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The U.S. Department of Transportation announced that more than $5 billion in grant awards will be used to repair or replace nationally significant large bridges across the United States. The money is being delivered via Large Bridge Project awards through the Federal Highway... View full entry
President Joe Biden on Thursday announced plans to increase protections for workers facing extreme heat, as temperatures across the U.S. soar and large swaths of the country face heat advisories. — HR Dive
The President’s announcement comes as close to 40% of the U.S. population faces heat advisories, according to the National Weather Service. The country currently has no federal standards on workplace heat safety, and there has been no timeline for the finalization of one. As reported by HR Dive... View full entry
The Biden Administration has recently announced a new $90 million commitment in the form of competitive awards meant to help states and cities in their myriad attempts at mustering updated building codes into the country's patchwork response to climate change. The funds are being taken from the... View full entry
President Biden on Monday fired J. Brett Blanton, the federal official responsible for the maintenance and operation of the Capitol complex, amid bipartisan calls for his resignation, after an investigative report accusing him of misusing his position and revelations that he avoided the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. — The New York Times
Blanton, who had faced calls for removal over accusations about abuse of government property while in office, was only recently revealed to have been in absentia on the afternoon of January 6th. Speculation had remained over the President’s willingness to remove the AOC from the 10-year... View full entry
The Biden Administration has unveiled the first set of recommendations under its Federal Buy Clean Initiative, an undertaking that aims to drive the development of American-made, low-carbon construction materials, while also supporting job growth. During a visit to the Cleveland-Cliffs Direct... View full entry
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $39 million to 18 projects dedicated to developing technologies that can transform buildings into net carbon storage structures. The initiative titled the Harnessing Emissions into Structures Taking Inputs from the Atmosphere (HESTIA) program... View full entry
President Joe Biden is using his executive powers Monday to boost the domestic production of solar panels and their parts and will issue a 24-month tariff exemption on imports of the products from several countries. The White House said Biden will authorize the use of the Defense Production Act to accelerate manufacturing of solar panels in the United States as a way to strengthen the administration's efforts to shift the country toward clean energy. — NBC News
Invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) allows the President to order private businesses to prioritize the production of materials deemed necessary for national defense. Aside from accelerating the domestic production of solar panels, Biden is using the Act to rapidly expand American... View full entry
Architect, educator, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners co-founder Billie Tsien is set to receive an Honorary Doctorate and deliver the commencement speech at the Boston Architectural College’s (BAC) graduation ceremony on Friday, May 27th. “It is an immense privilege to... View full entry
The Biden administration on April 19 restored key regulations in the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires review of federal projects to assess their likely impacts on climate change and nearby communities. The changes to the NEPA rules will go into effect in late May, and could mean proposed infrastructure like highways, pipelines and railways take more time to get approved. — Construction Dive
This move reverses changes made by the Trump administration, which loosened the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 2020 in order to accelerate projects by shortening the time used to gather environmental information and community input. According to Construction Dive, construction... View full entry
The Department of Homeland Security announced on Monday that it would begin performing maintenance and emergency repairs on areas of the unfinished border wall with Mexico that runs along Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. — Construction Dive
Following President Biden’s executive order in January to halt the construction of the border wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of terminating the construction contracts for the projects. As part of this process, unfinished projects were handed over to the Department of... View full entry
President Biden on Wednesday set in motion a plan to make the federal government carbon neutral, ordering federal agencies to buy electric vehicles, to power facilities with wind, solar and nuclear energy, and to use sustainable building materials. — The New York Times
Biden called for the transformation of 300,000 government buildings, 600,000 cars and trucks, and the use of its annual $650 billion budget for goods and services to meet his goal for a carbon-neutral federal government by 2050. Detailed by The New York Times, his timetable for the... View full entry
Arizona State University professor Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson has been officially named as President Biden’s nominee for chair of the National Endowment for the Arts. Once confirmed, Dr. Jackson would become the first Black and Mexican American woman ever appointed to the prestigious chair... View full entry
The $1 trillion package is far smaller than the $2.3 trillion plan that President Biden had originally proposed and would provide about $550 billion in new federal money for public transit, roads, bridges, water and other physical projects over the next five years, according to a White House fact sheet. — The New York Times
A proposed $20 billion in aid to communities of color that have been historically impacted by past infrastructure projects was reduced to $1 billion as part of the dealmaking process. New York Senator Chuck Schumer has promised an additional $3.5 trillion package that will address climate and... View full entry
A new nominee for chairman of the White House’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation has been named this week, placing a community activist and architect into a position of influence that had been only a part-time role until 2016. The Hartford Courant is reporting that Sara Bronin has been... View full entry
President Biden formally signed H.R. 49 into law this weekend, officially recognizing the now-vacant site of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting as a national memorial in a historic move that clears the way for a new permanent monument in Orlando. The bill, named to honor the tragedy’s... View full entry
