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11
Jan 13

Austin’s Desperate Need for Hospitality

JW Marriott

JW Marriott

People flock to Austin to be part of its many events. From UT games, SXSW Interactive/Film/Music Fests, ACL Fest, NI Week, The ROT Rally, etc. Truly, the list goes on and on. There is always something to do, and folks want to be there.

 

The problem is, the City’s hotels simply do not have enough space to accommodate its visitors. The Austin Convention Center and Visitors Bureau currently reports 6,000 hotel rooms downtown. While that might sound like a healthy sized inventory, it seems attendance to major events always leave visitors without a place to stay.

 

What’s more, statistics show that these events are growing and so is their attendance. Total attendees for the SXSW Festival was reported as 302,700 in 2012, whereas 2011’s festival brought in 286,000. The ACL Festival lures roughly 70,000 people to Zilker Park each day of its three-day event in past few years. Next year, the event will span two weekends, which will certainly encourage a huge jump in attendance.

 

So what happens if you double up on events?

 

Formula One’s race weekend this November falls on the same weekend scheduled for the Texas Longhorn football game against Oklahoma State. Hotel managers and owners in Austin are voicing serious concerns for incoming guests. Each event alone supplies downtown hotels with enough guests to reach capacity.

 

Danelle Awtrey, director of sales and marketing at Inter-Continental Stephen F. Austin said, “Many of (the UT Alumni) are repeat, and they book months in advance. So, the hotels in downtown are booked typically 90 percent to 100 percent on every UT football weekend.” Similarly, Formula One fans book as far out as a year in advance and bring the same amount of visitors. Awtrey says it is logistically impossible to accommodate that many visitors in one weekend.

 

F1-UT conflict bad for hotel business

 

All parties involved are scrambling to find a solution to a potentially large problem. In the meantime, however, Oklahoma State’s Director of Football Operations, Mack Butler, is forced to lodge his team and staff as far as Horseshoe Bay or Temple. He needs a block of 100-plus rooms, and they are just not available.

 

Developers are certainly not blind to the need for hospitality in the downtown area. For instance, White Lodging has two new hotels in construction right now. The Hyatt is set to open in Spring and the JW Marriott will open in the first quarter of 2015. They announced yesterday that they will also be building a Westin, which is projected to open in Spring of 2015. These three projects will add another 1,634 rooms to CBD hotel room availability.

 

It is refreshing to know that hotel developments are on the horizon for downtown Austin. Unfortunately, until we get there, we are in quite a conundrum.

 

Sources:

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4
Jan 13

Water and Wastewater Woes

A Brief Look into America’s Aging Water Infrastructure

As citizens living in one of the most industrialized nations in the world, it’s probably safe to say most of us take our unlimited access to available clean water for granted. Thanks to modern infrastructure, we never have to worry where our clean water will come from or second guess if it is potable and ready for personal use and consumption.

 

But, what if the fundamental systems in place today were slowly deteriorating and beginning to fail. What if most of our water and wastewater systems across the country were beginning to age, and not receiving the attention they require to be brought fully up to date.

 

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), that’s exactly the kind of situation most of the nation’s water and wastewater systems currently face.

 

As the U.S. population has continued to steadily increase, the percentage of people served by the public water system has increased as well. As a result, new water lines have been constructed to connect distant residents to nearby centralized water systems. However, although new pipes are being added to serve demand in new areas, existing component parts of current centralized water systems are not being upgraded, and as a result, are showing signs of disintegration.

 

In their report “Failure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Water and Wastewater Treatment Infrastructure,” the ASCE  documents the lack of capital spending being invested in our nation’s water infrastructure. Their depiction shows if current trends continue, the gap between how much money is needed to update existing water facilities and how much federal money is actually available, will only continue to widen.

 

 

In a recent report, PBS took a look into the wastewater tunnels beneath the City of Detroit, home to some of the most outdated infrastructure pipes in the country. Points of concern for them are leaks that have popped up and are in need of repair. Quick fixes exist to temporarily patch up existing leaks, like lining old pipes with a polymer sleeve that hardens soon after a resin is applied, but old, leaky pipes aren’t an incident isolated only to Detroit. Cities across the nation are facing the same crumbling infrastructure beneath the streets, and it’s a growing engineering concern.

