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Royal Architectural Institute offers course on Building Information Modeling
The RAIC will be offering a course to enable architects, engineers and others in the industry to understand how to offer fully integrated project delivery using this powerful new tool.
Sacramento’s Economy Sidelined in 2008; Recovery in 2009
Over the past six months, Sacramento’s economic pulse has gradually slowed. This observation is based on the fact that employment growth in the metro area has steadily moderated from 2.7% year over year in April of this year to 1.0% in October. The major reason has been job losses in construction due to a particularly weak multiple-unit housing market. Strength in government-related employment will underpin the local economy and help it ease through 2008 before recovery begins in 2009.
Seven States Now in Recession
The risk of an economy-wide recession in 2008 has increased, but remains well below 50%. Reed Construction Data (RCD) believes that the economy will avoid a recession — but it will be a near miss. Seven states are now in a recession: Alaska, Arkansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada and West Virginia. Only five states have experienced a significant acceleration in growth in the last few months: Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and Mississippi.
Slower Construction Activity Won’t Reduce Demand for Construction Skills Training
According to a recent Statistics Canada report, growing construction employment has been a major contributor to the rise in total enrolment in apprenticeship training programs between 1997 and 2005. However, it appears that registrants are dropping out early to take advantage of higher earnings that have resulted from strong labour demand. A concern over the longer term will be a growing shortfall of skilled construction tradespeople, due to a steady rise in the number of retiring baby boomers.
Starts Decline Seasonally in September
Reed Construction Data announced today that the year-to-date value of U.S. construction starts through September 2007, excluding residential contracts, totaled $233.6 billion, 17.9% higher than in 2006 and down 8.6% from August. Because September is seasonally weaker than August, the month-to-month decline may not include any negative impact spilling over from the liquidity problems set off by the collapse of the subprime residential mortgage market.
Strong Canadian Dollar Will Moderate Non-Residential Construction Costs
After increasing by a blistering 10.6% year over year in second-quarter 2007, non-residential construction costs slowed slightly to 9.6% in the third quarter. This moderation was the result of slower quarter growth in all three construction categories. In the institutional category, costs slowed from 10.1% year over year in the second quarter, to 8.8% in the third quarter. Industrial construction costs slowed from 9.6% to 8.5%, while commercial construction costs moved from 11.2% to 10.3%.
Strong Labour Markets Leading to Higher Wages
Employment growth in Canada continued its strong pace in September 2007. The Canadian economy has created even more new jobs through the first nine months of this year than during the same period last year (+283,000 versus +219,000, for a net gain of +64,000). The construction sector, with a net gain of +43,000 jobs, has played a key role in the overall jobs strength. Furthermore, the current figure for average hourly earnings (+4.2%) is the highest in the history of this series, which dates back to 1997.
Subprime Mortgage Crisis Morphs into a Bad Debt Crisis
After cuts of 0.25 percentage points by the Bank of Canada (on December 4th) and the U.S. Federal Reserve (on December 11th), the key policy-setting interest rates of both central banks now stand at 4.25%. The Bank of Canada’s move was in anticipation of what the Fed would be doing. The reasons behind the action taken by the Federal Reserve were more complicated. The subprime mortgage crisis has morphed into a bad debt crisis. Measures are being taken globally to ensure liquidity.
Surprise! Increases in Energy Efficiency Lead to More, Not Less, Energy Use
Contrary to what most people believe, increases in energy efficiency usually mean a rise in energy consumption, not a reduction. This apparently counter-intuitive statement is supported by basic economic logic and was recently summarized in an article written by economists Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets. What are most interesting are examples from history and from more current developments in fuel usage.
The BIM Transformation is Manageable with the NEW SmartBIM Library v3
SmartBIM Library v3 (SBL v3) has arrived and now you have the ability to store, organize and locate BIM objects, streamline design workflow and share libraries of BIM objects.
