Richard Cuthbert has resigned as chief executive after discovery of a flaw in the accounts.Название сообщения

The company had previously announced that a significant one-off profit of from a long-term contract would offset lower than originally expected profitability follow the conclusion of several contracts.

Now, however, it has been discovered that the one-off gain was miscalculated by £4.3.m, meaning that profits will once again take a hit for the year to 31 July 2011.

As part of the year-end audit process, new finance director Rod Harris, who joined in June from Carillion Business Services, has reviewed contract risks and project claims. As a result, the group has decided to increase provisions against these contract risks and project claims by a further £4.3m.

The reduction in the one-off gain and the increase in provisions relate to non-recurring and non-cash items.

Mr Cuthbert tendered his resignation with immediate effect. Chairman Bo Lerenius will stand in as executive Chairman until a new chief executive is appointed. 

Mr Lerenius said: "I would like to express the board's gratitude to Rich for his many years of service and his continuing belief in and commitment to the business.  The board will focus on maintaining Mouchel's position in its core markets in the interests of all its stakeholders."

Mouchel shares plummet as boss quits following massive accounting error

Mouchel’s share price plummeted today following the firm’s announcement that chief executive Richard Cuthbert has quit after an “acutarial error” that mistakenly suggested the firm was to make £4.3M more on a one-off contract than it will.

Saudis Planning To Build World's Tallest Skyscraperv - PiFFko news!

If a Middle East prince has his way, Saudi Arabia will someday be home to the world's tallest building. Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz recently unveiled a scheme for a 5.3-sq-kilometer city north of Jeddah that would include a mixed-use supertower designed to reach more 1 km above the desert floor.

Kingdom Tower, under design by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, with structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti, would enclose 530,000 sq m. The skyscraper is expected to cost $1.2 billion. The main contractor on the project is the Saudi Binladin Group. According to the architect, the foundations are designed, and the contract for the piles is already under tender. The Kingdom City development is expected to cost $20 billion.

Martin Luther King Memorial Dream Becomes Reality

The decades-long dream to create the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., will become a reality on Aug. 28. Fifteen years in the making, the memorial faced challenges—ranging from an extensive approval process to a site on the National Mall made of fill from the Potomac River—before construction could start in late 2009. Two years later, the design-build team, the first use of the delivery system for a memorial on the Mall, will deliver the $120-million vision within walking distance of the spot where Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech 48 years ago.

First authorized in 1996, the high-profile memorial has a mix of significant private and public stakeholders, including the Federal Commission of Fine Arts (FCFA), the National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. Dr. Ed Jackson, executive architect with the foundation, says after ROMA Design Group of San Francisco won the design competition in 2000, negotiations began in earnest.

 “Once the design competition had been completed and we had identified a winner, everyone thought the game was over. But for those of us who [know] the process here in Washington, that’s just the beginning of the game,” he says.

The project went through a trying series of approvals, including concerns raised by the FCFA in 2008 that the original sculpture concept of Dr. King was “too confrontational.” Security enhancements were also a sticking point. Plans to use a series of bollards to block vehicle entry were scrapped in favor of trees, a stone wall and bollards.

Once consensus was reached, the National Park Service signed off on the project in October 2009, allowing work to begin.

Darien Grant, project executive with Turner Construction, New York City, credits the design-build process for getting the project through the final years of approvals and getting the project on-track for its August delivery. Turner Construction partnered on the project with McKissack & McKissack, Washington D.C.; Gilford Corp., Beltsville, Md., and Turner subsidiary Tompkins Builders, Washington, to form the design-build team, which was selected in June 2007. The MLK memorial is the first memorial on the Mall to use a design-build procurement method, Grant says.

 “The [design-build] process really panned out,” he says. “If you look at the numerous stakeholders and their specific functional requirements, with the design-build process, the team brought to the table the proper intellectual horsepower to balance the desires of the owner with the requirements of the other agencies involved.”

The artistic vision for the memorial stems from the Dr. King quotation, “Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope,” which was part of his “I Have a Dream” speech. Upon entering the memorial, visitors will pass through a 30-ft-tall granite Mountain of Despair. Beyond the passageway, visitors will see the “Stone of Hope,” another 30-ft-tall piece of granite, carved as if it had been removed from the Mountain of Despair. A sculpture of King, created by Chinese artist Lei Yixin, is carved into the Stone of Hope, which is on the face opposite the entrance.