 

Watch A Journey to Confront Our Aging Water Systems on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

 

In PBS’ report, Sue McCormick discusses a significant concern among engineers regarding the fact that we’ve  “…differed our replacement of public systems, and ultimately we will see potential significant rises in failures.” Many existing wastewater treatment plants are forced to keep old plants running, while trying to adhere to the federal Clean Water Act, and manage $600 million in improvements. It’s a lot to juggle to maintain existing infrastructure and keep polluted water from entering our rivers and lakes.

 

In 2009 the ASCE issued a U.S. Infrastructure Report Card, divvying out a D-minus to the nation’s water and sewer systems. A D-minus meaning we’re short “$84 billion over the next eight years to bring it to a good condition over what we’re currently spending.”

 

So without the federal funds necessary to properly update our country’s water infrastructure, what is the best solution to this growing problem?

 

San Antonio, Texas, a city constantly praised for its approach to water and wastewater systems, thinks they’ve found one answer – preventative conservation.

 

Though the San Antonio Water System (SAWS) also is tasked with patching up existing systems at the lowest user cost, they are also in the game of preventing the need for so much infrastructure patch-work through means of conservation. For example, their largest wastewater plant is called a recycling center, where they reuse all of the processed residuals that come out of the plant. Individual conservation methods are also strongly encouraged, as well as xeriscaping, or landscaping that doesn’t need irrigation.

 

Perhaps San Antonio’s conservation methods are the best way to avoid our aging water systems from receiving another D-minus from the ASCE.  One thing is clear however, our aging centralized water systems need to be given the attention they deserve to preserve our fundamental way of living.

 

Sources:

PBS Newshour: Crumbling Pipes and Underground Waste: A Glimpse at Our Nation’s Ailing Sewer Systems
ASCE: “Failure to Act”
Wastewater Infrastructure Report Card
 

Industry — No Comments
30
Aug 12

Green Building Standards Arrive for Landscape Developments

Early this year, a new standard in green building was developed to encourage sustainable land development and management practices for sites without structural components. The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) is the first of its kind in terms of sustainability for project sites without buildings and provides tools for those who influence land development and management practices.

 

By developing sustainable benchmarks for soils, hydologry, vegetation, human health and well-being, and materials selection, SITES provides new standards which help project teams properly combat growing global environmental concerns like climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion.

 

The effort to launch this program began as two individual projects of the Sustainable Design and Development Professional Practice Network of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. In 2005, the two groups united to hold a Sustainable Sites Summit. Once the United States Botanical Garden joined the mission, Technical Subcommittees were created to guide the Initiative in the right direction.

 

Those in charge of SITES hope the program will increase awareness of green building possibilities for landscapes and land planning, much like the way the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED program did for sustainable building design and construction.

 

 

Open spaces such as local, state and national parks, conservations easements and buffer zones, and transportation rights-of-way are just a few site examples that are encouraged to participate in SITES. More conventional developments with buildings such as retail and office, airports, residential and commercial projects can also take advantage of the tools SITES has created.

 

The USGBC, a stakeholder in the Initiative, plans to integrate SITES into their standard LEED programs in the future.

 

Sources:

Sustainable Sites Initiative

Good Magazine – LEED for the Outdoors? Landscapes Get Their Own Green Certification Standards

 

Community / Industry / Traffic — No Comments
10
Aug 12

The Road Diet

The Road Diet
Ben Wear’s recent article in the Austin American Statesman discusses a topic that is becoming familiar to most Austinites by now: The Road Diet. So, what is a road diet? Well, let’s just say it is not rivaling CrossFit and Paleo as the newest fitness craze. It is actually an engineering attempt to make people reconsider using their mostly single-occupancy passenger vehicles and instead use transit, bicycles, walking, carpooling or some combination of these. This is typically done by reducing the number of lanes on a roadway in favor of other modes of transportation.

 

Wear specifically writes about Guadalupe and Lavaca Streets changing from their current configurations of four travel lanes with parallel parking on both sides to new configurations based on the City of Austin’s Great Streets Standards. Colorado Street and 2nd Street are being constructed to these new standards now. The typical Great Streets cross section features 16- to 18-foot sidewalks with benches, landscaping, shade elements and public art incorporated into the design to encourage pedestrian (and thereby commercial) activity.

 

Click on the thumbnail above to view larger image of the Great Streets 2025 Plan.

