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 →

Rare manslaughter conviction handed down to construction project manager for safety lapse

Shane Hedmond, at Construction Junkie, recently shared the following: Just last week, an Encino, California man was sentenced to 6 months in county jail and 18-months of supervised release after an excavation collapse killed one of his employees, according to the Ventura County Star. The project manager, who was acting as an unlicensed contractor at … Continue reading Rare manslaughter conviction handed down to construction project manager for safety lapse →

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 →

Is a virus infecting millions of internet-connected cameras coming to a construction job site near you?

According to Catalin Cimpanu of Bleeping Computer: Since mid-September, a new IoT botnet has grown to massive proportions. Codenamed IoT_reaper (Reaper for this article), researchers estimate its current size at nearly two million infected devices. According to researchers, the botnet is mainly made up of IP-based security cameras, network video recorders (NVRs), and digital video recorders … Continue reading Is a virus infecting millions of internet-connected cameras coming to a construction job site near you? →

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 →