Additional elements include a 2,350-cu-ft, 194-ton granite inscription wall and 47,000 sq ft of granite pavers. The 450-ft-long, crescent-shaped wall displays 14 quotations from Dr. King. Landscaping includes 185 Yoshino cherry trees, 32 American elm trees and 16,835 Big Blue Liriope plantings. Two large waterfalls are served by below-grade pump rooms with a 175-ft access tunnel.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Pulls Strings For Kansas City Music-Goers

In addition to a swooping, stepped concrete and sloped stainless-steel roof-line, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Kansas City, Mo., features a radial glass atrium that hangs on finely tuned steel cables. The privately funded, $413-million job is set to open Sept. 16 after more than a decade of planning, design and construction.

Locals have likened architect Moshe Safdie's design to the Sydney Opera House—or to a pair of armadillos. The atrium was envisioned to resemble a cello's strings fanning over a bridge and fret-board. The cables span the 300-ft-long, 105-ft-wide glass lobby to support 48,300 sq ft of high-performance glass panels, each roughly 1.5-in. thick. To keep the ceiling and walls from caving in, a series of 27 threaded rods and corresponding cables are tensioned to an average 400 kips, or 400,000 lbs, creating the effect of a 250-mph wind load as they pull against the building superstructure.

“The cables were by far the dominant force that we needed to consider,” says G. Kelley Gipple, principal of locally based Structural Engineering Associates Inc., the main building's engineer of record.

Though most work was smooth, the project hit a snag in 2009 when a 125-ft-tall boom lift failed, tipping over and killing the operator. The family is suing the manufacturer, JLG, and others for wrongful death in Jackson County court.

Double Yolk

Organized like two egg yolks within a single shell, the building contains 4,500 tons of steel brace frames and curved box trusses. They support a precast concrete and stainless steel outer structure, which encases two cast-in-place concrete bowls: a 1,800-seat proscenium theater and a 1,600-seat orchestral hall. For acoustics, each space is isolated from each other and the over-arching canopy.

Like a stringed soloist in concert, the elegant cable-glass atrium, built by Germany-based Novum Structures LLC, took center stage during a key period of construction last year, forcing the general contractor, locally based JE Dunn Construction, to carefully sequence work around the delicate glazing operation.

“It's a one-of-a-kind structure, so there was a lot of cutting-edge planning that had to go into it,” says Kyle McQuiston, project executive for JE Dunn.

For eight weeks last summer, as the cable system was tensioned (from the center grid outward), Dunn had to stage the finishing of the building's exterior precast concrete walls, interior walls and elevators as the pulling job was done. Once the tensioning work was complete, the building's steel members had shifted 2 in. to 6 in. from their original locations. Workers were then clear to finish the build-out.

The big pull took place outside the glass atrium, across a driveway that lies underneath the stringed fanfare, where 27 rods anchor into a 50-ft-tall, 4-ft-thick concrete wall bolted into bedrock. On one side of the wall are the below-grade portions of the performance halls; the other is a 1,000-space parking garage.

At about 50 ft high at their opposite ends, the rods pull against articulating, 20-in.-thick mast tubes that frame out the glass-wall's radius. Inside the atrium, one cable follows the roof slope while another curves downward, forming a truss shape. Both cables pin to 70-ft-high brace frames, which bear on columns.

Arup, the building's design engineer, chose hardier rods outside for safety. Fire models showed that a bus exploding in the driveway would pose more risk to melting connections than would an interior fire.

The enclosure's vertical load is taken by the massive concrete wall. For extra support, concrete struts attached to the wall tie back into the main structure. This supports the driveway slab and resolves the horizontal tension with compression forces. “If you can provide a building a circular load path—keep all of the forces from the tensioned net within the building—then the foundation is much smaller,” explains Brian Markham, an associate and structural engineer in Arup's New York City office. “We could take this building and pick it up off its foundation, and the cable nets and the glass atrium would maintain their integrity.”

Seattle Voters Approve Alaska Way Viaduct Replacement Tunnel by Wide Marginм

A $2-billion deep-bore tunnel along Seattle’s downtown waterfront appears to have overcome what may be its final obstacle to construction, garnering the approval of nearly 60% of voters in a referendum on whether the city should give the notice to proceed with the project.

The tunnel, scheduled for completion in 2015, is the centerpiece of a $3.1-billion Washington State Dept. of Transportation program to replace the seismically suspect double-decked Alaskan Way Viaduct. That thoroughfare carries approximately 110,000 vehicles each day along one of Seattle’s primary north-south arteries. Damage from the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake sparked a decade-long, often-controversial effort by WSDOT to find a suitable strategy for replacing the Viaduct and the aging seawall that supports its backfilled foundation soil.

