Seattle Washington Building Expert Directory

'Regluing' Oregon State's Showcase for Mass Timber

September 17, 2018 — Nadine M. Post - Engineering News-Record
The tally of how many defective cross-laminated timber panels need replacement on a $79-million college of forestry building under construction at Oregon State University is almost complete, nearly six months after two layers of a seven-layer CLT floor panel, 30 ft x 4 ft, came unglued and crashed 14 ft from the third to the second floor of the three-story building. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Nadine M. Post, ENR
Ms. Post may be contacted at postn@enr.com

The Great Skyscraper Comeback Skips North America

February 05, 2015 — Patrick Clark – Bloomberg
Tall buildings are back. Developers around the globe completed a record 97 buildings of at least 200 meters (656 feet) in height in 2014, according to a new report from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, as size-obsessed builders got back on a growth track after a two-year skyscraper dip. It’s not hard to explain the pattern. A typical skyscraper takes two to four years to finish, says report co-author Daniel Safarik. Work back from the year of completion, and the global financial crisis looks like an easy explanation for the drop-off in tall buildings. If you thought it was hard to get a home loan in 2009, imagine asking bankers to finance a gravity-and-wind-defying symbol of luxury, industry, and capitalist will. Especially, as Bloomberg Businessweek’s Bryant Urstadt pointed out, since supertall buildings are notorious for being hard to fill with tenants. (It’s worth noting that “tall” isn’t a technical term, though “supertall,” which is used to describe buildings more than 300 meters tall, is. And construction schedules vary. The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, planned for 330 meters, has been under construction for 28 years, according to a CTBUH report last year.) Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Patrick Clark, Bloomberg

“Time Is Money!” In Construction and This Is Why There Is a Liquidated Damages Provision

February 01, 2022 — David Adelstein - Florida Construction Legal Updates
In construction, the adage “Time is Money!” rings true for all parties involved on a project. This includes an owner of a project that wants a project completed on time, i.e., by a substantial completion date. While substantial completion is often defined as when an owner can use a project for its intended purpose, this intended purpose typically equates to beneficial occupancy (in new construction) and other factors as identified in the contract. The best mechanism for an owner to reinforce time and the substantial completion date is through a liquidated damages provision (also known as an LD provision) that includes a daily monetary rate for each day of delay to the substantial completion date. A liquidated damages provision is not designed, and should NEVER be designed, to serve as a penalty because then it would be unenforceable. Instead, it should be designed to reasonably compensate an owner for delay to the substantial completion date that cannot be ascertained with any reasonable degree of certainty at the time the contract is being negotiated and executed. (Liquidated damages are MUCH easier to prove than actual damages an owner may incur down the road.) As an owner, you don’t really want to assess liquidated damages because that means the project is not substantially completed on time. And, in reality, a timely completed and performing project should always be better and more profitable than a late and underperforming project. However, without the liquidated damages provision, there isn’t a great way to hold a contractor’s feet to the fire with respect to the substantial completion date. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of David Adelstein, Kirwin Norris, P.A.
Mr. Adelstein may be contacted at dma@kirwinnorris.com

Wilke Fleury Attorney Featured in 2022 Best Lawyers in America and Best Lawyers: Ones To Watch!

September 13, 2021 — Wilke Fleury LLP
Wilke Fleury congratulates attorneys David Frenznick, Adriana Cervantes, Matthew Powell and Dan Egan on their inclusion in the 2022 Edition of Best Lawyers in America! Since it was first published in 1983, Best Lawyers® has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Best Lawyers lists are compiled based on an exhaustive peer-review evaluation. Almost 108,000 industry-leading lawyers are eligible to vote (from around the world), and they have received over 13 million evaluations on the legal abilities of other lawyers based on their specific practice areas around the world. For the 2021 Edition of The Best Lawyers in America©, 9.4 million votes were analyzed. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Wilke Fleury LLP

What Made the Savannah Harbor Upgrade So Complicated?

May 10, 2017 — Jim Parsons - Engineering News-Record
Of all the East Coast port upgrade programs aimed at luring cargo traffic from the newly widened Panama Canal, the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project (SHEP) may well be the most ambitious, and complex. Elements of the joint effort by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Savannah District and the state of Georgia—originally estimated to cost $706 million, but subsequently increased to $973 million—range from 40 miles of channel dredging and new water quality mitigation facilities to the addition of an upstream fish passage and the recovery of a Civil War-era relic. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Jim Parsons, ENR
ENR may be contacted at ENR.com@bnpmedia.com

Los Angeles Could Be Devastated by the Next Big Earthquake

October 15, 2013 — CDJ STAFF
A group of scientists have made a list of about 1,500 concrete buildings in Los Angeles which could potentially collapse in an earthquake. They have offered to make the list available to Los Angeles officials, although the city has yet to take them up on the offer. In response, a group of Times reporters combed through records to identify which buildings were of the sort most likely to collapse in an earthquake. The group found more than 1,000 concrete buildings built before 1976 when Los Angeles increased the requirements for steel rebar. Experts estimate that in a major earthquake, five percent of these buildings could collapse, which for Los Angeles would mean about 50 buildings. Many of these buildings could be seismically retrofitted, but the article notes that a retrofit starts with a $100,000 structural study. Carol Schatz of the Central City Association notes that the cost of retrofitting “would be greater than the value of the building.” Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of

More Business Value from Drones with Propeller and Trimble – Interview with Rory San Miguel

August 10, 2017 — Aarni Heiskanen - AEC Business
Here’s my interview with Rory San Miguel, CEO of Propeller Aerobotics, a UAV tech company. We’re discussing the use of drones in construction and the company’s recently announced collaboration with Trimble to deliver efficient UAV workflows. You’re a co-founder of Propeller. How did your company come about? I met Francis (Propeller co-founder) in 2013 at a drone delivery startup called Flirtey. There we worked closely on drone technology as engineers but ultimately felt like there were nearer term revenue opportunities for drones in the mapping/surveying space. We quickly spun out to start Propeller and have focussed on making drone data easy for construction, mining, quarries and landfills since then. Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Aarni Heiskanen, AEC Business
Mr. Heiskanen may be contacted at info@aepartners.fi

Tightest Credit Market in 16 Years Rejects Bernanke’s Bid

October 08, 2014 — Prashant Gopal – Bloomberg
James Bregenzer, a 31-year-old marketing strategist in Chicago, was rejected for a mortgage in May after successfully financing two previous home purchases. The hitch this time: his monthly payment would have been $100 more than the lender was willing to approve. Bregenzer is in good company. Standards in the U.S. are so high and inflexible that former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, now a Brookings Institute fellow-in-residence with a net worth of at least $1.1 million, said at a conference last week that he couldn’t refinance his house in Washington. Even some doctors struggle to get home loans if they’re self-employed. “We asked if we could go over by $100 and were told that’s just not going to work,” said Bregenzer, who bought his first home before getting married in 2008. “The process of buying a home used to be stupid easy. Now, my wife and I were buying a home with two salaries, we make a heck of a lot more than I used to, and I have to go into great and terrible detail to show documentation.” Read the court decision
Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Prashant Gopal, Bloomberg
Mr. Gopal may be contacted at pgopal2@bloomberg.net

SEATTLE WASHINGTON BUILDING EXPERT DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES