Crisp

Hermann Park Golf Course

Dallas, Texas

Sheraton Downtown Phoenix

San Antonio Marriott Riverwalk
San Antonio, TX

Registration for the CLC Leadership Development Conference, formerly known as Fall Working Weekend, is now open. This year’s event is co-hosted with the San Antonio Chapter of AGC and will take place October 23-25, 2014, at the San Antonio Marriott Riverwalk. Highlights of the program include keynote speaker George "The Iceman" Gervin, former San Antonio Spurs player; Chuck Greco, Linbeck Group, LLC, and Senior Vice President of AGC of America; and a roundtable session that will allow attendees to learn best practices from CLC groups from across the country.

The ACE Mentor Program of Houston invites you to join in The Third Annual BUILD IT FORWARD Event. This event brings together students involved in the ACE Mentor Program and industry wide professionals to build storage benches that will be delivered to area charitable organizations. For more information and to learn how you can get involved, please click here.

This session will build on the Liens and Bonds speech with an advanced discussion of liens and how they are enforced. The session will also cover a variety of payment topics.

This class develops professional estimating skills, including: an understanding of the different types of estimates; the importance of documentation and formatting; and the link between design, estimating and project costs. 

This course covers the safety and health hazards associated with permit-required confined space entry. This course features workshops on permit entry classification, instrumentation and program development.

This trainer course is designed for individuals interested in teaching the OSHA 10- or 30-hour General Industry safety and health Outreach training program to their employees and other interested groups. Using the OSHA General Industry Standards as a guide, special emphasis is placed on those topics required in the 10-and 30-hour programs as well as those which are most hazardous.

This course covers the various types of common machinery, machine safe guards, and related OSHA regulations and procedures. Guidance is provided on the hazards associated with various types of machinery and the determination of proper machine safe guards.

This Free training class focuses on preventing frequently-cited construction hazards. The Focus Four Hazards in Construction are conducted as four-hour awareness training focusing on the greatest dangers of working on a construction site.

This course covers the OSHA Standards, policies, and procedures in the construction industry. Topics include scope and application of the OSHA Construction Standards, construction safety and health principles, and special emphasis on those areas in construction which are most hazardous.

The management system course provides the participant the opportunity to design the core elements of a management system for environmental, risk, safety and health programs. Note: Participants must attend all three sessions.

Este seminario es GRATIS y se centra en la prevencin de riesgos que con mas frecuencia se citan en la construccin.

This course covers the OSHA Excavation Standards and safety and health aspects of excavation and trenching with topics including practical soil mechanics and its relationship to the stability of shored and unshored slopes and walls of excavations, introduction of various types of shoring (wood timbers and hydraulic), soil classification, and use of protective systems.

AGC of America recently surveyed members who build highway projects about their experiences with work zone crashes. The results suggest a strong consensus within the industry about the nature of the problem and some agreement about how to combat it. Of the highway contractors surveyed, 45 percent had one or more vehicle crashes in their construction work zones in the past year. Those accidents resulted in construction worker injury 20 percent of the time, including six percent that involved the death of one or more workers. The casualty rate for drivers and passengers in the cars was even higher, with 43 percent of the crashes resulting in injury to vehicle occupants, including 16 percent with fatalities.

A recent report by TRIP, a national transportation research group, recently found that the rural road fatality rate is three times higher than all other roads, while 15 percent of rural roads are in poor shape and 22 percent of rural bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America, Stephen E. Sandherr, stated " ...the U.S. Department of Transportation is warning states it will begin cutting back federal funding for highway projects in August as the balance in the federal Highway Trust Fund approaches dangerously low levels."

The Spring 2014 BIMForum in Boston focused on the variety of ways that BIM is being used to enhance the speed and creativity of projects. The theme of Optimizing Design with BIM led to a wide variety of presentations that showed how there are very different methods in how BIM is utilized throughout the industry. One of the focal points was a strong effort on sharing information between trades, yielding a quicker, more effective process. Design and constructability conflicts are also able to be resolved more rapidly and more efficiently because all those needed to make these changes were actively involved throughout the lifecycle of the project.

