Successful estimating is the key to the Missouri Department of Transportation’s 2006 construction program coming in at just 1.66% higher than budgeted.  MoDOT showed a record amount of construction projects in 2006 - 413 transportation improvement projects worth more than $1.2 billion.  This was the busiest construction year ever for the department.  This finding and many others are reported in MoDOT’s Tracker, a quarterly publication showing the latest data on Missouri’s transportation system.  Click here for a complete version of the current Tracker.

A slideshow of 33 of the best construction photos of the year is available at the ENR website - scroll down to Multimedia: Slideshow Images of the Year. The page also has a link to an article on the challenges of cataloging digital photography. I’ve used the image cataloging software program they recommend - Extensis Portfolio - and I recommend it. Portfolio creates a catalog of thumbnail images that you can scroll and search by keyword. You can download a 30-day trial and a server version also is available for shared files.

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Just for fun…here are a couple of odd construction stories that recently made the news and Building 101, a blog on ENR.com:

On December 12 in Richmond VA work was stopped on a construction site after a backhoe unearthed an unexploded artillery shell thought to date from the Civil War-era…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, a tower crane in Seattle appears to have gone insane. Buffeted by unusually high winds, the unmanned crane was spinning around madly for hours on end, drawing confused looks from pedestrians and construction workers alike. Written descriptions are sometimes not enough, so here’s a link to a video of the twirling tower crane one unnerved Seattle resident posted on YouTube.

Several other videos of the mad crane are circulating the Internet. Which all goes to show, you can’t keep a good (or bad) story quiet in this age of online communications.

The Labor-Management Council of Greater Kansas City gave a “Survival of the Fittest” party and 4,000 construction workers came - nearly 20% of all unionized construction workers in the region. Walton Construction, which has an office in St. Louis, was a sponsor. The workers jammed the Overland Park Convention Center to hear author Mark Breslin’s analysis of the industry and to learn about the future of the organized construction industry in the Kansas City region. Read more on the Labor Management Council’s new blog.

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen today approved $14.5 million tax increment financing (TIF) for the One City Centre office building downtown project to be developed by Pyramid Cos. The city of St. Louis will guarantee repayment of the acquistion loan if Pyramid defaults. The vote was near unanimous with 26 members in favor, two aldermen opposed.

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