AGC has received reports that its members have received a letter from the U.S. EPA directing them to complete a mandatory survey on construction stormwater management practices within 60 days - or face significant fines and penalties of up to $37,500 per day per violation.

While EPA claims to have not directed this survey to general contractors, several have received it. If you have received a survey, it is imperative that it be completed and returned before the 60-day deadline to avoid steep penalties. However, most contractors need not continue beyond A5, or the first page of the survey. Unless a contractor has an ownership interest in the properties it builds on, it is unnecessary to complete the detailed financial and technical portions of the survey. For details, visit the definitions page and scroll down to owner/developer questionnaires.

EPA has initiated a national rulemaking to reduce stormwater discharges from new development and redevelopment and to strengthen its stormwater program (a.k.a., "post-construction" stormwater rule).  To collect information from entities believed to be owners/developers of residential, non-residential, industrial and commercial sites, EPA mailed out letters (click here for an example) last week to approximately 3,000 companies directing them to complete a lengthy, mandatory questionnaire within 60 days.

For more information on AGC's efforts and the new "post-construction" stormwater runoff rule that EPA is working on, click here.

For more information, contact Leah Pilconis at (703) 837-5332 or pilconisl@agc.org.

With just three to four legislative weeks left in Congress before the November 2 election, a number of outstanding issues remain.

It is unlikely that both chambers will pass a bill that has created one of the biggest and most partisan debates leading up to this election: a package addressing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which expire in December. The debate has centered on extending the tax cuts for all but the wealthiest 2 percent of households, or for everybody.

Congress will likely fail to pass the FY11 appropriations bills before October 1, resulting in a must-pass continuing resolution extending federal spending at current levels. Other major legislative items on the Democratic leadership's list include a defense authorization bill (on which the Senate will vote on Tuesday); a reauthorization of the FAA programs that expire at the end of September; and a food safety bill.  If the Senate invokes cloture on the defense authorization on Tuesday, it will open the bill up to two items Democrats want to deliver before the elections: the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the DREAM Act, which would allow a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought into this country as minors by their parents if these illegal immigrants are paying taxes, attending college or serving in the U.S. military. Items with little chance of passage or debate include card check, climate change, comprehensive immigration reform and telecommunications.

AGC has been urging Congress and the White House to finish work on long-term transportation and water infrastructure spending bills, and keep income tax rates (especially the death tax) from soaring to help construction industry employment recover from millions of lost jobs. AGC believes the stopgap funding for transportation isn't providing the certainty companies need for hiring and growing. In addition, the prospect of a leap in taxes is deterring private investment.

For more information, contact Jim Young at (202) 547-3350 or youngj@agc.org.

By Geoff Zeiss, Director of Technology, Autodesk, Inc.

Experts predict that a build-out of the smart grid will be one of the largest creators of wealth in the decade. One smart grid analyst goes so far as to say that the smart grid is "akin to the transcontinental railroad, the phone system, the interstate highway system and the Internet."

Challenges
It is very easy to see why America needs to do something about the current power grid.   The reliability of the existing grid is decreasing as our dependence on it is increasing.  According to the Department of Energy, today's electricity system is 99.97 percent reliable, yet still allows for power outages and interruptions that cost Americans at least $150 billion each year - about $500 for every man, woman and child.  Consider this:

• The number of outages affecting more than 50,000 people was 41 in 1991-95 and 92 in 2001-2005.
• The US has 9,200 electric generating units with a total of more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity - most of them were constructed in the 1960s or earlier.
• The current electrical network has 14,000 transmission substations, including 4500 large substations, and the average age of a substation transformer is more than 40 years - beyond their expected life span.  Substations are a critical component of our distribution system, and a loss of only 4% of transmission substations would result in a 60% loss of connectivity.
• As to the country's 300,000 miles of transmission lines, since 1982 peak demand for electricity has exceeded transmission growth by almost 25%  each year - but only 668 miles of new interstate transmission lines were built between  2000 and 2008.

