SIZE AND REVENUE OF CIVIL ENGINEERING CONTRACTORS BASIC INFORMATION
What Is The Size And Revenue Of Civil Engineering Contractors?
The construction industry is composed of about 710,000 businesses, mostly small companies, 91 percent of which have fewer than 20 employees. While the largest U.S.-based contractor had revenues of $22 billion in 2007, the overwhelming majority of builders had an annual volume of less than $10 million.
To provide a snapshot of the construction industry, it can be categorized as one in which building contractors range in size from a small family-owned business operating in a narrow geographic area to giant multinational firms.Finding the right one for your project is sometimes a confusing task but can be made somewhat easier by understanding how the industry works.
This is a business of high risk and relatively low profi t margins. The Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) of Princeton, New Jersey, is a nonprofit organization serving the construction financial community; every year it surveys the 7,000 members in chapters across the country to obtain financial data and the major concerns of the industry.
The members include residential, nonresidential, industrial highway, and specialty contractors. The 2007 financial survey presented the following national overview as reported by the respondents:
■ The year’s hot topic was fi eld personnel recruitment and the ability to retain qualified workers, a concern that will continue for the immediate future. (This can impact owners, who may see a decrease in quality levels of workers.)
■ Construction jobs are good jobs, with the seasonally adjusted hourly rate of $21.08 per hour as of September 2007, a rate that reflects a 4.5 percent increase over the previous year for the same period. (Owners may find that labor increases in the construction industry exceed the overall inflation figures reported in the media.)
■ Material costs are a major problem. From December 2003 to September 2007, construction material producer prices indices increased 30 percent, more than double the 13 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Steel, cement, diesel fuel, and other petroleum-based products were at the top of the price
increase column.
The construction slowdown in 2008 in the United States has had a dampening effect on price increases of some materials, while worldwide demand has increased the prices of others. The projected building cost index for 2009, as reported by McGraw-Hill in December of 2008, refl ected a decrease of 0.5 percent, as opposed to an increase of 5.5 percent for the year 2007 – 2008.
■ In 2006, shipments of construction materials exceeded $500 billion, approximately 11 percent of the total shipments by U.S. manufacturers, and shipments of construction machinery topped $36 billion, 11 percent of all U.S. machinery manufacturers.
Due to the value of the dollar in relation to other world currencies, heavy equipment manufacturers like Caterpillar saw export sales rise during that period.
■ The typical construction establishment is a small company with an average employment of fewer than nine individuals.
■ Internal Revenue Service fi gures for 2004 show that the 700,000 corporations in construction had a net income of $47 billion, or 3.7 percent of total receipts of $1.3 trillion, considerably below the all-industry average margin of 4.9 percent.
■ Construction is a high-turnover industry. The Small Business Administration (SBA) showed that in 2004, 77,000 companies closed shop.
CFMA reviews the member responses and prepares a Best-in-Class composite for nonresidential and industrial building contractors.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
DEEP SEA CLAY BASICS AND TUTORIALS
DEEP SEA CLAY BASIC INFORMATION
What Are Deep Sea Clay? Deep Sea Clay Information
The clay materials formed in large parts of the deep sea and oceanic basins are, generally, quite distinct from terrigenous clays. This is because many such areas are so far removed from land that detrital terrigenous material becomes a minor, even insignificant, source of sediment.
As a result, the products of other processes make a more important contribution to the fine grained sediments that accumulate in these environments (Berger 1974). Globally, the most important of these are the minute skeletal components of microfossils which form a continuous pelagic rain from surface to deeper waters.
Their contribution to the fine grained sediment accumulating at the ocean floor depends upon the dynamic balance between the processes of their production in surface waters and their destruction by dissolution on their journey down through the water column following death of the organisms. The two most important biogenic components are calcareous and siliceous microfossils.
The calcareous microfossils include foraminifera and coccoliths composed of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mainly in the form of calcite, whilst the silceous microfossils include diatoms and radiolaria composed of opaline amorphous silica (SiO2), in the form known as opal-A. The rate of production of these organisms in surface ocean waters depends on biological fertility.
