AGC connected the Wall Street Journal with chief economist Ken Simonson to comment for a story about how one company has begun all-too-rare construction of a corporate headquarters to take advantage of low construction costs.

Read the article, Japanese Firm Makes a Mark in Chicago, here.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

AGC of Washington’s David D’Hondt and Doug Moore of member company McKinstry take media through the firm’s new Green Innovation Center during the release of AGC’s “Building a Green Future” report.

The nation's buildings and infrastructure will become more efficient, significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cutting energy consumption, according to a new green construction plan released Thursday by AGC. The plan outlines measures designed to stimulate demand for green construction projects, boost infrastructure capacity, and improve building efficiency and green construction practices.

Read AGC's plan here, and the press release here.

The news was covered by the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, Daily Commercial News, and Mother Nature Network, among others.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

The AGC Labor and Employment Law Council - a network of labor lawyers who represent AGC members and chapters - held its 26^th Annual Construction Labor Law Symposium on April 16 in Washington, DC.  Attorneys and chapter labor relations managers from across the country attended.

Council members and guest speakers provided presentations on various developments in construction labor and employment law, including:

• The Latest Info on Project Labor Agreements and How to Negotiate Them
• Labor Requirements for Federal & Federally Assisted Contracts
• Interesting Issues in Multiemployer Pension Plans
• Primer on Handbilling, Picketing & Bannering
• Primer on §§8(b)(4)(D) and 10(k) - Jurisdictional Disputes
• Conducting I-9 Self-Audits
• Workplace Violence:  "Terror, Trials, and Trends"
• Workplace Pandemic Planning

(L-R:) LELC Member Mike Boldt of Ice Miller; Senior Compliance Specialist Bill Isokait of U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division; AGC Associate General Counsel Denise Gold; and NLRB General Counsel Ron Meisburg.

Handouts on those presentations are posted on the Labor & HR Topical Resources page of AGC's Web site, integrated into their respective topic areas.

Guest speakers included Wilma Liebman, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.  Liebman spoke about recent controversies involving the Board, asserting that the upside of the battle over recent Board appointments and over the Employee Free Choice Act is that they have brought labor issues to the public's attention, while the downside is that they may have made labor-management relations even more hostile.  The Obama Board will take a more "dynamic" approach to decision-making than the Bush Board took, according to Liebman, viewing the National Labor Relations Act as a "living document" and taking into consideration happenings in the "real-world."  However, various constraints on the Board will prevent it from making the wholesale changes feared by some.  If fundamental change in labor law is to occur, she said, it must come from Congress.  Liebman stated that the Board's first priority will be to issue decisions in cases that have been pending for a long time but had to be put aside during the two years that the five-member Board had only two members.  These include cases on union bannering, pre-recognition bargaining, job targeting, the rights of workers hired by employers who knew of their illegal status, the rights of union objectors, and the property access rights of a contractor's employees working on another employer's premises.

Kyle Hicks, minority labor counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, delivered the Charles E. Murphy Keynote Address.  She spoke about recent developments in Congress and prospects for pending labor and employment legislation, particularly in light of upcoming mid-term elections.  The address is named in memory of "Chuck" Murphy, a long-time member and past chairman of the Council who passed away last year.

Make sure that your in-house and outside labor and employment lawyers are Council members, so that they will stay on the cutting edge of construction labor and employment developments.  For information about Council membership, click here or contact Denise Gold, AGC associate general counsel for labor and employment law, at goldd@agc.org or (703) 837-5326.

Gary Janco of member company CC Myers Inc. telling reporters about how CARB’s new off-road diesel emissions rule is hurting his business, forcing layoffs.

Emissions from California's construction and other off-road diesel equipment are less than 28 percent of what state officials have estimated, AGC announced Wednesday. As a result, the California Air Resources Board has no scientific justification for sticking to a new rule requiring construction contractors to spend billions of dollars on their existing equipment.

Read AGC's release and supporting materials here.

The news was covered by the Associated Press, San Diego Daily Transcript, and Fresno Bee, among others.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

AGC cautioned the Obama Administration to reject calls to impose new contracting rules that would allow for blacklisting of companies based on arbitrary reasons, false accusations and unproven anonymous complaints.

The proposed changes, referred to as 'High Road' contracting rules, also have the potential to delay countless federal construction projects by adding new levels of time-consuming and costly bureaucratic reviews.

Read AGC's press release here. The news was covered in Engineering News-Record.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

Highway and Transportation Division Chair Dean Word (right), Dean Word Co, Texas, joins Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez at a National Work Zone Awareness Week Kickoff event in New York City.

AGC used the start of the annual Work Zone Awareness campaign to call for increased police presence at highway and transit construction sites nationwide to cut the hundreds of work zone fatalities that take place every year.

Read AGC's press release here.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

Construction employment expanded in 26 states and the District of Columbia between February and March 2010, yet only Arkansas and North Dakota have more construction workers than they did a year ago, according to AGC's analysis of federal employment figures released Friday.

The new figures, while offering room for optimism, underscore how far the industry is from a recovery, AGC said.  Read AGC's press release here.

CNBC covered the the story here, as well as the Seattle Times and Phoenix Business Journal.

Jon Cloud testified before EPA on California's proposed diesel retrofit rule.

AGC member Jon Cloud testified before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to explain how California's plan to require construction contractors to install emissions reduction kits on their off-road diesel equipment will endanger workers and force job cuts.

Cloud (J. Cloud, Inc., El Cajon, Calif.) and Guy Prescott, a representative of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local Union Three, asked EPA to deny or delay a decision to allow the state to proceed with its off-road rule.

Read AGC's press release here.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail at (703) 837-5310 or turmailb@agc.org.

Five-year-old Ben Miller with Schiavone Construction safety professionals and AGC senior vice president Kris Young, observing New York City’s Second Avenue subway project.

Most construction projects have a range of fans and foes, especially when the project means shutting down large stretches of New York's Second Avenue for years at a time.  That's the case with the Schiavone/Skanska joint project to build a new stretch of subway line in Manhattan's Upper East Side.

But the contractors didn't expect that one of their biggest fans would be young construction expert Ben Miller.  Unlike most five-year olds, Ben knows what a tunnel boring machine is, and knows the difference between various makes and models.  So when AGC's senior vice president Kris Young (Ben's a big fan of the Web site for her underground boring company in Iowa) asked the folks at Schiavone is she could bring Ben over to their construction office for a briefing on the project when she was in town last week, they were more than happy to help out.

With the help of Schiavone senior vice president Michael Goldstein, project engineer Julio Martinez and Skanska safety engineer Ron Knott, Ben got a special briefing on one of the largest transit construction projects underway in the U.S. today.  They walked him through the safety rules every worker on the project must follow, gave him an update on their progress, and let him watch (from a safe distance of course) as their team installed new excavation equipment.

It was a nice thing to do for a special young fan.  And who knows, maybe thanks to the time a few busy professionals spent showing him one of their projects, Ben Miller just got the inspiration needed to start his own contracting firm when he grows up.

For more information, contact Brian Turmail, turmailb@agc.org, (703) 837-5310.

AGC responded Tuesday to the final federal rules governing the use of government-mandated project labor agreements on federal construction projects, calling them unnecessary, costly and counterproductive.

Read AGC's statement here. Read more on the rule here, and in the Phoenix Business Journal.