Engineering News

The Bridge Finder for Your Daily Travels

Written by Andrew Kimos Wed, Jan 06, 2010

The most recent article posted on the Operations Channel is titled “A Bridge to Everywhere” and briefly explores some notable facts and figures concerning our nation’s bridges, as part of our ongoing infrastructure series.

One web link embedded in the article, provided by MSNBC, provides each reader the ability to evaluate the bridge status along any route of car travel in the United States. This MSNBC web link has been a favorable feature of our bridges article, and some folks that have read the article suggested I bring that link to light in this Blog section as well.

The Green Flip

Written by Stephanie Aurora Lewis Wed, Dec 30, 2009

LEED V3 Provides New Tools.

Many homeowners are running amok trying to sell their homes in a downturned economy. The design/build professional Christopher Prelitz, LEED AP, founder of Prelitz + Partners, owner of New Leaf America, and author of the book Green Made Easy, has been renovating buildings with green features since 1993. An active member of the sustainable building community of Southern California for nearly 20 years, Prelitz says, "If you green it, you will sell it." Perhaps Prelitz's most profitable market is green-ovating homes and flipping them for nice profits. The concept sounds "easy," but doing a green renovation is often seen as such an elephantine task that many walk away from the idea with their eyes dazed over.

How to Make It Hot Without Touching It?

Written by Robert Klar Fri, Jan 15, 2010

A plate-type heat exchanger is a device which transfers the heat stored in one fluid to another fluid at a different temperature by passing the different fluids by each other in plate-like chambers. The flow of the fluids may be cross-flow, parallel-flow, or counter-flow (perpendicular), as defined by the directions from which the fluids are supplied to the exchanger.

No Shortage of (Natural) Gas

Written by Andrew Kimos Mon, Dec 21, 2009

I envision that somewhere, in our national array of large facility operators, there must be a seasoned fuel manager, armed with sharp pencils, finely tuned spreadsheets, and two red telephones, each linked to a fuel oil and a natural gas distributor, respectively. I imagine him or her sitting at a dimly lit desk, deep in a warm mechanical room, alongside a huge array of quietly humming dual-fuel boilers. A small computer screen on the desk is scrolling the latest fuel commodity prices.

Developing a Green Building Momentum

Written by Stephanie Aurora Lewis Wed, Dec 16, 2009

The tables have turned as owners are coming to architects requesting a LEED Certified building, reports Bruce S. Fowle, FAIA and LEED AP of FX FOWLE. Furthermore, “According to FMI Management Consultant’s 2008 U.S. Construction Overview, construction industry stakeholders are increasingly recognizing green building capabilities as "good" — and as a necessary part of a firm's best practices. Green building is no longer a niche sector,” reports HGTV in their News Trends article Construction Industry: Green Building is Good.

Stimulating U.S. Infrastructure Jobs - An Opinion

Written by Andrew Kimos Wed, Dec 09, 2009

In today’s news there’s talk of a new federal government jobs stimulation program, with a cost between $75 billion and $125 billion. This new jobs program would be funded in theory from recaptured amounts totaling nearly $200 billion, originally programmed under the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Approximately $50 billion of the new jobs program would be targeted for U.S. infrastructure projects, i.e., roads, bridges, and water projects. As Buildipedia.com’s U.S. infrastructure watchdog, this particular aspect of the news caught my attention Tuesday.