Steel Imports Ran 19.6% Below Last Year. Structural Shapes and Rebar Went the Other Way.
Census put August steel imports at 2.13M tonnes. Year to date is down 19.6%, but heavy structural shapes doubled and rebar ran 147% above last August.
DOE Put $1.9B Behind Restringing 1,500 Miles of Existing Line Instead of Building New
DOE selected 31 grid projects across 26 states under SPARK: $1.9B federal, $3.35B cost share, 1,500 miles reconductored and advanced tech on 21,000 miles.
San Francisco Approved One Tower With Two Programs. The Developer Picks 385 Apartments or an Office Block.
536 Mission cleared approval with two schemes: 385 apartments at 698 feet, or a commercial-only tower at 752 feet. No contractor and no cost disclosed.
Mass Timber Let Mortenson Delete the Basement. That Move Anchored $2M of Savings on a $55M Building.
Mortenson says mass timber cut $2M and about 25% of the schedule at Western Washington’s Kaiser Borsari Hall, mostly by removing the need for a basement.
Trayd Says Weekly Payroll Drops From 14 Hours to 27 Minutes. It Wants the General Ledger Next.
Trayd launched an accounting product Thursday, pushing its field-payroll tool into the general ledger. It has raised $15M and quotes eight-week implementation.
Confidence Split in Half by Company Size. Big Firms Scored 63, Small Firms 41.
ENR’s 3Q confidence index fell to 52, and the average hides a split: firms over $250M scored 63, firms at $50M or less scored 41. Skill shortages rose 18 points.
Tower Cranes Rose in 11 of 18 North American Cities. Education Went From 12 Cranes to 17.
RLB’s Q3 crane index has 11 of 18 cities up, four flat and three down. Denver added eight cranes; Toronto lost twenty.
O’Hare Built Concourse D on 88 Acres of Live Airfield Without Closing a Foot of FAA Pavement
Chicago’s aviation department says the $8.8 billion ORD Next programme has taken 88 acres of active airfield for Concourse D with zero FAA pavement closures.
98% of Crane Professionals Hit a Communication Breakdown Within 90 Days. 71% of Crane Deaths Aren’t the Operator.
NSC and the NCCCO Foundation counted 405 U.S. crane deaths from 2015 to 2024. Operators were 29% of them. The rest were on the ground.
The Port Authority Is Training Up to 85 Southeast Queens Residents for JFK’s $19 Billion Rebuild
JFKR STEP will put up to 85 southeast Queens residents through pre-apprenticeship training aimed at union placement on the JFK redevelopment.
The Cement Industry Built a Wildfire Rebuild Website. It Lists Six Non-Combustible Ways to Replace a Burned House.
Building with Resilience launched a Resilient Rebuild Hub covering ICF, CMU, precast and 3D-printed homes, aimed at Pacific Palisades fire rebuilds.
California Data Center Developers Now Owe a Water Supply Assessment Before They Can Permit
Seven bills signed 21 September add water supply assessments, monthly energy reporting and full environmental review to California data center permitting.
Construction Partners Bought a Pensacola Asphalt Plant and 150 People. It Won’t Say What It Paid.
Construction Partners closed on Roads, Inc. of NWF, folding a hot-mix plant north of Pensacola and 150 employees into C.W. Roberts Contracting.
Engineers Put 11 Code Changes in Front of ACI, AISC and ASCE. One Is Worth 12% of a Structure’s Embodied Carbon.
Phase 1 of the CURE project names 11 code changes for ACI 318, AISC 360 and ASCE 7. The largest could cut a structure’s embodied carbon by 12%.
Contractors Piloting Automation Jumped From 12% to 32%. Accuracy Beat Labor as the Reason.
BuiltWorlds says 32% of surveyed contractors piloted an automation solution this year, up from 12%. The top reason given was accuracy, not headcount.
Architecture Billings Came In at 47.2 in August. Northeast Firms Hit Their Worst Reading Since 2020.
The AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index read 47.2 in August. Regional averages split hard: Midwest 50.7, Northeast 40.7 and falling.
Housing Completions Fell 27% in a Year. Single-Family Starts Were the Only Thing Rising.
Census and HUD put August housing completions down 27.1% year over year, the release’s clearest signal, while single-family starts rose 7.6% for the month.
HanmiGlobal Takes PM on SK hynix’s $4B Indiana Plant. The Cleanroom Is Due October 2028.
HanmiGlobal is construction manager on SK hynix’s $4B-plus HBM packaging plant in West Lafayette, with cleanroom completion targeted for October 2028.