Construction industry

“ To assist local enterprise, several Federal agencies pro- vided work on various projects: improvements in docks and warehouses; the construction of a new sea wall and of a fishing harbor for small boats; the modernizing of school and other public buildings; the building of an airport; and the repair of streets and sewers. Today local industry has recovered to some degree. The huge mills of the Bloedel-Donovan and the Puget Sound Pulp and Paper Company are in operation; seining boats are again busy; a cement plant is at work; and business as a whole has improved. ”

“ The construction of each building has been studied with very great care, so as to secure the minimum amount of material, the least possible amount of work in construction or erection, and the means of arranging all the parts in separate packages capable each of being carried by two men; and the result is that each building is the cheapest and lightest that has yet been constructed in proportion to the area covered. ”

“ They wish here to acknowledge, therefore, the help secured from many engineers and contractors, from the volumes of Engineering News, Engineering Record and Engineering-Contracting, and from the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the proceedings and papers of various other civil engineering societies and organizations of concrete workers. The work done by these journals and societies in gathering and publishing information on concrete construction is of great and enduring value and deserves full acknowledgment. ”

“ The Court reasons that if the man who is building or repairing an interstate highway is 'engaged in commerce', the one who carries cement and gravel to him from a nearby pit is 'engaged * * * in the production of goods for commerce'. Yet if that is true, how about the men who produce the tools for those who carry the cement and gravel or those who furnish the materials to make the tools used in producing the cement and gravel? Each would be essential to the highway worker 'engaged in commerce'. ”

“ Indeed, the city can be understood as construction itself.
Never-Ending Construction
The world is full of construction officials, who, if they cannot plan some kind of project, are capable of nothing but yawning; the proprietors of construction companies, who, in order to make money, cannot rest from their labors for a minute; the pitiful part-time farmers who pay back their loans by engaging in construction work; the proprietors of cement and gravel companies who will be in a pickle if they cannot get someone to use the tons of building materials they have made ”

“ In fact it is economy to employ a few extra men to arrange runways and keep them clean, because of the additional speed thus gained. Good organization effects more economy than special methods of hoisting as far as the labor of handling the concrete is concerned. ”

“ The foundations for all structures shall be executed by the contractor for masonry in such manner and to such depth as to secure a safe and secure foundation, of which the engineer will judge. If a natural foundation cannot be procured at a reasonable depth, then the contractor shall prepare such artificial foundation as the engineer may direct. The stuff moved from the foundations, if of the proper quality, shall be deposited in the adjoining embankment, provided the site for said embankment has been cleared of all perishable material. ”

“ General Construction.—On the question of general construction there is little to be said, except that buildings are now being properly designed in more permanent form than were some of the earlier buildings. On the whole there is little fault to be found with factories in general, except in so far as the output has outgrown the accommodation. ”

“ Men worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant an unvaried, monotonous city. ”

“ The general constructor, therefore, can readily delegate these special parts of his concrete bridge or building to specialists at frequently less cost to himself and nearly always with greater certainty of good results than if he installed molds and organized a trained gang for doing the work. ”

“ Classified according to their construction, factory buildings may be divided into three types, which, for convenience, may be designated as first-, second-, and third-class buildings. A similar division to this is also frequently made by the state or municipal laws for the regulation of the construction of factory buildings.
3. First-Class Buildings.—Buildings of the first class are those in which the walls, floors, columns, girders, beams, partitions, and roofs are of stone, brick, terra cotta, concrete, steel, iron, and such other fireproof materials as have been proven to be efficient. ”

“ This may be well illustrated in the construction of a great building, for which an architect gives all attention to a plan, and may require a considerable force of assistants and draftsmen to embody his ideas on paper; then contractors, one or several, secure material, employ men and direct them in placing materials in form and combination to suit the plans; but a host of workmen move as directed at the will of a foreman to pile brick, mortar, stone, iron or timber according to the plan. ”

“ The figures given in Chapter XIX, showing the reduction in lumber cost coming from using the same material over a second or third time, should be studied in this connection. The leading firms of engineering-contractors which both design and construct reinforced concrete buildings fully realize these opportunities and take advantage of them, but the general practitioner, particularly if he be an architect, does not do so. ”

“ Would the increased demand for construction lead immediately to an increase in demand for building labor sufficiently great to give employment to workmen who would not be needed on the old construction because of the increase in individual output? ”

“ In addition, the government uses construction projects to stimulate the economy. Using construction bonds as a convenient cover, it spurts out wads of money (merely in order to make it circulate a little better) , dig up our precious land, and cover it over with concrete. ”

“ Our own youthfulness, and the social tone of the day and region, discouraged either. If I thought anything about it, I must have thought, as I think still, that it was a manly and satisfying matter to come to grips with the serviceable actualities of the building trades. Construction, in its various phases, still seems to me a more useful and more tonic concern than brokerage, for example, and similar forms of office life.
Johnny soon suggested that I go with him, some Saturday afternoon, to the "yard." I asked Raymond to join us. ”

“ The most inexperienced laborers can do all the work of the most elaborate béton construction, excepting only the surface-finishing, and this, with all the other work, can be superintended by one competent, experienced builder. ”

