Articles

TASA ID: 11934

This article was originally published in Transmission & Distribution World, www.tdworld.com, September 2016.

Typically, utilities have leaks that occur inside conduits, along cracks and at pipe penetrations. The conduit problem, for example, occurs where the conduit penetrates inside a structure such as a building foundation, a manhole or a vault. Water infiltration occurs inside the structures at the annular space between the cables and the conduit. This leakage can fill an underground vault with water, depending on the water table elevation. 

TASA ID: 4009

In many product liability cases there is something missing from an existing warning and instruction - some safety information which arguably the plaintiff did not know at the time of the accident. It may be relatively straight forward to figure out whether or not the existing warning was defective by reference to items like the ANSI Z353 Standards, signal word, color, conspicuity, language, grade level word choice, whether or not the warning adequately explains the hazard and the consequences of not heeding the warning and whether or not the warning explains what to do to avoid the hazard.  All of these are items which in general make a warning more likely to be noticed, read, understood and heeded.  That is exactly why the standards and authorities require them.  

TASA ID: 4009

Jurors in product liability warnings cases strive to answer these two questions: 

1. Was the warning on this product defective?
2. Was a defect in this warning a proximate cause of this personal injury accident?

Plaintiffs do not prevail unless jurors provide a “yes” answer to both questions.  The kinds of arguments and the evidence presented for each of these questions are vastly different from each other.

TASA ID: 3647

We have continued to work on more detailed risk evaluations on our projects, trying to use Monte Carlo simulation methods that our friends in industrial projects have used to quantify the variations in total schedules that affect their financial outcomes. You might remember the summary chart of how good our master schedules were over several years. I have taken out the small projects from the figure below, which makes it look even worse.

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TASA ID: 3647

It’s been awhile since we checked in on general building contractor finances. The best data comes from the annual Construction Financial Management Association annual report, now called the Benchmarker. They survey most financially sound builders each year, and provide data that the builders themselves can use to gauge their progress versus their peers. The last time we did this was in 2013, so we will be seeing what has happened in the last three years as the market and the economy have improved.