Steel in the News

The American Society of Civil Engineers will host a Design-Build Contracting seminar in Chicago on May 20-21, 2010. The two day seminar will be broken up into a Pre-Award phase on day 1 and a Post-Award phase on day 2. CEU credits can be earned by attending this event.

For more information on the event, download the brochure. To register for the seminar, click here.

AISC and NSBA member Oregon Iron Works, Clackamas, Ore., is looking beyond traditional fabrication tasks and diversifying its capabilities to include manufacturing streetcars. As the first U.S. streetcar manufacturer in six decades Oregon Iron Works already has 13 streetcars on order.

The company’s other out-of-the-box productions include manufacturing steel bridge girders, hydroelectric systems, unmanned seaplanes, space-launch platforms, and nuclear-containment equipment. All along, the key to the firm’s success has been its ability to be open minded about green technologies and how they mesh with its capabilities.

Oregon Iron Works recently signed on to develop North America’s first commercial ocean wave energy system. Once again, going green has proved to be a good way to overcome the economic downturn: the company is looking to hire 150 or more new employees.

Click here for a recent article about Oregon Iron Works, from “The Oregonian.”

Preserving a historic property in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, was the only viable option for creating a new multi-family town home. In order to keep its existing 5,000-sq.-ft footprint, the structure needed to be a renovation. If the developer chose to demolish and rebuild, zoning requirements would shrink the new building size by half.

The project was also in tight quarters and did not allow for heavy machinery to assist in the renovation. Therefore most of the structural steel skeleton was installed by hand.

Current building codes posed a second obstacle – meeting newer seismic requirements. The solution was to place the entire building on jacks so a new foundation could be could be put into place that would support new steel columns and beams.

The job took about five months to complete by hand, but in the end the historic heritage school is now one of the sturdier buildings in town.

For more information click here.

For most of the U.S., this is the last week of Standard Time. I’ve already set my alarm for 2 a.m. next Sunday morning (not really, but it sounds pretty earnest) when we’ll “spring ahead” an hour.

Funny - just when I’ve begun to remember to think about which side of the train I should sit on so I don’t have the sun in my eyes for the 30-mile trek into the city each morning, I get a reprieve.

I usually catch the 6:49 heading southeast into Chicago, and since February 15th that has been increasingly after the sun came up. Just last Wednesday, March 3rd, I stopped momentarily to appreciate a colorful (6:24) sunrise as I was backing out of the driveway. This week I’ll continue to carefully choose a seat on the right side of the morning train. Of source, even though next Monday we’ll be back to boarding in the dark (for a week), the sun still will rise long before we arrive in town.

For a good explanation of what’s behind the switch to Daylight Saving Time, visit http://geography.about.com/cs/daylightsa
vings/a/dst.htm.

If you prefer to dig into it yourself, start with the U.S. Naval Observatory’s table of sunrise and sunset times for your locale (they offer times for more than 22,000 locations) by going to http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_One
Year.php. And while you’re there, take advantage of the curious explanations for things like why the shortest day of the year doesn’t coincide with the earliest sunset.

Welcome to the sure signs of spring, and remember (most of you) to change your clocks next weekend.

Haselden Construction (Centennial, Colo.) is building the 219,000 square-foot Research Support Facilities (RSF) building, which is designed to be a model for sustainable, high-performance building design. The design–build team also includes RNL Design, Denver, and Stantec Consulting, which provided engineering, energy modeling and sustainability consulting.

Technology — from sophisticated computer modeling to advanced windows that actually open — will help the newest building at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) near Denver be one of the world’s most energy efficient offices. A short video clip (click here to view) shows its construction and explains many of the ways planned to achieve zero net energy use.

Although Denver-based structural engineer and builder KL&A is not mentioned by name, the first comment in the video is about its use of reclaimed steel gas pipe as the building columns, and all the action shots are about structure. Steel was provided by AISC member Omaha-based Paxton & Vierling Steel Co.

The newly published Supplement No. 1 to AISI S100, North American Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members, 2007 Edition, is available as a free download on the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) website, www.steel.org. (Select the “Shop AISI” tab or click here.)

The supplement adds the provision for determining the safety and resistance factor for partition walls, and updates the reference to Supplement No. 1 of AISI S123, the North American Cold-Formed Steel Framing Standard-Lateral. The Specification harmonizes cold-formed steel design technology among the U.S., Canada and Mexico, allowing faster introduction of new technologies and opening up the marketplace for a wide variety of derivative products such as design aids and educational materials.

“Houses of Steel” captures the quality and inventiveness of entrants into the annual Living Steel International Architecture Competition which has run internationally over the last three years. This comprehensive collection presents commentary and images about the winners and finalists of all the global competitions in an elegant book.

“Houses of Steel” is published by Images Publishing and is available in major architecture and design bookstores. To purchase the book online, visit www.imagespublishing.com  or click here.

Additional images from the various competitions can be viewed at http://www.livingsteel.org/pages/winning
-designs

Join David Nour of Relationship Economics and AISC for a webinar all about corporate blogging. If you are interested in starting or maintaining a blog, this webinar is for you. In 60 minutes David will teach you how to better connect with your customers through blogging.

The webinar “Corporate Blogging Best Practices” is scheduled for Tuesday, March 16 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. For more information or to register, go to http://www.relationshipeconomics.net/AIS
C.html.

The next time you search for something on Google, try this: When the results come up, go to the upper left hand corner of the screen and right beside the word “Web” click on “Show options.”

Look down the list of options that appears on the left side of the screen. Toward the bottom you’ll find “Wonder wheel” – click on that.

So far, it’s just a hidden tool that shows related search possibilities in a graphical format. But as you follow your curiosity and click through a few more words and phrases, notice two things. First, the list of results keeps changing to match the new topic. And second, you can always jump back to one of the hubs from earlier in your search. Play around, and have fun.

If you prefer a more methodical introduction, click here for step-by-step instructions.

You can also listen to a Google software engineer’s explanation in a 30-second video by clicking here.

And while you’re there, check out the “Timeline” option as well. It’s particularly interesting if your search for something with a history, such as “steel.”

The new Granite City Crossing Bridge in St. Cloud, Minn. crosses the Mississippi River with three deep continuous steel spans. The girder depth is 104 in. at midspan and 168 in. at the piers. Extra effort and teamwork replaced the aging Desoto Bridge in surprisingly short order. 

To see a YouTube clip of the demolition and rebuilding of the Desoto/Granite City Crossing bridges click here. Click here to view the online Minnesota DOT project gallery.

To read more about this and other projects check out the Steel Bridge
News section in the March issue of Modern Steel Construction. The
digital edition will be available online Monday, March 1.