“ Once again, new and unheard of crafts are ushered in, to engage their quota of the time and strength of the working force, and to put it to new tests of adaptability. Take the implications of the steel industry itself, in the building trades. The old time carpenter and builder gives way to the house-smith and the structural steel worker. ”

“ Certain provisions of the Factory and Workshop Act, including those which are stated below, apply as if any premises on which machinery worked by mechanical power is temporarily used in the construction of a building, or in structural work in connection with a building, were a factory, and as if the purpose for which the machinery is used were a manufacturing process. ”

“ It is probable that the carpenter work includes merely shifting and erecting forms and not the first cost of framing centers. No materials, of course, are included. It should be kept in mind that while the output and labor force are exact the wages are assumed. ”

“ The practice common among farmers of hauling their own stone or concrete materials, cutting their own logs where possible, having their lumber sawed at local mills, and doing part of the actual construction work, aid in reducing the cash outlay and in making possible a better house for the same money expenditure. ”

“ A general view of the approach during construction is shown by Fig. 1, Plate XXV.
Contractor’s Organization.
Table 6 shows approximately the number of men employed daily on the tunnel lining, by both the contractor and the sub-contractors, their occupation, the average rate of wages and the total daily expense for labor when the work was in full swing. ”

“ The essential requirement is that there be given on the plans all information necessary to enable the construction to be carried out according to the intentions of the engineer, that all parts of the work fit together, that the culverts are of the proper size and located at the proper places, ditches drain properly, grades are reduced to the predetermined rate, that excavated material is utilized and that an exact record of the work done is retained. ”

“ Whenever it may be necessary to pump or bale water in the foundations, the contractor shall furnish the pumps or buckets, and all scaffolding and apparatus necessary to work them. He shall be allowed the net cost of all labor employed in the operations of pumping or baling water, and shall make a monthly return to the engineer of the value of such labor, provided that these operations are conducted in an economical manner, with efficient men, pumps, and tools, under the direction and to the satisfaction of the engineer. ”

“ It was the wonder and the reproach of European engineers that their so-called reputable American colleagues would risk professional standing on such temporary and flimsy structures as the original American lines. Poor road bed; poor construction; temporary wooden trestles across dangerous spans—everything the opposite of what sound engineering science seemed to demand. Why did not the owners of the roads exercise business foresight to provide for reasonably solid construction? ”

“ Average repairs vary from one-half of 1% of the value of the building per annum in the case of the highest type of fireproof buildings, 1% for ordinary mercantile buildings, 2% for older property or that of cheaper construction, 3% to 4% for old tenements, and so on up in proportion to the age, character of construction, and lack of care of the buildings. ”

“ The necessities and the advantages of manufactures, which first dictated the making and improving of a common road, next conceived the benefit of a railroad and a canal, and the profits of manufacturing were straightway applied to their construction, and they were done. ”

“ The necessity of having a plan prepared by some one who understands the principles and requirements of simple building construction, before undertaking the erection of any building, cannot be too strongly emphasised. This great need, which is often overlooked by the settler, cannot be economically dispensed with. ”

“ General contractors and special trade contractors for heavy construction other than building are primarily engaged in the construction of highways; pipelines, communications and power lines, and sewer and water mains; and other heavy construction projects. Special trade contractors are classified in heavy construction other than building if they are primarily engaged in activities such as grading for highway and airport runways; guardrail construction; installation of highway signs; asphalt and concrete construction of roads, highways, streets and public sidewalks ”

“ After all, even if we could legitimately assume that individuals on a given construction site might be able to resume productive activity on their own, we cannot go on to assume that everything this implies would also resume 'on its own.' What this would imply is the resumption, in an �organizational vacuum,' not only of productive activity on an isolated construction site, but also the production and transportation of construction equipment and machinery; the production and delivery of construction materials such as steel, lumber and concrete ”

“ If, then, increased building accommodation and improved buildings are to be provided, the solution of the difficulty would appear to lie in a better arrangement of buildings and in the adoption of cheaper methods and materials of construction. ”

“ Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton, however, had found that their aspirations pointed to the great constructive work that is done by the big-minded, resourceful American civil engineer of today. Bridge building, railroad building, the tunneling of mines—-in a word, the building of any of the great works of industry possessed a huge fascination for them. ”

“ Great rigidity was thereby insured, and less temporary work required than in any other mode of construction, while it gave confidence to the workmen engaged, and offered every facility in providing for their safety, and for that of the structure itself. ”

“ An expedition and enlargement of the program in the District would bring about direct economies in construction by enabling the erection of buildings in regular sequence. By maintaining a stable labor force in the city, contracts can be made on more advantageous terms. ”

“ There is a type of building which, while not distinctly mill construction as usually understood, is frequently used for one-story buildings, such as rolling mills, cement works, machine shops, foundries, rail yards, and buildings of this class. ”

“ Another method of procedure is to draw a plan of the house that contains the rooms considered necessary, submit such plans to a lumber merchant and get quotations on costs of various types of material necessary to construct it. Such construction will usually require the services of a skilled carpenter and mason but permits of more latitude in most cases than is available under a set building arrangement. ”