All posts by SEO Team

Green and Sustainable Building Construction Is the Future

The green and sustainable building construction market in the United States was vital and growing before the Covid-19 pandemic. During this, it shrank over 7%. It is now recovering and projected to grow by 9.3% from that low point, reaching $103 billion by 2023. According to many sources, the green and sustainable building construction market is one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Drivers of the Demand for Green and Sustainable Building Construction The growth of the green and sustainable building construction market in the U.S. is being driven by government regulations and initiatives, private sector green building and sustainability initiatives, and consumer preference for eco-friendly homes and workplaces. Government Regulations and Initiatives As the nation’s largest energy consumer, the federal government has taken the lead in the U.S. effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. The construction industry accounts for more than a third of the nation’s process-related carbon dioxide emissions, so the logical...

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How Smart City Construction Has Changed the Industry

What is Smart City Construction? What was once envisioned only in works of science fiction is becoming reality in the form of smart city construction. Broadly speaking, a smart city is an urban environment in which community development priorities and government policies converge with information and communications technology (ICT) and innovative design and construction processes to seamlessly connect people, places, and things.  Smart cities rely on ICT infrastructure. This is similar to the concept of an Internet of Things (IoT)—a network of physical objects equipped with sensors, processing capability, software, and other technologies exchanging data between and among themselves and connected systems over the internet and other communications channels.  Some cities are implementing “smart” infrastructure elements, most notably in their airports, energy projects, and traffic control systems. However, with the exception of some demonstration projects, smart city construction is still a thing of the future, though nearer than one might think. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. A Model Smart City (Woven City) There soon...

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Modular Construction: The Change to How Structures Are Built

What Is Modular Construction? In modular construction, prefabricated structures are manufactured in a factory using assembly line methods and transported elsewhere to be assembled on a building site. Much of construction work may be completed in the factory—walls, floors, roof, doors and windows, plumbing, wiring, ductwork, heating and cooling systems, fixtures, finishes, etc. Cranes are used to load modules onto flatbed trucks and then to offload and position them on a foundation already constructed at the building site. Once the individual modules are joined together, they form one building that meets all building code requirements. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Are Modular Buildings Permanent? Some modular buildings are permanent once installed, and others are designed to be partially disassembled and moved to another location. Permanent modular construction is typically used for residential structures, from single-family homes to multi-story apartment buildings. Relocatable modular construction is used when the need for a structure is temporary, for example, to provide extra space for schools or hospitals while...

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Living Building Materials: The Newest Innovation

What Are Living Building Materials? The term “living building materials” conjures up images of 19th century sod cabins, or “soddies,” built by settlers on the treeless American plains and prairies. However, the term, abbreviated as LBM, actually refers to building materials that mimic the behavior of a living organism. Such materials may be self-replicating or self-mending, emulate biological processes such as breathing, or copy the structure of certain organic structures or components, such as spider silk or abalone shell nacre. Living building materials have the advantages of being eco-friendly and sustainable, but sometimes the downside is an unaffordable price tag.  Some living building materials currently in use include self-mending materials, air cleaning bricks, passive cooling ceramics, mass timber, self-cleaning paint, and thermobimetals. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Self-Mending Materials Self-mending materials pay homage to the human body’s ability to heal itself. Self-mending concrete is the most common example. Water-permeable capsules filled with living but dormant dry spores are mixed into wet concrete. The spores...

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Virtual Design and Construction Markets See Rapid Growth

What Is Virtual Design and Construction? Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) originated at Stanford University in 2001 in an effort to increase productivity in the construction industry, which was lagging behind all other non-farm industries in terms of productivity improvement. VDC leverages the power of digital technology to integrate multiple information systems, processes, disciplines, and workflows, in a strategic, holistic approach. This can be used to design, model, plan, budget, schedule, and manage construction projects. Though much of the buzz centers on the virtual modeling of designs, virtual design and construction is as much about the information flows between and among project personnel as it is about 3-D modeling. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. A Rapidly Growing Virtual Design and Construction Market The rapidly growing demand for virtual design and construction–which is expected to accelerate–is due in part to increase demand for residential and commercial construction. It is also driven by the increasing complexity of customer demands and building processes. The impressive growth of...

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Construction Drones: The Industry’s Secret Weapon

In the last five years, no industry has seen greater growth in using drones than construction, with a year-over-year growth rate of 238%. (Mining is a distant second.) To maintain or grow market share, builders may need to acquire their own aerial image acquisition and aerial data analysis capabilities or develop relationships with providers that specialize in construction drones. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. How Construction Drones Work Drones, also referred to as UAVs (short for unmanned aerial vehicles) are airborne robots. Drone pilots fly some on the ground using remote control. Others are capable of autonomous flight by using computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms to make movement decisions without the guidance of a human pilot. Every drone communicates with a ground control station, either a remote controller operated by a pilot or a computer, via a data link. The drones used in construction have built-in cameras that acquire visual images and transmit digital image data over the data link. They equip some...

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Enbridge Line 5: Great Lakes Tunnel

Enbridge Inc., a multinational pipeline company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is embroiled in a decade-long controversy over the construction of the Great Lakes tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac connecting Lake Michigan to Lake Huron.  The company’s intent is to route a segment of Line 5–part of a system of Enbridge pipelines carrying oil from western Canada to eastern Canada–through the proposed tunnel. The segment of Line 5 that passes through the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac consists of two 20-inch diameter pipes running parallel, about 1,000 feet apart, for 4.5 miles at a depth of up to 270 feet. These two pipes carry a total of 23 million gallons of crude oil and petroleum products per day and are known as the Great Lakes Tunnel or Enbridge Line 5. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Great Lakes Tunnel: A Controversial Project They completed construction on Line 5 in 1953 but, despite its age, Enbridge states it’s in good condition other than the outer...

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Buffalo Bills New Stadium

The lease on the Buffalo Bills’ current home, Highmark Stadium, expires in 2023, and planning efforts for relocating to a new stadium started in 2014. The team, Erie County, and New York State, recently arrived at an agreement to build a new 60,000 seat stadium, with a price tag of $1.4 billion, in Orchard Park. An architectural firm has been hired, but they have yet to select a construction contractor for Buffalo Bills new stadium, and no date has been projected for breaking ground. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Tax Payer Money to Pay for Buffalo Bills New Stadium Although the Bills will design and build Buffalo Bills new stadium, they will pay it for through a public-private partnership. The Bills have made a $550 million commitment while the public contribution is anticipated to include $600 million from the state budget and $250 million from Erie County, for a total of $850 million in public funds–reportedly the largest taxpayer contribution ever for a professional...

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Amazon HQ2

Amazon’s highly publicized search for an east coast home for its second headquarters, dubbed Amazon HQ2, ultimately resulted in a plan for construction on two sites in Arlington, Virginia. The project is proceeding in two phases at a total cost of more than $2.5 billion. Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Phase 1 of Amazon HQ2 Construction of two 22-story towers for Amazon HQ2 started in January 2020 on what has become known as the Metropolitan Park site—Phase 1 of the project—with completion on track for mid-2023. In addition to the two solar-powered office towers, the Amazon HQ2 site will include more than 50,000 square feet of retail space, including a daycare center, a 2-acre public park, and a meeting center available for use by the community at no cost. The buildings’ rooftops will feature a café, dog run, and urban farm terrace. Phase 2 of Amazon HQ2 Phase 2 involves the construction of “The Helix ” on the PenPlace site, which required the FAA...

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