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Beijing, China to Place 4 Month Ban on Construction Projects to Reduce Pollution

"Cina Smog" by erhard.renz, CC BY 2.0"Cina Smog" by erhard.renz, CC BY 2.0

From November 15, 2017 to March 15, 2018, construction will be banned in all of Beijing, reports the South China Morning Post.  Some projects, like infrastructure and affordable housing projects, may still be approved by the municipal commission of housing and urban-rural development to continue. For those that are approved, they can expect to be highly scrutinized for any creation of dust or use of construction equipment with high emissions.

Smog levels hit record highs in the city in January and February of this year and officials have promised to reduce hazardous airborne particles by 25% as compared to 2012 levels. It’s also believed that water and soil contamination is responsible for hundreds of thousands of early deaths yearly.

Full story: Beijing slaps ban on winter construction in bid to improve air quality | Construction

As electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular around the world, researchers are trying to find ways to adapt the technology to heavier duty applications.  Due to the large size of projects and amount of money in the industry, the mining industry has seen its fair share of technological advancement. Several manufacturers, like Komatsu, have developed and released driverless dump trucks for mining operations in the past few years.  A team of companies in Switzerland is now working on a gigantic battery powered dump truck that will be tested for 10 years.

Rapid growth and the industrialization are the major contributors to China’s noted air quality issues. 4 years ago, the Chinese government issued a “war on pollution” aiming to improve air quality and reduce other environmental hazards, such as land and water contamination.  Air quality is at its worst in the winter months across the country, due to households relying more on coal power to heat residents’ homes.

After sharing average hourly wage data for construction laborers, ranked by state, a little over a week ago, I’ve decided to begin doing the same for the other many different construction related professions.  Our second profession that we’ll be analyzing will be heavy equipment operators.

Asphalt is one of the world’s most popular pavement materials.  Because of that, researchers and scientists are constantly looking for ways to improve upon it.  Additives have been included in some asphalt mixes for years to improve strength, but recently researchers have been getting pretty clever with the types of additives they’re testing.

Video feeds on a construction site are not only great for timelapse videos, they can potentially help stop intruders who enter your site.

Construction crews all over the world unearth some pretty cool or very weird items, but sometimes crews find some extremely significant historical artifacts, as well. Last week, a contractor in Colorado made an extremely rare discovery that has many scientists very excited.