Although the Congress has not set a national goal for renewable energy, 36 states have Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS).  The development of wind energy in the US is increasing at an exponential rate led by Texas, which recently set a new record of 6.7 GW of wind power generation, approximately 20% of the state's total power generation at the time.   In other states such as California, a massive expansion of solar power is underway where the Governor has reset the RPS target to 33% renewable energy by 2025.  The first proposal for off shore wind energy, off Cape Cod, has been approved and construction is expected to begin this year.  To bring this power to consumers, a massive build out of the transmission network will be required.  One proposal involved 19,000 new miles of very high voltage transmission lines to bring wind and solar energy to market.

Smart Grid
In addition to renewable energy programs, regulators are encouraging power utilities to reduce peak demand through consumer oriented programs such as smart meters and time-of-use pricing.  Many power utilities have already begun pilot deployments of smart meters.  Ontario in Canada will have completed deployment of smart meters to every residence and small business by the end of 2010.  Power utilities are also deploying technology for demand response that allows the power utility to reduce demand by shutting down non-essential equipment at peak.   To enable this type of capability requires a bidirectional network that allows information to flow from the utility to the consumer, as well as information to flow to the utility from the consumer.  This requires a build out of new communications networks, typically fiber in more densely populated areas and wireless such as WiMax in rural areas.

To reduce down time, whether brown outs or black outs, power utilities are automating their distribution networks by making installing intelligent network management hardware and software and building out network redundancy.  The objective is to make the distribution network smart enough to be able to isolate problem equipment and reconfigure itself to minimize the number of customers affected and to reduce the time required to identify and repair the faulty equipment.

It is estimated that implementing renewable energy and the smart grid to support it will cost between $1.5 and $2 trillion over the next two decades.   The current administration has made the smart grid build out a top priority.  The 2009 economic stimulus bill includes funding and loan guarantees for modernizing the nation's electricity grid. This total includes $11 billion to finance 3,000 miles of transmission lines, new and upgraded substations to transport renewable energy; as well to finance 40 million smart electric meters in homes.

Aging Workforce
At the same time that utilities are facing an increased workload to accommodate non-emitting energy sources and the smart grid, they are also facing a workforce crunch.  Experienced workers are retiring at a faster rate than they can be replaced with trained younger workers.  Utilities need new tools to improve productivity to enable them to upgrade and build out the smart grid without increasing their workforce.  As banks, low cost airlines, and the German automobile industry, to name just a few of the industries that have turned to IT for solutions have shown, IT technology can dramatically reduce costs while improving quality.

Automating the Design Process
Model-based design, or building information modeling (BIM), together with 3D visualization technology is helping engineers, architects, designers and construction companies automate tasks such as clash detection and quantity takeoff.  When combined with project management software, called 4D and 5D modeling, it enables construction companies to model the entire construction process, facilitating scheduling of crews and material delivery.

In the electric power sector, utilities are also adopting these technologies to improve the substation design and redesign process by making it easier for the design teams involved to collaborate.  For example, Duke Energy (Arnold Fry, Duke Energy Transforms Its Substation Design Process, Electric Energy T&D, Nov/Dec 2009) is streamlining the substation design/redesign process through a state-of-the-art design solution, Substation Design Solution (SDS), that enables its designers to create an integrated 3D model of a substation that includes all the equipment, connections, and structural elements.   Duke Energy estimates that SDS will reduce overall design time by at least 50%. With the time saved, the company believes that it will be better positioned to meet its customers' evolving capacity and service demands.  Additionally, the Duke Energy SDS will come online just in time to support the move to smart grid technology.

As utilities ramp up deployment of smart grids, they are going to devote these new technologies to not only redesigning existing and designing new substations, but also to designing and getting regulatory approval for transmission lines, designing renewable power generation and other facilities for their expanded networks.  And this is just the beginning.  New data capture techniques such as laser scanning and high resolution oblique imagery is being adopted by utility companies to reduce the time required to develop 3D models of existing facilities.  And other utility sectors such as water and wastewater utilities are also moving in the direction of intelligent networks.

