Author: Caryn Norton
With more than 25% of the country’s office stock projected to become obsolete by 2030, how is an international commercial hub like New York City adapting? Join STOBG’s SVP of Building Repositioning, Brooks McDaniel as he discusses the city’s trend towards residential conversion with commercial design leader and managing partner at MdeAS, Dan Shannon.
A Houston project plans to achieve two firsts: the city’s first mass timber commercial office project, and the state of Texas’s first commercial office building targeting net zero energy operational carbon upon completion next year. Framework at Block 10 is owned and managed by Hicks Ventures, a Houston-based development company.
The AEC industry is ever evolving. In the search for more sustainable solutions in construction, mass timber continues to take hold. As a central feature of a building’s aesthetic—and perhaps of the owner’s commitment to environmental stewardship—mass timber is notable and noticeable, and is actively challenging traditional building methods. Is it the next step in improving the built world?
The good news? Commercial leases are back on the rise, and the data center and industrial sectors are going strong. The not-as-good news? That means certain materials will continue to have long lead times. Learn more about the state of the global supply chain in our September Supply Chain report.
“The best air quality in the world.” “The world’s first National Park City.” “A zero carbon, zero waste city.”
Those are just some of the bold goals London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced in 2018 as part of the city’s plan to make London a world leader in sustainability. As he put it at the time, “My aspiration is to help turn London into a zero carbon city by 2050. And I’m committed to working with national government, local boroughs, London’s businesses, NGOs, our European neighbours, and individual Londoners to achieve this goal.”
Building green isn’t just a trend—it’s a responsibility. In 2021, several STOBG companies signed on to the Contractor’s Commitment, a pledge created by contractors for contractors, to set sustainability targets and measure their progress—divided into Good, Better, or Best tiers. Over the last two years, those early signatories were able to provide valuable input to make the Commitment even stronger and more impactful.
It’s Hurricane Season, and we know that the best time to prepare for a storm is before it’s even in the forecast.
Marc Reeves, Ajax Building Company’s Florida-based director of safety and risk management, offers the following tips on keeping the flow of communication going if a storm is on the way.
Machine learning takes safety to the next level. Construction technology expert Michael “MC” Contreras shares how we’re training AI to make the jobsite even safer.
Although mental health awareness is at an all-time high, it continues to be referred to as “the silent epidemic” within the construction industry. And while this is certainly concerning from an employee health and wellness perspective, it is also inextricably tied to safety on the jobsite. Here, Structure Tone Dublin environmental health and safety director Fiona O’Reilly explains the deep connections between mental health and safety and how she and the STOBG Mental Health & Well-Being Committee have raised awareness and taken action to prioritize mental health.
The rise of mass timber usage on projects in the US Northeast is a trend that is here to stay due to the material’s ability to respond to the construction industry’s impact on climate change while satisfying designers’ appetite for biophilic building solutions. Like the specialized engineering expertise required to deliver custom wall systems, complex mass timber projects comprised of glulam, cross-laminated timber (CLT), etc. lend themselves to early-award, design-assist bid packages. We thought we would share some key lessons learned from our experience selecting a glulam partner early in the preconstruction phase.