The number of lanes is reduced to one lane in each direction and one-way roads are for the most part undergoing two-way conversions in this process. In addition, for some Great Streets cross-sections, such as the 3rd Street Reconstruction from Congress Avenue to Trinity Street (currently in the final stages of design by Bury), 7-foot-wide bicycle lanes are separated from the parking by a curb and travel lanes are included in the design. As you can imagine, with the limited right-of-way downtown, these design features result in a reduction of travel lanes and available on-street parking. As a result, choosing to take your car downtown will leave you with fewer lanes to travel in and fewer parking options.

 

While there are obvious downsides to reducing the number of travel lanes and parking spaces in an already congested downtown, there are some positives to Great Streets and similar road diets. Perhaps the most important advantage is increased safety. Traffic is forced to drive at reduced speeds due to the layout of the roadway, and accidents caused by mistakes due to lane-changing may be reduced with one lane to travel per direction. The dedicated transit lanes Wear writes of in his article will improve the efficiency of Cap Metro’s bus routes and with the advent of bus rapid transit, these lanes will become critical to operations.

 

Ultimately, the plan is to make people feel more comfortable using other modes of transportation and, given the cost of time and money driving and parking downtown, using the transportation alternatives resulting from the road diet just might add a little girth to people’s wallets.

 

Sources:

 

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18
Jul 12

Takeaways from Texas Monthly’s Panel Discussion | Life by the Drop: Solutions for the Looming Water Crisis in Texas

In 2011, a mere 14.8 inches of total rainfall fell across the entire state of Texas. The record low numbers, though catastrophic for Texas agriculture and municipalities, were conducive in achieving one important thing: bringing the State’s drought crisis to the forefront of every Texan’s mind.

 

Last Thursday, Texas Monthly organized a panel of experts to discuss possible solutions for the state of our water resources. Moderated by Texas Monthly Senior Editor, Nate Blakeslee, Life by the Drop: Solutions for the Looming Water Crisis in Texas, brought to light a wide variety of water issues currently facing the state. The two-hour Q/A session opened up by giving each panelist below, the opportunity to share his or her ideas on how best to solve the current crisis our water system is facing.

 

Kip Averitt – Former Texas Legislature; founder, Averitt & Associates
Laura Huffman – State Director , The Nature Conservancy
Robert Puente – President/CEO, San Antonio Water System (SAWS)
Andrew Sansom – Executive Director, Texas River Systems Institute
Todd Staples – Texas Commissioner of Agriculture

 

Conserve. Conserve. Conserve

Water conservation was by far the most popular solution during last Thursday’s event and was countlessly repeated by each member of the panel.
 
Todd Staples:

  • Water conservancy is the easiest way to go.
  • It can help achieve significant reductions in water usage, without requiring new municipal projects to be built, which would come at a cost to state residents, either in form of taxes or higher utility bills.

Robert Puente:

  • Though San Antonio’s municipal population has boomed over the last 20 years, SAWS is still impressively using the same amount of water as they did in in the early 1980s.
  • Water conservation is a method that shouldn’t be implemented only during times of drought, but rather it is a concept that must be adapted into every resident’s daily way of life.

 
Municipal Incentives
Some metropolitan areas have made it beneficial for entities and local residents to participate in water conservation methods.

     

  • San Antonio Corporations – encouraged to participate in programs like the Large Scale Retrofit Program, which offers a 50% rebate on the installation of new water saving equipment.
  • Residents – encouraged to take advantage of Indoor Conservation Programs and Rebates. Kick the Can, an incentive program under this system, allows residents to receive up to two free water-efficient toilets, which contribute to water conservancy, and help individual residents save on their water utility bill.

 
Agricultural Incentives
In 1974, despite a smaller population, Texans used more water than we do today, due to a larger agricultural population. Currently, the quantitative water needs of agriculturists still heavily outweigh those of municipal needs.
 
Huffman and Staples:
Texas needs to find ways to optimize the way agriculturalists use water.

 

More Information

Though water conservation was the highlight of the night and the main topic discussed here, if you’d like more information on:

  • Brackish water resource methods
  • Environmental water flow systems and why they should be included in the new State of Texas Water Plan
  • Where the money will come from for all the new projects and upgrades outlined in the State of Texas Water Plan
  • Stories by those affected by our current water crisis
  • And many more interesting water resource topics

please search the hashtag #txwater on Twitter, visit KUT.org where you can listen to special documentaries on the subject or pick up Texas Monthly’s July issue on Life by the Drop.

Industry / Voices — No Comments
15
Jun 12

Green Building at Its Finest

Imagine a world where city buildings are capable of self-cleaning themselves and the air pollutants around them. Sounds like something out of the future, right? Turns out, that future is already here!

