CA Balcony Inspection legislation moving forward despite pushback

I posted an update over at the Xpera blog on the proposed legislation that would require inspection of balconies and other elevated exterior elements: California Senate Bill 721, which would mandate the inspection of elevated exterior elements (EEEs) for all multi-family projects with at least three units, is moving forward. The bill was introduced in … Continue reading CA Balcony Inspection legislation moving forward despite pushback →

Legal Update: New Construction Laws for 2018

Every year, California ups the ante for the shear volume of legislation passed. New laws going into effect in 2018 number in the hundreds. Over at the Xpera blog, I put together a brief article highlighting a dozen of the more interesting laws that impact the built environment in the Golden State. Here are some … Continue reading Legal Update: New Construction Laws for 2018 →

New Steel Reinforcing and Post-Tenioning safety requirements coming to CA in 2018

Retrofit Magazine shared the following major construction safety news announcement: The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) has voted to adopt the Iron Workers (IW) safety standard updates for reinforcing steel and post-tensioning activities. California is the first state-approved OSHA plan to work with the IW to reform existing safety standards. The IW … Continue reading New Steel Reinforcing and Post-Tenioning safety requirements coming to CA in 2018 →

Santa Monica latest city to mandate seismic retrofits for older buildings

According to Rong-Gong Lin II, Raoul Rañoa and Jon Schleuss of the LA Times, the city of Santa Monica is considering a mandated seismic retrofit program: Santa Monica’s safety rules would go beyond what Los Angeles has done by requiring not only wood-frame apartments and concrete buildings to be retrofitted, but also steel-frame structures. The ordinance … Continue reading Santa Monica latest city to mandate seismic retrofits for older buildings →

Stanford researchers working on regional “seismic observatory” using existing fiber optic networks

Researchers at Stanford are pleased to report the following: Thousands of miles of buried optical fibers crisscross California’s San Francisco Bay Area delivering high-speed internet and HD video to homes and businesses. Biondo Biondi, a professor of geophysics at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, dreams of turning that dense network into an … Continue reading Stanford researchers working on regional “seismic observatory” using existing fiber optic networks →