Branimir Kovac, Vice President of ECA Member firm Thompson Pipe Group, was confirmed as Chairman of the American Concrete Pipe Association (ACPA) at their annual meeting in April. Kovac began his career as a contractor and has more than 30 years of industry experience. In 2010 he joined Thompson Pipe Group as the General Manager [...]
Dave Sorem’s note: We are letting our friend John Hakel take his final bow in this month's Government Affairs space. In typically modest fashion, John, in announcing his well-earned retirement spent most of his time in this piece praising the efforts of others in helping to grow the Rebuild SoCal Partnership. In my role in [...]
The founders of the ECA had it right when deciding upon what a construction-focused association should look like, and exactly who it was they were serving “Championing the interests of its members,” and, striving to be a “collective influence in the advancement of the construction industry in Southern California.” These words ring just as true [...]
Multiple shift work is a constant in the construction industry, caused by either demanding deadlines or government requirements (highway work in particular). A study released at the turn of the year from Oregon State University found a direct correlation between shift work sleep disruption and worker safety. This study, published in the December 2020/January 2021 [...]
While flipping through channels recently I came across a CBS TV show, Tough As Nails. I don't get to watch much television, but this show caught my attention. Through the uncertainty of 2020 our industry was fortunate to keep working. Tough As Nails highlights union workers, it has the typical cut away scenes of personal [...]
“Victory has many fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Although often attributed to John F. Kennedy, this line originated in the diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s foreign minister/son-in-law. He was shot by a German firing squad on January 1, 1944, after a failed coup against “Il Duce.” William Shirer, Kennedy’s [...]
Damages recoverable for breach of a construction contract are supposed to put the injured party "in as good a position as it would have been in had the contract been performed." (Rest.2d Contracts § 344.) But damages are only recoverable when the breaching party had "reason to foresee [them] as a probable result of the [...]
This last year has hit all of us with a seemingly endless barrage of challenges. The effects of the pandemic have gone far beyond the physical impact of the infection itself and have assaulted almost every aspect of our everyday lives. One result of such tumultuous times is a staggering uptick in crime - construction [...]
The good news … construction activity is ramping up. The bad news … so is the price on a bunch of the stuff you use on a job site, from diesel to softwood lumber prices. In an open letter to President Biden in February, Stephen Sandherr, AGC's chief executive officer, urged domestic lumber producers to [...]
The 101-year-old Devil's Gate Dam is the subject of sundry studies these days, with Cal Tech, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the County of Los Angeles preparing to turn the structure into an earthquake detector. While the project is still in the early stages, there is support for the concept from the County Board of [...]
