SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Hammered by mounting pressure to address the growing homelessness crisis in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday his administration will make $3.3 billion available ahead of schedule for counties and private developers to start building more behavioral health treatment centers as part of his efforts to fund housing and drug use […]
Cybercriminals are focused on ransomware, business email compromise and cryptojacking right now, but a recent report from IBM X-Force thinks AI and ChatGPT could be next. IBM X-Force hasn’t seen any AI-engineered campaigns, yet, but mentions of AI and ChatGPT are proliferating on the dark web. The X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2024 report identified over 800,000 references […]
On April 9, the DOT issued a new final rule for its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise workforce participation plan. The program, first signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, sets goals to award at least 10% of DOT-funded projects to companies owned by minorities, women and other socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. The federal program […]
In the course of my career working with federal contractors, I’ve seen it happen time and time again: a subcontractor violates an applicable prevailing wage statute (either the Davis-Bacon Act or the Service Contract Act) by failing to provide its employees with the required wages and/or fringe benefits. The Department of Labor gets involved, and […]
This is a good article. although it has a construction contractor focus, the principles can be applied to any industry. “But all this customer cares about is low price!” We hear this line daily as a defense of longheld beliefs that their darned customers just don’t care about value over price. Here’s a new belief […]
A renewable energy operator will soon begin development and construction on a nearly $140 million facility near Elk Grove that is expected to be complete in 2026. Ameresco, Inc., which describes itself as a cleantech integrator specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy, announced this week in a news release that it would contract with […]
California’s highway department awarded an emergency contract to the Sacramento-based contractor after a slide temporarily stranded thousands of people over Easter weekend. The California Department of Transportation has awarded a $1 million emergency contract to Sacramento-based Teichert for initial safety and stabilization work on a washout that shut down a section of iconic Highway 1 […]
If you are a government contractor, odds are you have faced a situation where some aspect of the contract you were performing changed outside of your control, or you ran into something that neither you nor the government expected. As a result, your work requirements likely changed, and with that, your costs likely changed as […]
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is warning vendors who wish to participate in USDA food purchase programs of a possible phishing scheme using fraudulent email messages. The fake emails look like they are solicitations for bids sent by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which manages USDA’s food purchase programs. The threat actors have been […]
State departments of transportation use drones for construction-related tasks and face challenges related to new allowable drone manufacturers. By far the most common construction use is for road construction, particularly road widening, repair, and rerouting, as some states are tackling entirely new roads right now for both budget and capacity reasons. Drone tasks also include […]