This is a commentary written by Jaye Richardson, a materials operation manager with AMEC Earth and Environmental, Inc. It appeared in CE News in August of 2010, but I just came accross it in CENews.com’s top 10 of 2010 list. He offers some very interesting insight into the decline of the materials testing and inspection business into a purely cost-driven business with little emphasis on the ‘quality’ in QA/QC. He has a great writing style too, highly recommended! [Source: CE News. Image: HEA on Flickr]
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AMEC acquires leading US engineering and environmental services company MACTEC
London, United Kingdom (18 May 2011) – AMEC, the international engineering and project management company, announces today that it has agreed to buy MACTEC, a leading US engineering and environmental services company, from its private equity and other individual shareholders for a cash consideration of US$280 million. Completion is subject to regulatory approval and is expected by the end of June 2011. [Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from AMEC. [/Editor]
ASTM Updates June 2009
D5434 – “Standard Guide for Field Logging of Subsurface Explorations of Soil and Rock” and D4429 – “Standard Test Method for CBR (California Bearing Ratio) of Soils in Place” are two standards revised this month that may be of interest to geotechnical engineers. Those in the construction services and materials testing business should take a look at a number of changes to relevant standards. This month there are also a few revised standards related to detection of different ions in water. I also see that there are a number of geothermal and solar standards that were reapproved this month, most of them seem to have been last modified in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Click through for the full list of new, revised and reapproved ASTM standards from June.
ASTM Updates for March, 2012
This post contains a list of new, revised and otherwise updated ASTM standards that pertain to the geotechnical engineering, materials testing and related fields. Standard C39/C39M for testing the compressive strength of concrete cyllinders was updated, as was C42/42m for obtaining and testing drilled cores and sawed beams of concrete. The month of March also saw several geosynthetic standards being updated or added, including new standards for selecting the test method for geomembrane seams, and for testing the flexural rigidity of geogrids and other geosynthetics. There are also a few updated standards related to asphalt mix design and sampling of asphalt. Click through for updated ASTM Standards relating to geoprofessionals.