 

ALCOA, a world leading integrated aluminum company, has developed a product called Reynobond® with EcoClean™. This proprietary process leverages HYDROTECT™ technology from TOTO® to apply a titanium dioxide coating, called EcoClean™, to the pre-painted aluminum surface of Reynobond®. The result is the first coil-coated aluminum architectural panel that cleans itself and the air around it by utilizing natural components like sunlight, water vapor and oxygen.

 

 

In the United States, carbon dioxide, a leading cause of smog, is the most common greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere. Nearly 40% of that comes from buildings alone, and according to experts, total U.S. carbon emission are projected to grow by 16% between 2006 and 2030. With numbers like that, it’s clear how valuable green technology like Reynobond® with EcoClean™ is becoming to the construction industry and society as a whole.

 

The Reynobond® with EcoClean™ process is so effective that 1,000 sqm / 10,000 sq ft² of it on your building can have approximately enough cleansing power to offset the smog created by the pollution output of four cars every day, which is the equivalent air cleansing power of 80 trees every day. Neat, right?

 

Here’s hoping this green technology soon shifts from an innovative idea to an industry standard.

 

Sources:

http://www.alcoa.com/bcs/aap_eastman/ecoclean/en/home.asp

http://www.good.is/post/superb-idea-buildings-that-eat-smog/

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2008/5/carbon%20footprint%20sarzynski/carbonfootprint_brief.pdf

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8
Jun 12

Patients. Planet. Profit.

Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas (Dell Children’s) was the first hospital to achieve LEED Platinum certification – but they didn’t stop there. The hospital has continued to introduce internal programs to reduce its environmental impact.

 

Dell Children’s Continues ‘Green’ Stewardship

Annually, US medical waste creates an astounding 5.9 million tons of waste. State agencies regulate waste generated by healthcare facilities, but waste amounts are still on the rise and some can be considered hazardous. Organizations, like Practice Green Health, outline some of the specifics.
 
From 2010 to 2011, Dell Children’s reports reducing their landfill waste by 6% (718 to 676 tons) and their recycled material contribution by 50% (245 to 149 tons).
 
This year, the hospital is planning additional waste reduction initiatives. Dell Children’s recently:

  • Converted to single-stream recycling,
  • Began composting kitchen waste,
  • Prepared education programs ,
  • Improved signage to make recycling easier and more efficient,
  • Began analyzing waste generated through the hospital’s operating rooms for recycling potential, and
  • Reviewed food menu items for possible replacement of environmentally-friendly materials.

 
The hospital is currently building a third bed tower that will surpass the energy efficiency required by USGBC’s LEED Healthcare Rating System by 22 percent. The project includes a solar hot water system, solar photovoltaic panels, LED lighting and electric vehicle charging stations.
 
“Dell Children’s sustainability commitment goes well beyond our groundbreaking ‘green’ facility,” said Alan Bell, AIA LEED® AP, director design & construction Seton Network Facilities. “Efforts made to reduce landfill waste and encourage recycling reinforce the importance of good stewardship of our resources. What’s good for the environment and community is also good for our patients.”
 
As part of their education efforts, Dell Children’s has teamed with USGBC’s Central Texas Balcones Chapter to plan an expert panel discussion on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of healthcare, a set of metrics used to gauge how responsible medical facilities are with their projects.  The TBL consists of three Ps:

  • Patients – A measure in some shape or form of how socially responsible an organization has been throughout its operations
  • Planet – A measure of how environmentally responsible it has been
  • Profit – The traditional measure of corporate profit—the “bottom line” of the profit and loss

click image to enlarge

The event will be held at Dell Children’s and will include a tour of its facilities. Mark your calendars for September 18th and attend their event to learn more.
 
Also, there are sponsorships slots still available at this time. Please contact Chris Randazzo at 512.328.0011 or email him at crandazzo@burypartners.com. He is on the Healthcare Event Coordinating Committee for USGBC’s Central Texas Balcones Chapter, and can help you with further information.
 
Sources:

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1
Jun 12

Engineering Ranks on List of Most Valuable Majors

High school graduation season is in full swing. Years of studying and hard work have paid off, and many graduating seniors are preparing to embark on the next chapter of their lives: college.

 

Deciding on a field of study can be a challenge for some, and even if one goes to college certain of a degree plan, the average student changes their major two or three times during their college years. While majors should be chosen based on talents and ambitions, it may be wise to research projected job growth for careers a student is interested in.

