Word: contractor
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...most important steps in dealing with a disaster is investigating its causes. When the fifth floor of a high-rise office tower under construction in Los Angeles collapsed last December, killing three people, the general contractor, San Francisco-based Swinerton & Walberg, was besieged. Recalls Bill Van Leuven, Swinerton's manager of business development: "People were banging on our doors. We didn't know where to turn. No one was prepared to address the problem." The company hired Lexicon Communications, which organized a team of safety engineers and Swinerton executives to assess the possible causes of the collapse...
...that ice, which had formed on Launch Pad 39-B during Cape Canaveral's 27 degrees F weather the night before the lift-off, had somehow damaged the shuttle. In fact, engineers at Rockwell International, the prime contractor for the shuttle, saw the ice in televised shots of Pad 39-B and telephoned NASA to urge a delay in the launch. But Space Flight Director Moore said that an "ice team" had inspected the shuttle. "We checked just 20 minutes prior to launch, and the consensus of the reports was good," he said. "It was decided that very low risk...
...Stumped for a Christmas gift? Give a loved one a chapel, as Marylou Whitney gave her husband Sonny, so he might worship without leaving their Saratoga Springs, N.Y., estate. Or do as Washington Contractor Samuel Gessford did when he built five Philadelphia row houses for his homesick wife to look at. Mansions, yachts, planes--they are all among the grand gifts in Only the Best by Stuart E. Jacobson (Abrams; 216 pages; $35). In this celebration of the sumptuous, it is the odd items that twinkle brightest: a money clip from Jack Benny to George Burns ("I want the dollar...
...agents. He also tried to coax his daughter Laura, 25, into the family spy ring while she served as a communications specialist in the Army, but she refused. John had recruited his brother Arthur, 50, a former Navy officer, to supply secrets about Navy ship vulnerabilities from a defense contractor in Chesapeake, Va. Arthur pleaded guilty in August and is awaiting sentencing...
Arguing that new weapons rise faster in price than do consumer goods, the Pentagon for the past four years has used an inflation index about 30% higher than the Consumer Price Index. But the GAO found that after the impact of contractor cost overruns is subtracted, prices for weapons and other Defense purchases prove to have "increased at about the same rate as prices of all goods in the U.S. economy." Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, claims the Pentagon used its $37 billion cushion to boost contractor profits and shuffle money to pinched programs...