Construction

The past year brought continued financial woes for small businesses across a wide array of industries — but not all of them. In a select few sectors, business is booming and sales expectations are soaring heading into 2013. Small agricultural companies and heavy-duty manufacturers are primed for some of the most rapid growth in the coming months, according to a new report from Sageworks based on financial data from thousands of firms with annual revenue below $10 million.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — United Arab Emirates-based construction company Arabtec says it's working to resolve a rare strike by laborers seeking higher wages. Labor protests are uncommon across the Gulf Arab states, which depend on workers mostly from South Asia for vital construction jobs. Entire teams of workers are often housed in crowded labor camps with basic services. UAE authorities have made arrests of strikers in the past but there also are concerns of wider protests.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obama's economic advisers and outside experts say the nation's much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind , including young people looking to buy their first homes and...

For the past three years, the Washington region has steadily added to the amount of new office space under construction, from 4 million square feet in 2010 to 7.3 million square feet currently under construction. At the end of the first quarter, only New York City and Houston had more office space under construction. While the supply of office space has grown 1 percent, demand has only increased 0.25 percent during the same three-year time frame. As a result, office vacancy rates have been slowly...

Author Sheri Koones is on a mission to educate American homeowners about home building. Her first three books focused on the basics on home construction, borne of her own experience as a frustrated homeowner trying to remodel her Greenwich, Conn., house. At that time, she said in a recent interview, there was almost no information to help her make intelligent choices as she faced an endless number of decisions about this or that flooring material, plumbing fixture, roof shingle and on and on. Koones's last four books have zeroed in on...

When constructing a house, how can you ensure that the materials you use do not pose a health threat for you and your family, the builder's workforce and the community that extends far beyond your house, in some cases globally? The fact that I am even raising this question may come as a surprise to most homeowners, but in the United States, there are no statutes requiring that toxic ingredients in building materials be pre-tested before they are marketed. Government action can be taken only after the material has been shown to...

The glass-and-steel roof swoops up like a bird taking flight. A wall made of etched glass opens the rear vista to newly planted landscaping. Embedded in the floor are heating elements intended to ward off the cold weather and keep winter-weary feet cozy. The location, near Columbia Pike and Walter Reed Drive, is perfectly positioned to take advantage of Arlington County's growing night life and ethnic restaurants. And the price tag: $1 million. "Is this made of gold?" asked commuter Yohannes Kaleab, examining...

Gino S. Valenti, 88, a civil engineer who retired as superintendent of construction in the Office of the Architect of the Capitol in 1994, died March 9 at the Brooke Grove retirement community in Sandy Spring. The cause was lung cancer, said his daughter, Christy Kelly. For 35 years, Mr. Valenti worked in the Architect of the Capitol's construction management division. His work included oversight of the construction of the Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings, the Madison Library, and expansions of the...

Construction has begun on Edmonston's long-awaited "green street" project, which will revamp Decatur Street with a variety of environmentally friendly features. The street will include rain gardens and bioretention ponds to capture storm water runoff. Half of the road surface will be replaced with permeable pavement that will allow water to soak into the ground. Low-energy street lamps will replace current ones. The project will cost more than $1 million, much of which comes from federal stimulus act money, although...

Kyle Brown strode into the job-training class at Goodwill of Greater Washington and smiled at the black men and women he was about to hire as part of his construction company's effort to diversify its mostly Latino workforce. In 1984, when Brown started at Miller & Long Concrete Construction, most workers were black. But by the mid-1990s, they had been replaced by Latinos. And Brown, 48, a tall man with dreadlocks, vividly recalls his initial loneliness as "the outsider. " Now, he has been sent on a mission to alter...

As he signed legislation Thursday raising Maryland's gas tax , Gov. Martin O'Malley identified an initial $1.2 billion in new road and transit projects that he said the new revenue will make possible, including several in the Washington region. A list released by O'Malley (D) included $280 million in design work on the Purple Line , the proposed rail link between Bethesda and New Carrollton, and $100 million in design work for the Corridor Cities Transitway, a rapid bus line...

HOME BUILDING: U.S. builders broke ground on fewer homes in April, one month after topping the 1 million mark for the first time since 2008. Construction fell 16.5 percent in April, but most of the decline was in apartment construction, which tends to vary sharply from month to month. PERMITS UP: Applications for new construction, a good barometer of future activity, surged 14.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.02 million, the most since June 2008. ...

WASHINGTON — U.S. builders broke ground on fewer homes in April, one month after topping the 1 million mark for the first time since 2008. But most of the decline was in apartment construction, which tends to vary sharply from month to month. And applications for new construction reached a five-year peak, evidence that the housing revival will be sustained. The Commerce Department said Thursday that builders started construction at a seasonally adjusted annual...

MOLINE, Ill. — Deere & Co. said on Wednesday that bad weather and weak economies will hinder sales growth this year for lawnmowers and construction equipment. The company reported better-than-expected second-quarter earnings and maintained its full-year profit prediction. Sales of farm gear such as its big green John Deere tractors and combines are still strong and growing, the company said. But the lower overall sales outlook sent its shares skidding over 4...

BALTIMORE — Construction industry experts will be talking about the proposed Purple Line light rail project. A forum is scheduled for Wednesday with officials from the Maryland Transit Administration. Interested firms will get an overview of Maryland's new public-private partnership law. Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown is scheduled to attend. The Purple Line is a 16-mile light rail line with 21 stations between Bethesda and New Carrollton. Its estimated the cost would be about $2.2 billion.

BRASILIA, Brazil — FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke warned Tuesday that delays in completing the stadium in Sao Paulo could result in the city being stripped of hosting 2014 World Cup matches. Sao Paulo is scheduled to host six World Cup matches, including the opener and one of the semifinals, but Valcke said that organizers "have to speed up. " "And don't forget, and it's not a threat, we can change all until the first minute of the ticket sales," the...

Northern Virginia commuters are starting to navigate some of the biggest detours and traffic jams since the building of a new Woodrow Wilson Bridge and the reconfiguring of the Springfield interchange, amid a road and rail construction boom. The biggest projects are the extension of Metrorail through Tysons Corner, eventually to Dulles International Airport, and high-occupancy toll lanes along 14 miles of the Capital Beltway from the Springfield interchange to just north of the Dulles Toll Road.

After five years of hemorrhaging jobs, the construction industry has become one of the bright spots of the labor market — a hopeful sign that one of the most damaged sectors of the economy may finally be starting to heal. Overall, the government's monthly jobs report, released Friday, showed continued modest growth in December. The economy added 155,000 jobs, on par with the monthly average for both 2012 and 2011. The unemployment rate remained at 7.8 percent. But a closer look reveals that nearly...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman says Tehran's nuclear negotiator is seeking a "constructive" response from the European Union's top diplomat in upcoming talks aimed at possibly restarting wider dialogue with the U.S. and other world powers. Wednesday's meeting in Istanbul comes more than a month after the last round between Iran and the six powers ended in stalemate. Spokesman Abbas Araghchi told reporters Tuesday he hopes EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, will take a...

Projects Proposed Gainesville District 1. Tuong Van Monastery, 2101 James Madison Hwy. Special-use permit to add buildings and relocate and reduce the size of a proposed Buddhist temple. 2. Heathcote Assisted Living, 13650 Heathcote Blvd. Special-use permit for a continuing-care retirement community. Potomac District 3. Barnes Goodman Property, 14807 Spriggs Rd. Rezoning of 8.85 acres from agriculture to suburban residential for the construction of 12 single-family houses and...