In 2009, the 1.7-mile, 57-ft dia tunnel emerged as WSDOT’s top replacement alternative compared with constructing a new above-ground structure, and doing away with an express route entirely in favor of a beefed-up street system. State and local officials assembled a funding plan that draws on federal funds, state gas tax money, a contribution from the Port of Seattle, and toll revenue from the completed tunnel. That funding also covers upgrades to the Viaduct’s less-controversial southern section, already under way.

Earlier this year, WSDOT awarded the tunnel’s design-build contract to Seattle Tunnel Partners, a joint venture of Dragados USA and Tutor Perini Corp. Other team members include Frank Coluccio Construction, Mowat Construction, HNTB, and Intecsa.

But despite a planned September groundbreaking, tunnel opponents refused to give up. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, a longtime tunnel skeptic, regularly battled with the pro-tunnel city council, contending that downtown property owners would be on the hook for potential cost overruns arising from the uncertainties of the waterfront’s soils. Opponents also worried that the tolls would divert traffic to already clogged city streets.

Though the city council dismissed those concerns, McGinn backed the effort to put the question to Seattle voters—did they support the city’s already negotiated agreements on utility relocations, street use, design review, and liability, allowing the project to begin on schedule?

While the city council could have kept the project moving in the face of a “no” vote by passing a new ordinance, that outcome would have almost certainly led to a new round of efforts to slow or block the project. 

In conceding the outcome of the vote, which was conducted entirely by mail, McGinn stated, “I worked to give the public a direct vote on the tunnel. The public said move ahead with the tunnel, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Architect-Contractor Team Converts Joplin Structures to Schools in Time for Aug. 17 Opening

It took just minutes for a tornado packing 200-mph winds to level a third of Joplin, Mo.'s public schools last spring. In a remarkable turnaround, it took less than three months to bring the schools back on line in time for the new school year.

On  Aug. 17, classroom sessions resumed on schedule in Joplin, even as construction crews continued cleaning up from the May 22 tornado, an EF5 event that cut a mile-wide swath through a six-mile stretch of the city, killing more than 150 residents and injuring another 1,000. 

The tornado destroyed six of 19 school buildings and severely damaged three others, leaving school administrators scrambling to locate and renovate replacement facilities, some of which will function as fully operating schools for up to three years.

Many of the facilities initially were constructed for uses far different from schooling. Joplin High School houses 11th- and 12th-grade students in an 80,000-sq-ft Shopko store that stood vacant for 10 years, while East Middle School is operating in a 50,000-sq-ft warehouse in an industrial park.

“There was huge demand for space in the days following the tornado,” recalls assistant superintendent Angie Bessendorfer. “People find it interesting we've converted a Shopko to a high school, but the reality is, the store was the only 80,000-sq-ft space available. We didn't want our students returning to trailers in a field.”

Once FEMA agreed to fund 75% of project costs, the decision to proceed with replacement facilities was immediate, with contracts calling for work to conclude no later than Aug. 10. To help expedite construction, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon waived the bidding requirements required for public projects.

Bessendorfer says the majority of designers and builders involved in the projects were closely associated with Joplin's school district as a result of past or pending projects.

Kevin Greischar, principal with Overland Park, Kan.-based DLR Group, design architect for the high school, arrived in Joplin on June 3 and, with a staff of six, set up shop in a classroom in one Joplin's remaining school buildings. Schematics for the $5.5-million project were performed on June 8 and the morning of June 9, then presented to administrators that afternoon. 

“We supplied a simplified floor plan, knowing we were flying the airplane at the same time we were building it,” says Greischar. Columbus, Kan.-based general contractor Crossland Construction began demolition of storage and back-office space on June 11.

“All we had were four walls and a roof,” says Crossland project superintendent Aaron Shnurbusch. “A similarly scaled school would have required a year to a year and a half to complete. Here, we had about eight weeks, so we handpicked subcontractors we'd had long relationships with and who we knew had the manpower and expertise to pull it off. The floor plan allowed us to begin by building out interior walls, with the understanding that the locations of doors and such might later be modified.”

Final design documents were completed three weeks after schematics, on June 30.

Scheduling for the $4.5-million middle school was no less forgiving.“We first learned about the project on June 3, a Friday, and developed schematics over the weekend,” says Kyle Denham, principal with Joplin-based PLJBD Architects, the project's designer. Crossland, also contractor for middle school, began work on June 13.м