Ashley Phelps is the Assistant Director of Supply Chain Management at Gilbane Building Company. With the use of Lean strategies and tactics, her focus is ensuring project teams have the capacity and capability to streamline the procurement process and enhance relationships with key business partners. Prior to her role in Supply Chain, Ashley lead Gilbane’s Advanced Planning and Scheduling Department. With a background in scheduling, she coached teams on Lean planning and scheduling techniques with an emphasis on continuous improvement.

Michigan State University (MSU) is a forward-thinking public owner that uses ConsensusDocs standard construction contracts as the basis for its projects. At the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) annual conference held in Grapevine, Texas, MSU's STEM Teaching and Learning Facility was considered “the most significant construction project of 2021” by AGC. Granger Construction Company was the Construction Manager and a signatory party on the ConsensusDocs 500 contract. Granger received the association's top prize, Construction Risk Partners Build America Grand Award, and the award for the best construction management renovation project under $99 million.

Prices of materials and services used in new nonresidential construction leaped nearly 21 percent in April from year-ago levels, according to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America of government data released today. The association urged the Biden administration to provide relief to hard-hit employers by ending tariffs on key construction materials and reconsidering its recently proposed Buy America regulations that will make it harder for firms to find and pay for key construction materials.

In construction, alternative project delivery methods typically refer to design-build, construction management at-risk (CM@R or CMAR), and integrated project delivery (IPD). Design-build and CM@R have been commonly used for so long that it seems strange to call them “alternatives.” IPD and design-build are more written about as a subject matter. However, CM@R is just as popular as ever, and some practitioners see CM@R as the project delivery method that delivers project schedule towards completion the fastest. Experienced practitioners of CM@R like the ability to commence construction before all the design details for the entire project are determined. In Iowa, both chambers of the legislative body recently approved legislation, Senate Bill 183, that expands the authorization to use CM@R on public projects and explicitly disallows design-build for public projects. This would make Iowa one of two states banning design-build for all public projects joining North Dakota.

Pre-Conference Federal Contractor HR Workshop Presentations Accepted Also

DHS is ending the COVID-19 Temporary Policy for List B Identity Documents. Beginning May 1, employers will no longer be able to accept expired List B documents. DHS adopted the temporary policy in response to the difficulties many individuals experienced with renewing documents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that document-issuing authorities have reopened and/or provided alternatives to in-person renewals, DHS will end this flexibility. Starting May 1, 2022, employers must only accept unexpired List B documents. If an employee presented an expired List B document between May 1, 2020, and April 30, 2022, employers are required to update their Forms I-9 by July 31, 2022.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it has published guidance on how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects people with opioid use disorder (OUD) who are in treatment or recovery, including those who take medication to treat their OUD. The publication, “The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Opioid Crisis: Combating Discrimination Against People in Treatment or Recovery,” is intended to help people with OUD who are in treatment or recovery understand their rights under federal law and to provide guidance to entities covered by the ADA about how to comply with the law.

One of a Four-Part Series on Improving Worker Health & Behavioral Outcomes