdon Architecture of Wichita, KS.\";s:11:\"field_ft_44\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_28\";s:16:\"Walton, Wal-Mart\";s:11:\"field_ft_28\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_29\";s:899:\"<p>Walton Construction St. Louis has completed a\n190,617-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter expansion in Chesterfield,\nMissouri. Renovations to the retail facility were completed in less\nthan a year with a grand opening scheduled for October 29, 2008. The\narchitect was LawKingdon Architecture of Wichita, KS.<br /> <br /> &ldquo;We phased the remodel and addition project to ensure that Wal-Mart was\nable to remain open throughout construction,&rdquo; said Bill Butler, project\nmanager, Walton Construction. <br /> <br /> Walton Construction St. Louis began working with Wal-Mart in 2003 on\nthe construction of a return center in Waco, TX.&nbsp; Since then, Walton\nhas been contracted by Wal-Mart to construct mechanized distribution\ncenters and Supercenters in several states. Walton completed a similar\nSupercenter in Marion, IL last year and recently completed a\nSupercenter in Harrisburg, IL.</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:1:\"4\";}'),(990,355,10,2,1230312829,'a:33:{s:9:\"weblog_id\";s:2:\"10\";s:8:\"entry_id\";s:3:\"355\";s:6:\"sticky\";s:1:\"n\";s:14:\"allow_comments\";s:1:\"n\";s:16:\"allow_trackbacks\";s:1:\"n\";s:10:\"entry_date\";s:19:\"2008-12-18 09:47 PM\";s:15:\"expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:23:\"comment_expiration_date\";s:0:\"\";s:8:\"category\";a:1:{i:0;s:2:\"32\";}s:9:\"author_id\";s:1:\"2\";s:10:\"new_weblog\";s:2:\"10\";s:6:\"status\";s:4:\"open\";s:14:\"trackback_urls\";s:0:\"\";s:18:\"versioning_enabled\";s:1:\"y\";s:5:\"title\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:9:\"url_title\";s:31:\"new_concrete_parking_lot_course\";s:6:\"submit\";s:6:\"Update\";s:11:\"field_id_58\";s:31:\"New Concrete Parking Lot Course\";s:11:\"field_ft_58\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_62\";s:192:\"The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\"\";s:11:\"field_ft_62\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_59\";s:28:\"Concrete, Parking Lot, Class\";s:11:\"field_ft_59\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_63\";s:29:\"Sheraton Wesport Chalet Hotel\";s:11:\"field_ft_63\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_57\";s:19:\"2009-01-20 08:00 AM\";s:15:\"field_offset_57\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_56\";s:19:\"2009-01-21 05:00 PM\";s:15:\"field_offset_56\";s:1:\"y\";s:11:\"field_id_55\";s:27:\"8:00 AM - 5:00 PM both days\";s:11:\"field_ft_55\";s:4:\"none\";s:11:\"field_id_60\";s:715:\"<p>The National Ready Mixed Concrete Association and the American Society of Concrete Contractors have teamed to offer a new course \\\"How to Build a Sucessful Parking Lot Construction Business.\\\" to be held Jan. 20-21 in ST. Louis.</p>\n<p><br />The course is intended for concrete contractors and concrete producers. It provides features and benefits of concrete and asphalt for paved parking areas. It presents the imporantance of marketing and effective presentation skills in the succesfful promotion of concrete parking lots.</p>\n<p><br />For more information and registeration<a href=\\\"http://www.ascconline.org/eventscalendar.asp\\\"> visit the ASCC website</a> or call 314.962-0210 (toll free 866.788.ASCC)</p>\";s:10:\"category_0\";s:2:\"32\";}'),