 

Forbes recently ran a story on “The 15 Most Valuable Majors,” showing that “engineering concentrations comprise one third of the most valuable majors.”

 

“These aren’t majors that anyone could do. They’re hard, and these programs weed people out… However, there is high demand for them and a low supply of people with the skills, so it drives up the labor market price.”

 

Civil engineering ranked No. 6 on Forbes’ list, so we took some time to ask a few of our recent graduates what they love about their chosen career.

 

Lauren Beavers, E.I.T., is a 2010 graduate of the University of Texas, and she chose engineering simply because she’d always been good with math and science. “The best part about engineering classes is that it’s not about memorizing, but about learning how to solve problems.”

 

Sarah Shepard, E.I.T, a 2011 graduate of Southern Methodist University, changed her major several times, but chose civil engineering after trying a few classes and deciding it was a good fit. “Civil engineering is a challenging and diverse field that can present any number of design problems, which can be addressed in several ways. I enjoy the process of determining what the driving factors are for each project and designing a solution to meet those needs.”

 

After receiving her degree from California State Polytechnic University Pomona in 2010, Brenda Rascon, E.I.T. feels that her education and experience are versatile. “The (engineering) program itself is described as challenging, but there’s no reason everyone can’t achieve it.”

 

Civil engineering may have been the only service we offer to make Forbes’ list, but projected job growth for other Bury services is looking great as well. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average growth rate across all careers is 14 percent over the next 10 years.

 

Projected Job Growth 2010-2020

  • Civil engineering – 19%
  • Landscape architecture – 16%
  • Urban and regional planners – 16%
  • Survey and mapping technicians – 16%
  • Mechanical engineering – 9%
  • Electrical engineering – 6%
  • Surveyors –25%

 

School may be out for the summer, but Bury has already mapped out our fall college road trip to visit with engineering students across the country. A full schedule of our campus visits can be found on the Student Programs page of our website, along with information about the internships we offer.

 

Congratulations, graduates!

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20
Apr 12

ENR Names Bury Top 500 Firm

ENR Top 500 Firms

Engineering News-Record (ENR) has released its annual list of the Top 500 Design Firms in the United States.  The list is based on design revenue generated by the firms, and covers both public and privately-held companies.
 
Bury+Partners (Bury) is proud to announce that we hold a spot in the ENR rankings this year, and that collectively, that makes it the 9th time we have been named. In the last two years, we have seen a revenue increase of nearly 20% and moved up the list an impressive 78 spaces.
 
ENR’s report carried some welcome news for the economy in general. After watching revenues decline over the past few years, the economic storm of the recession is finally showing signs of recuperation. This year’s list of The Top 500, taken as a group, reports a total revenue of $85.06 billion, while the last few years were reported as:
 

  • $90.85 billion in 2008.
  • $80.02 billion in 2009, and
  • $79.8 billion in 2010.

 
With the economy showing signs of improvement, firms will now need to prepare for the increased work that will come in. With this in mind, Bury began to grow in staff numbers and talent. In the last year alone, we have added more than 60 employees and continue to seek qualified individuals to join the family.
 

ENR Top 500 Firms

Click this image to read the full article.

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23
Mar 12

Houston Named No. 1 Large US Metro


Houston was recently named the 2011 No. 1 Large Metro in the US for corporate facility expansion projects by Site Selection magazine. Experts say the ranking could lead to even more regional economic development.
 
Site Selection magazine is published by Conway Data Inc. and is the official publication of the Industrial Asset Management Council, headquartered in Norcross, Georgia. To qualify in the expansion and relocation category, all facilities have to be at least 20,000sf, have a capital investment of at least $1 million and create 50 new jobs.
 
Greater Houston secured 195 of these projects last year, easily beating its closest competitor, Chicago, which garnered 167. The Greater Houston Partnership (GHP) helped coordinate 34 of these relocations and expansions in its 10-county region. GHP’s efforts alone created 4,720 new jobs and a capital investment of $17.5 million.
 
As the largest city in Texas, and the nation’s fourth largest city, it may come as no surprise that Houston would offer so much opportunity for businesses. But some say the ranking is an absolute advantage and a new selling point to the community.
 
Regina Morales, director of economic development for the city of Sugar Land, said “It enhances our locale as an excellent business environment. We can say it all day long, but when a third party now says it, and they do an unbiased analysis of all communities, then that puts the region on a preferred list of locations to look at.”
 

 

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