The Associated General Contractors of America has joined the Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes program, launched in 2011, which aims to hire 100,000 veterans in the next five years. "The only thing keeping many of our members from hiring vets is figuring out how to find them," says Stephen Sandherr, AGC's CEO. "This new partnership will make it easier for construction firms to find, recruit and hire veterans."

The Construction State Law Matrix is the most comprehensive, definitive and concise publication available, covering all aspects of state laws that may affect your public or private construction project. This essential resource, for use before completing any construction contract in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, ensures compliance and enforceability under state law.

Members receive exclusive weekly offers - Must sign up by August 15

JE Dunn Construction recently welcomed Emre Ozcan as the new Senior Vice President. As the new Houston office leader, Ozacan has more than 17 years of experience in the Houston market focusing on healthcare and commercial projects with notable clients such as Baylor College of Medicine, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Rice University. Congratulations and AGC wishes you the best of luck!

After a section of a fifth-level Houston parking garage partially collapsed in June, Aggregate Technologies, Inc. immediately got to work rebuilding the site. This particular job presented some unique challenges that had to be dealt with before construction could begin. The first through fourth levels had to be shored up to stabilize the structure before any demolition work could be done and avoiding use of impact equipment was necessary to avoid further damage to the structure. Thanks to Aggregate's hard work, the parking garage will soon be finished and in use.

A Houston submarket that once was predominately industrial is attracting new Class A office construction thanks to its lower costs and accessible location. The West Belt office submarket, located on Beltway 8 north of I-10 and extending just east of Highway 249, is a cost-effective alternative for companies in west Houston that need larger spaces and higher parking ratios. According to Jon Lee, Senior Vice President of CBRE's Houston office, "There are many new projects being contemplated that require preleasing to move forward. We anticipate this to continue to be a hot area in the foreseeable future."

Are you in the K-12 construction industry of Houston? Houston Independent School District (HISD) will be introducing an approved $1.89 billion bond, seven-year construction program to market consisting of 40 schools, three athletic facilities, and numerous renovations. The objective of the Labor Compliance Program (LCP) is to build the highest quality schools safely, on time, within budget, and with the best construction workers. HISD’s Labor Compliance Program (LCP) helps ensure a level playing field and protects workers by reviewing certified payrolls, monitoring job sites, interviewing workers, providing certified payroll training and sponsoring community job fairs.

The Houston region is expected to have 296,000 job openings in the "middle-skills" occupations within the next three years, and a new effort is being launched to fill them. In conjunction with the Greater Houston Partnership and JPMorgan & Co., the UpSkill Houston program will create seven sector-specific councils to improve coordination among the stakeholders. The seven key sectors for the Houston region are advanced manufacturing, construction, health care, oil and gas, petrochemical, ports and maritime, and utilities.

According to the Texas Comptroller's Office, the Houston area boasts the lowest school construction costs in Texas at just $135 a square foot, nearly $20 lower than the state average. The Houston region also includes three of the most prolific builders in the state—the Katy, Cypress Fairbanks and Fort Bend school districts, which have added a combined 6.7 million square feet of facilities since 2007. Efforts are being made to ensure that Houston's school construction costs continue to remain one of the lowest in the state.

On July 16, 2014, the House approved  a $10.8 billion Highway Trust Fund patch, which provides sufficient revenue to maintain current funding levels through May 2015. The bill also extends MAP-21 authorization for the highway and transit programs for those eight months. Revenue needed to support the patch came from a general fund transfer which was offset by a variety of tax code adjustments including extending customs fees on importers, taking money from the leaking underground storage tank fund (LUST) and changing rules on private pension contributions. Additional revenue for the Highway Trust Fund is necessary in order to avoid a slowdown in reimbursements to states for ongoing highway construction projects in the next few weeks.