Diatoms dominate in more fertile nutrient rich water whereas coccoliths dominate in less fertile regions. Since seawater is universally under saturated with respect to amorphous silica, most silica is dissolved and recycled
as the skeletons of opaline microfossils descend through the water column.
A further fraction arrives at the sediment water interface where more is dissolved but in regions of high productivity some is preserved and may accumulate. Thus the distribution of siliceous pelagic sediments mirrors the patterns of the most highly productive ocean waters such as in regions of oceanic divergence and upwelling where nutrient-rich deep ocean waters rise to the surface.
The fate of calcareous pelagic sediment is similar except that the degree of undersaturation of seawater with respect to carbonates increases with depth. This gives rise to a depth in the oceans, known as the Calcite Compensation Depth (CCD), below which calcite does not accumulate.
In the deepest parts of the Ocean basins (> 3500 m) below the CCD, sedimentation rates may be extremely slow and hydrogenous processes involving iron and manganese oxides take on an important role. Such areas accumulate deposits know as deep sea red clays (Glasby 1991).
Red clays are extremely fine grained with often more than 80% < 2 um in size. They cover about 30% of the ocean basins and are most prevalent in the Pacific Ocean. Most of the components of Pacific red clays are allogenic, the most important being aeolian dust.
Red clays accumulate very slowly with the highest rates of sedimentation coeval with Pleistocene glacial periods when aeolian dust production was at a maximum (Glasby 1991). Because of their fine grain-size and long term stability serious consideration has been given to using red clays as sites for radioactive waste disposal (Burkett et al. 1991).
What Are Deep Sea Clay? Deep Sea Clay Information
The clay materials formed in large parts of the deep sea and oceanic basins are, generally, quite distinct from terrigenous clays. This is because many such areas are so far removed from land that detrital terrigenous material becomes a minor, even insignificant, source of sediment.
As a result, the products of other processes make a more important contribution to the fine grained sediments that accumulate in these environments (Berger 1974). Globally, the most important of these are the minute skeletal components of microfossils which form a continuous pelagic rain from surface to deeper waters.
Their contribution to the fine grained sediment accumulating at the ocean floor depends upon the dynamic balance between the processes of their production in surface waters and their destruction by dissolution on their journey down through the water column following death of the organisms. The two most important biogenic components are calcareous and siliceous microfossils.
The calcareous microfossils include foraminifera and coccoliths composed of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mainly in the form of calcite, whilst the silceous microfossils include diatoms and radiolaria composed of opaline amorphous silica (SiO2), in the form known as opal-A. The rate of production of these organisms in surface ocean waters depends on biological fertility.
Diatoms dominate in more fertile nutrient rich water whereas coccoliths dominate in less fertile regions. Since seawater is universally under saturated with respect to amorphous silica, most silica is dissolved and recycled
as the skeletons of opaline microfossils descend through the water column.
A further fraction arrives at the sediment water interface where more is dissolved but in regions of high productivity some is preserved and may accumulate. Thus the distribution of siliceous pelagic sediments mirrors the patterns of the most highly productive ocean waters such as in regions of oceanic divergence and upwelling where nutrient-rich deep ocean waters rise to the surface.
The fate of calcareous pelagic sediment is similar except that the degree of undersaturation of seawater with respect to carbonates increases with depth. This gives rise to a depth in the oceans, known as the Calcite Compensation Depth (CCD), below which calcite does not accumulate.
In the deepest parts of the Ocean basins (> 3500 m) below the CCD, sedimentation rates may be extremely slow and hydrogenous processes involving iron and manganese oxides take on an important role. Such areas accumulate deposits know as deep sea red clays (Glasby 1991).
Red clays are extremely fine grained with often more than 80% < 2 um in size. They cover about 30% of the ocean basins and are most prevalent in the Pacific Ocean. Most of the components of Pacific red clays are allogenic, the most important being aeolian dust.
Red clays accumulate very slowly with the highest rates of sedimentation coeval with Pleistocene glacial periods when aeolian dust production was at a maximum (Glasby 1991). Because of their fine grain-size and long term stability serious consideration has been given to using red clays as sites for radioactive waste disposal (Burkett et al. 1991).
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)