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April 11, 2015 • Vol. IXX • No. 8 • 470 Maryland Drive • Ft. Washington, PA 19034 • 215-885-2900 • Toll Free 800-523-2200 • Fax 215-885-2910
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Inside
FABCO Rents, Lincoln Celebrate Relocation...34
Michigan Builds Robot City for Driverless Cars The University of Michigan has designed a course for automated, driverless vehicles at the university’s Mobility Transformation Facility that will imitate the regular city environment for cars and recreate road navigation that a car
would face on a daily basis. The $6.5 million facility, known as M City, will be outfitted with 40 building facades, angled intersections, a traffic circle, a bridge, a tunnel, gravel roads, and plenty of obstructed views.
Occupying 32 acres at the University’s North Campus Research Complex, it includes approximately five lane-miles of roads with intersections, traffic signs and signals, sidewalks, benches, simulated buildings, street
lights, and obstacles such as construction barriers. The area includes fully developed streets, a four-lane highway and the usual street obstacles. It is aimed at giving driverless vehicles see CITY page 105
Acoustics Drive Design Behind New Concert Hall By Dick Rohland CEG CORRESPONDENT
Ritchie Sale Attr acts More Than 2,300...96
More Th an 1,30 0 Attend CAS Joi nt Sal e.. .102
Table of Contents ........4 Skid Steer Section ..............................47-68 Paving Section ....79-90 Auction Section..94-107 Business Calendar ..104 Advertisers Index ....106
The Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minn., has a new Concert Hall that more than triples the seating capacity of its predecessor, the McKnight Theater, yet built on just a slightly larger footprint than the original building. Working from a design driven by high acoustical standards and on a construction site with no room to turn, crews with McGough Construction completed the hall in just under two years on schedule and on budget. Based out of Roseville, Minn., McGough Construction is a 6th generation family run company with roots dating back to 1880s Ireland. It has several construction offices in the upper midwest and one in Phoenex, Ariz. The $42 million, 56,000 sq. ft. (5,203 sq m) Concert Hall continues the architectural theme of the glass covered facade of the Ordway which overlooks St. Paul’s small, tree covered Rice Park. It shares street space surrounding the park with the main branch of the city’s library, the St. Paul Hotel and the Landmark Center, all historic and architecturally distinctive structures. Xcel Energy Center, home to the Minnesota Wild, and two smaller convention halls sit nearby. Including the Landmark Center, this little entertainment corner of the city draws in more than 100,000 people a year. And due to the architect, HGA Architects in Minneapolis, seating capacity increased from 306 seats to just under 1,100 by raising the roof 30 ft. (9 m) and extending the footprint of the original theater just 10 ft. (3 m) on one side and 20 ft. (6 m) on the other. At the same time, the intimacy of the former theater will be the same with audience members no farther than 90 ft. (27 m) from the musicians. see ACOUSTICS page 46
Work winds down on the new Concert Hall for the Ordway Center in downtown St. Paul late last year. The glass covered facade matches the facade of the original Ordway Center seen to the far left in this photo. At right, a Husqvarna backhoe equipped with a small hammer and stationed on a Sky Trak crane works in tandem with a JLG lift holding a worker on its platform. The worker is operating the hammer by remote control for safety reasons. The smaller hammer is necessary to prevent damage on the existing Ordway Center.
OSHA Grossly Underestimates Cost of Silica Rule for Industry A new report released by the Construction Industry Safety Coalition (CISC) found that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) proposed silica standards for U.S. construction industry will cost the industry $5 billion per year — roughly $4.5 billion per year more than OSHA’s estimates. The coalition cautioned that the
flawed cost estimates reflect deeper flaws in the rule and urged the federal agency to reconsider its approach. OSHA’s proposed rule, intended to drastically reduce the permissible exposure limit (PEL) of crystalline silica for the construction industry, has been underestimated by the see OSHA page 104