Faced with a shrinking and less experienced workforce and the massive effort required to replace our existing networks with intelligent networks over the next two decades,  utilities in all sectors will be increasingly looking to model-based design and 3D visualization technology to enable them to meet their customers' expectations and the smart grid challenge.

AGC members in California sent hundreds of letters to the California Air Resources Board, urging it to repeal its costly and unnecessary off-road rule, which could be adopted by 32 other states.

AGC showed the board that emissions from off-road construction equipment are far lower than originally thought, and the news is spreading quickly. The North Bay Business Journal further explored the data while nearly 2,000 letters were sent in opposition to the rule to members of the California Air Resources Board last week. Engineering News-Record also covered the issue.

AGC released a study last year showing that as many as 32 other states could adopt California's rule.

For more information, contact Mike Kennedy at kennedym@agc.org.

AGC senior vice president Kris Young with Iowa DOT director Nancy Richardson and AGC of Iowa president Robert Cramer.

AGC, as part of the Transportation Construction Coalition and Americans for Transportation Mobility, pushed for passage of the long-delayed highway and transportation bill Wednesday in Des Moines.

The groups began a new national advertising campaign to push for federal funds to fix aging roads and unsafe bridges and improve transit services in August, and unveiled new bus, radio and print advertisements in Des Moines.  The effort, which will cover dozens of states during the coming weeks, is designed to educate the public about why passing a federal transportation bill is essential to improving road conditions in states like Iowa. AGC has hosted events in South Dakota and South Carolina as well.

Read the press release here. The news was covered by the Des Moines Register, as well as local television and radio stations.

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

In response to the Obama Administration's proposal for new transportation investment, AGC today noted that countless thousands of construction workers will have a better chance of retaining their jobs, but that the most effective sequel to the stimulus is passage of a fully funded six-year surface transportation bill.

Read AGC's statement here. AGC's reaction was covered by the LA Times, Baltimore Business Journal and Engineering News-Record.

The construction industry added 19,000 jobs in August, but the sector's 17 percent unemployment rate was the highest August rate ever, AGC said Friday, following its analysis of federal employment data.

Continuing gridlock in Washington over infrastructure legislation and expiring tax rates threatens to keep construction workers unemployed much longer, AGC warned.

Read more here.

Construction employment declined in 276 out of 337 metropolitan areas between July 2009 and July 2010, according to AGC's analysis of federal employment data. The employment figures demonstrate the widespread decline in demand for construction services that continues to outpace stimulus-funded work, AGC noted.

Read more here.

The news was covered by the Dayton Business Journal, Arizona Daily Star and Sacramento Bee, among others.

Casey Schwager of AGC member company Sloan Construction leads Congressman James Clyburn on a tour of the company's Columbia, S.C., asphalt plant.

The Transportation Construction Coalition and Americans for Transportation Mobility continued efforts for passage of the long-delayed highway and transportation bill on Tuesday with the unveiling of new billboard and online advertisements in Columbia.

The effort, which will cover dozens of states during the coming weeks, is designed to educate the public about why passing a federal transportation bill is essential to improving road conditions in states like South Carolina.

Read about the effort here.

The news was covered by several local television stations, including WBTV, WACH and WSAV, in addition to the Charleston Post and Courier, Columbia Business Report and Charleston Regional Business Journal, to name a few.

The California Air Resources Board abandoned its original estimates of off–road diesel emissions, conceding that its “off–road rule” is not needed to meet ambitious goals for the off–road equipment in the construction industry. According to new estimates that the agency staff developed over the summer, off road fleets of diesel equipment will exceed the state’s emission goals for many years to come.

During the earlier rulemaking process, the board staff used the now abandoned estimates to justify an "off-road rule" that would needlessly force contractors across the state to retire, retrofit, repower or replace billions of dollars worth of construction equipment, and all at a time when California's construction industry is still losing jobs. When informed of the state's new forecasts, association officials called on the Board's members to repeal the rule "quickly and completely."

Read AGC's press release here.

The news was covered by the Sacramento Bee and Equipment World, among others.

For more information, contact Mike Kennedy at (703) 837-5335 or kennedym@agc.org.