2/22/12 9:00am

Crime and Punishment

Wreckage from Upper East Side Crane Collapse.

Trial Begins for Operator Involved in Fatal Upper East Side Crane Collapse

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office yesterday opened up its manslaughter trial against the owner of a construction crane involved in a 2008 accident that killed two workers, and prosecutors said it was that man’s greed that lead to the fatal crane collapse, according to the Associated Press.

Prosecutors painted James Lomma, the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp., as a man who passed on a crucial repair job on the faulty crane in favor of the bottom line. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 2/14/12 2:02pm

Construction Outlook 2012

Barry LePatner: Cassandra or Nostradamus?

Construction Attorney Warns, Developers need to Get off the Sidelines and do what they do best: Build

He’s the Cassandra of the construction industry, the rabble-rouser of rubble.

Attorney Barry LePatner, founder of LePatner & Associates LLP and author of construction shock books Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward and Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets, has his own 30,000-foot-high view looking down on the current state of New York City’s construction industry. He believes there will be a $25 trillion construction boom in New York and the rest of the country between now and the year 2035. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 11/02/09 9:52pm

On Building Blocks

The Commercial Observer: You’ve said that $120 billion is wasted on unnecessary overruns every year. Where are those costs coming from and why is it happening?
Mr. LePatner: As I laid out in Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets, the little-known fact in our nation’s business economy is that the construction industry is the most inefficient in Read More