The Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) and key transportation, education and labor organizations are accepting abstracts from individuals of all disciplines interested in transportation workforce issues. Abstracts are due Nov. 4. 2011.

The Association of Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), the licensing company for insurance forms, has recently amended their certificate of insurance requirements. Consequently, contractors and subcontractors may no longer be able to provide certificates of insurance that are required by their contracts.

Candidates for the AGC Education and Research Foundation’s Outstanding Educator award take note: the application deadline for the 2012 award is Nov. 15, 2011. Applications may be found here.  Candidates must be full-time, teaching faculty members of an ACCE or ABET-accredited construction or construction-related engineering program with at least four years full-time teaching experience. 

Open any trade publication these days and you’ll likely be greeted by a tale or two about BIM. Its increasing adoption across the contracting community is swiftly moving it out of the hands of the pioneers and into the mainstream. It’s not hard to see why. BIM’s role in catalyzing performance improvements across dimensions of project cost, quality, schedule, and more are now well recognized and a powerful draw.

From Facebook to Twitter, today’s social media has become the go-to way to stay in tune with what’s new and to keep in touch with friends and family. But how do these platforms affect your business and employee relations? This highly compelling webinar will demonstrate the ease with which social networking is available to employees, but will also exam the potentially harmful effects.

AGC had a great turnout for our recent free double-header webinar and has made the presentations available online here. The first half was an update on the  Training Education & Development Forum, which  encompasses a broad range of programs, products and services that serve AGC members and Chapter staff who are involved in industry outreach, craft training, and professional development for employees at all levels and job titles within the industry.

There is still time to register for AGC’s 2011 HR Professionals Conference and Training, Education & Development (TED) Conference but the hotel room block booking closes Friday, Sept. 9, so act fast if you want to join us at the Crowne Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.

With today’s challenging climate, training is more important than ever. Sign up by Wednesday, August 31st for either the Construction Project Manager Course or Advanced Management Program and receive $500 off per registration fee! 

The development of the AGC Certificate of Management-Building Information Modeling (CM-BIM) beta exam phase was completed last week.  Fifty qualified professionals took part in the beta testing. These individuals were eligible to sit for the exam by attending all four units of BIM EP curriculum.

Construction contracts are often unbalanced, unfair, and unhelpful for actually getting a project built.  In this economy, some contractors and specialty contractors are willing to sign any contract, no matter what the terms, to get work.  However, what if those contract killer clauses come back to bite you. Your business could be in jeopardy,  which is why it is critical to review your contracts before you sign them and negotiate fair terms.