Contractor City Blog

Gregory Arkin over at Revit 3D had some poignant things to express recently in his blog about resistance to BIM. In a way, the protectionism that is built into the AEC industries detracts greatly from everyone being able to really build, the very best they can build. And, that in a way is a shame because it forces us to accept less than our best simply in the interest of survival. Perhaps though, there are other ways to not only survive, but thrive. Here is the beginning of his post with a link to the full text at the bottom.

Continue reading ‘Digging Into The Tough Stuff About BIM and IPD’ »

It’s time to reopen this since it is an interesting topic, and one that people have a wide range of opinions on. The fact that “retainage” isn’t even recognized as a word by my spell checker ought to make you suspicious. And the fact that it sounds like a bad case of constipation ought to make it doubly suspicious.

According to at least one source retainage is a percentage of a bid that is held as a good faith deposit to help insure completion of the contract work within the contract specifications. I have been on more than one job where retainage was leveled by the owner and then have witnessed it passed on to everybody else in the chain by the GC so that all shared in the event. After all, the GC’s performance is directly linked to the performances of subs and others, so why not? I have heard there are GCs who do this on their own even though the owner does not require it.

There are some researchers at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom who are testing straw bales and hemp, clad in panels, as a way to build homes. They call it a BaleHaus.

Straw has become increasingly popular to build with and at the Sustainable Sources Strawbale Building Registry they keep track of the number of straw bale structures that have been built across the globe. Of course these numbers are only from people who voluntarily list their project so Sustainable Sources claims the actual numbers could easily be greater by a factor of 10 or more.