My boss at my first engineering job told me that a PE license and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee.
Now that’s one heck of a saying, and at 22 years old, I didn’t really get it. I eventually put two and two together and realized that since a cup of coffee […]
While we may not often talk about them, we all remember the dark ages. These are the years where work in the architecture, engineering, and construction field fell to levels not seen for, at a minimum, decades. I was not one of the lucky who lived in a castle with a moat, so I was […]
Everybody loves to get hung up in contract language. On construction projects, contractors, owners, and subs will fire contract language back and forth like missiles in what gets to be an arms race of legalities that negatively affects projects by creating panic and anxiety. When lawyers get involved, the language starts to get twisted and manipulated […]
I’ve spent the past four years starting a construction company through the public bidding process. While I have arguably been successful in doing this, it has not come without plenty of headache, heartache, and just plain unimaginable stress.
I’ve probably bid at least 100 public RFPs, but I’ve only been awarded less than 10. I’ve dealt […]
I will often get asked, “What is Constructonomics?”.
Actually, that’s a lie. I very rarely, if ever, get asked that question. I’m not sure why I lied about that, but most likely because that’s how a post like this would typically start.
Nevertheless, I do think about the question a lot […]
And furthermore, why do these photos have a blue or red tint to them?
Well, I’m not really sure about the tint, but I suspect it has something to do with lighting at the Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting last night. The Philadelphia chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors met to tour the building and […]
Roofing. It’s probably something that you take for granted.
Protecting you from the elements, the humble roof doesn’t really get all of the credit that it deserves, but there are many iconic landmarks all over the world that are renowned for their roofing. In the US while most of the city sides such as New York, […]
The title of this post is very important. If you just glanced at it, you may think it reads, “How To Get Construction Management Work”. But of course this is not the case. It reads, “How Do You Get Construction Management Work?”….with a question mark! (And yes, that was an exclamation point) And it isn’t […]
We all know that a construction site offers up all kinds of health and safety issues, but it seems that many site owners still aren’t doing enough to keep their workers safe. One of the major issues which arise time and time again is the provision of temporary fencing, but this is […]
Thanks to Maxwell Systems for sending me this infographic. Check out the cost to building The Great Pyramid!
I’ve occasionally danced around the issue of construction labor unions on this site, but of course I have not taken any definitive stance on one side or the other. While one may think that this lack of commitment resulted from an aversion to being thrown in the Sckuylkill River with two concrete “slippers” on my […]
Over the last century there have been plenty of construction blunders that have left people asking “how could that happen?”Thanks to some overzealous developers in Spain, we are left asking that question once again.
The massive InTempo Skyscraper in Benidorm, Spain was meant to represent prosperity to contrast the county’s economic woes. However the 47-story building […]
The building that collapsed at 22nd and Market Street in Philadelphia is nothing less than a tragedy. But now that the dust has quite literally settled, it’s time to pick up the pieces and figure out what went wrong. However, it’s just not an easy thing to do. By the way, I kind […]
It’s easy for an outsider to an industry to get on their ethical high-horse and point their finger at others who are walking along the ethical line and perhaps even crossing it. It’s easy for regulators, government, and academia to point their finger at industry and tell them to clean up their act. However, it […]
