Four UK M&E Contractors Broke Away From the Rest. Data Centres Did It.
BESA’s Top 30 shows NG Bailey taking first at £707m and a four-firm group opening a £200m gap to fifth, on combined turnover of £6.8bn.
HS2 Is Two Months From Resetting Its Last Two Civils Contracts. Wild Says It Avoids £2bn.
HS2’s chief executive told MPs the Balfour Beatty Vinci and Skanska Costain Strabag resets are close, and that one earlier reset cut contract exclusions from hundreds to under 20.
Construction’s Blind Spot Isn’t Prevention. It’s the First 48 Hours After.
Researcher John Gaal says peer-reviewed prevention work outnumbers postvention roughly 40 to 1, and lays out a four-part protocol for the hours after a worker dies.
Heathrow Tied 5,000 Training Places to the Third Runway and Started a Skills Council to Aim Them
Heathrow pledged 5,000 apprenticeships and entry-level places on its expansion programme and launched an Infrastructure Skills Council aimed at the UK’s NEET problem.
Steel Lead Times Doubled to 55 Weeks. Data Center Developers Started Asking About Timber.
Skanska says steel is up 25% with lead times past a year while lumber escalation sits at 0-3%, and data center clients are now pricing mass timber alternatives.
North Carolina Settled PFAS Claims for $455M. Chemours Has Already Spent $1.2B Building the Fix.
A $455M settlement with DuPont, Chemours and Corteva closes state and local PFAS claims over Fayetteville Works, where a mile-long barrier runs 100 feet deep.
NextEra and Dominion Bolted a $5B Supplier Program and a Richmond Tower Onto a $67B Merger
Facing a hostile Virginia review, NextEra and Dominion added an up-to-$5B supplier program, a shareholder-funded Richmond tower and a $100M workforce fund to their merger.
The Tallest U.S. Mass Timber Student Housing Topped Out 10 Weeks Early in Columbus
Intro Columbus hit topping out exactly a year after groundbreaking, at 44 CLT panels a day, with 1,128 metric tons of sequestered carbon claimed by the design team.
Suffolk and MIT Put a Number on Construction AI: 17-20% Cost, 22-25% Schedule. It Isn’t Causal.
A joint Suffolk-MIT white paper models six AI levers compounding on a 180,000 sq ft multifamily project. Suffolk’s own CTO says the results are not causal.
The Fed Raised Rates. Economists Say Materials Inflation Is Still the Binding Constraint.
The Fed’s first hike since 2023 lands on an industry where nonresidential input prices are already up 8.9% year over year, and economists disagree on what it does to starts.
Backlog Rebounded to 8.5 Months in August and 1 in 6 ABC Contractors Is on a Data Center
ABC’s Construction Backlog Indicator rose half a month to 8.5 months in August, with the share of members on data center work at a record 1 in 6.
Mortenson and McCownGordon Take CM-at-Risk on the Royals’ $1.9B Crown Center Ballpark
The Kansas City Royals picked a Mortenson-McCownGordon JV as CM-at-risk for a $1.9 billion downtown ballpark, with JE Dunn on the surrounding 85-acre district.
An 85-Foot Piling Rig Came Down at a Brickell Tower Site, Injuring Four
A piling rig toppled at 1201 Brickell Bay Drive on 14 September, injuring four and crushing three vehicles and a site office. Cause is undetermined.
Iowa Opened a $3.5M Grant to Build Training Space. Healthcare Takes $1.5M of It.
Iowa Workforce Development opened a $3.5 million reimbursement grant for apprenticeship training facilities and equipment, with applications closing 19 October.
U.S. Steel Cleared the Last Permit for a $475M Quench-and-Temper Line at Fairfield
U.S. Steel has the air permit for a $475 million quench-and-tempering facility at Fairfield Tubular Operations, taking its Birmingham spend to $550 million.
GSA Says a $3.96M Repair Cap and 426-Day Approvals Have Inflated Some Costs 436%
GSA asked Congress for $10 billion for 103 buildings and a repair cap rise from $3.96 million to $75 million, citing 426-day average waits.
AirJoule Paid $27M for BitSink to Put Water-From-Air Into Data Center Cooling
AirJoule Technologies closed a $27 million buy of BitSink, betting atmospheric water generation can feed liquid cooling as rack densities climb.
Maryland Opened $103M for Building Electrification and Prices Missing BEPS at $230 a Ton
Maryland’s FY27 commercial buildings program puts $103 million across five tracks, paying $300 to $500 per metric ton of lifetime emissions cut.