Construction costs: is your school project at risk? Any dinner-table economist knows hurricanes Katrina and Rita will impact school construction costs. The educational industry, however, is holding its breath to see how big the impact will be.
Michael Garretson, deputy superintendent of the Broward County School District in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., was still reeling from the 2004 hurricane season when four storms struck his state in quick succession. Thanks to the construction demand the winds whipped up, materials that rose between 8 percent and 10 percent...

Optimizing the cost approach: beyond its use as an independent method to determine property value, the cost approach presents a highly effective way to verify market and income-based valuations, project construction costs and adjust estimates to account for unique physical property features.
Best Use An essential valuation method, the Cost Approach is crucial to various appraisal assignments, including when lack of market activity limits the effectiveness of the sales comparison approach, when land value is well supported, when appraising new or proposed construction, when improvements represent the highest and...

Optimizing the cost approach: beyond its use as an independent method to determine property value, the cost approach presents a highly effective way to verify market and income-based valuations, project construction costs and adjust estimates to account for unique physical property features.
Best Use An essential valuation method, the Cost Approach is crucial to various appraisal assignments, including when lack of market activity limits the effectiveness of the sales comparison approach, when land value is well supported, when appraising new or proposed construction, when improvements represent the highest and...

Trickledown wrap-up tricks: midsized construction projects may benefit from an insurance approach long used at the largest sites. A careful analysis will show if this approach makes sense for specific projects.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rising costs are prompting general contractors, developers and owners with midsized projects to explore an insurance program that has controlled the cost of risk on much larger projects. Consolidated insurance programs, or CIPs, create a single workers' compensation and general liability insurance program...

Disappointment and delays dog development. on Iran's South Pars Field.
THE INTERMINABLE PROBLEMS mat have beset Iranian efforts to develop its South Pars gas field look set to continue as a result of disagreement between French firm Total and the Pars Oil and Gas Company. The Iranian government seems unwilling to meet its share of spiralling development costs but...

Gifts in the Netherlands.
Is the grass greener across the North Sea? Perhaps not now, even if it was routinely thought to be in the past. But the Dutch state can be relied on to produce some substantial reading matter, critical thinking and case studies for public art and democracy wonks. It comes...

BACnet[R] for megachurch.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Houston's Lakewood Church is America's largest nondenominational church, with multiple services that attract tens of thousands of worshippers each week. The church building is the former Compaq Center, home to the Houston Rockets basketball team. An ambitious renovation in 2005 transformed the arena into a...

Thaw In Saudi-Qatari Ties.
Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa on Sept. 24 visited Saudi Arabia and met with King Abdullah ibn Abdul-Aziz. It was later announced that relations between the two GCC states improved after a five-year hiatus due to a bilateral spat. Gulf News on Sept. 25 quoted officials as saying the Saudi...

Brattle Group: $1.5 Trillion Needed to Meet Future Demand for Electricity.
ENERGY RESOURCE-21 April 2008-Brattle Group: $1.5 Trillion Needed to Meet Future Demand for Electricity(C)2008 JeraOne - http://www.jeraone.com The Brattle Group projects that growing demand for electric services will require investment on the order of $1.5 trillion between now and 2030. Peter Fox-Penner, co-chairman of The...

Hot seat: school board chair Kathy Kleinlein on budget cuts and our new superintendent.
Sarasota School Board chair Kathy Kleinlein has been one of Next Generation education's staunchest supporters. She's also the only member of the board with an M.B.A. as well as a doctorate in education. She formerly taught high school English and trained employees within a Fortune 500 company. Today, she's...