Consulting-Specifying Engineer - February 2008 - (Page 10)

In The News Architecture, engineering, and construction still going strong in the United States fter reaching near-record levels in the first three quarters of 2007, and averting most of the negative sentiment that plagued the broader economy, market values of architecture, engineering, construction, and environmental consulting firms (AEC/E) finally slowed to a 5% pace at year-end, according to analysts at Natick, Mass.-based ZweigWhite. The ZweigWhite 15 (ZW15), a marketweighted index designed to track the performance of publicly traded AEC/E firms in the United States, ticked up 55 points in the fourth quarter to close at $1,309.61 for the year. “Unfortunately, the overall economy did not fare as well over the same period and it appears as if it will head lower in 2008. Skepticism has been making its way into financial headlines with news of falling housing prices, tightening credit, record-breaking oil and commodity prices, and a sluggish holiday spending season,” said Michael S. O’Brien, a principal with ZweigWhite who specializes in financial advisory services. The Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index closed down 3% A in the fourth quarter, reflecting investors’ fears of recession. Despite collateralized debt obligations and the subprime mess having also shaken financial institutions abroad, foreign stocks showed resiliency. The S&P 700 Index, a measure of the international economy (not including the effect of American firms), advanced slightly last quarter—favorable in comparison to the decline experienced by the S&P 500. Jacobs Engineering Group, Pasadena, Calif., led the ZW15 and represented the AEC/E industry among the best performing stocks of the year. Jacobs exceeded analysts’ estimates with a 42.9% yearover-year revenue growth primarily due to its continued success in the oil service sector, which has been driven by high oil prices. Jacobs’ success translated into a soaring stock price, sending the company to the year’s 10 best performers within the S&P 500 Index. Other positive contributors to the ZW15 included Hill International, Marlton, N.J.; Stantec, Edmonton, Alberta; and The Shaw Group, Baton Rouge, La. But even the AEC/E industry was not left unscathed from the volatility that occurred in other areas of the market. Despite strong earnings reports, some AEC/E firms disappointed Wall Street with unsatisfactory future outlooks. Even with these declines in the short run, the ZW15 ended nearly 31% above the level at which it was introduced in June 2007 at $1,000. Since its inception, performance of the ZW15 has far surpassed the U.S. economy as measured by the S&P 500. Designing buildings for the fastest computers on Earth YP Mission Critical Facilities, Albany, N.Y., has been selected as the lead design firm for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ (NCSA) new petascale computing building at the University of Illinois in UrbanaChampaign. This facility will be home to the world’s most powerful “leadership-class” supercomputer, supported by Track 1 supercomputer funding from the National Science Foundation. This “petascale” system is expected to make arithmetic calculations at a sustained rate in excess of an amazing 1,000trillion operations per second (a petaFLOP per second). The supercomputer, called “Blue Waters,” will be 500 times more powerful than today’s typical supercomputer. Expected to go online E in 2011, the system may be used to study complex processes like the interaction of the Sun’s coronal mass ejections with the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere; the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe; and understanding the chains of reactions that occur with living cells. In 2007, EYP MCF furthered its bestin-class HPC and research computing facility planning and design experience with additional engagements at Argonne National Laboratory, Indiana University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. EYP MCF provided technology planning and engineering design services for the power and cooling infrastructure supporting these high-density supercomputer installations. How fast are these HPC systems? At Argonne National Laboratory, one of the two computers to be installed is a 445teraFLOP system that can perform 445 trillion calculations per second, which means to match that speed every one of the 6 billion people on Earth would need to perform 70,000 calculations per second. EYP MCF participated on a designbuild team that delivered the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, which houses the supercomputing system. For Indiana University, EYP MCF provided programming and design services for IU’s new 82,700-sq.-ft data center building, which broke ground on Oct. 12 and will house not only IU’s supercomputer, but also critical academic and administrative technology infrastructure. 10 Consulting-Specifying Engineer • FEBRUARY 2008

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Consulting-Specifying Engineer - February 2008 Contents Viewpoint News M/E Roundtable How To Write Control Sequences Mentoring Engineers: Myths, Motivations, and Models Keep Young Electrical Engineers Grounded Protecting a Vulnerable Population Codes & Standards Case Study New Products Equipment Lifecycles Advertisers Index Green Space

Consulting-Specifying Engineer - February 2008

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