Harpers Ferry Iowa Construction Expert Witness Directory

'Drywall Isn't Light': Peter Lupo on Safety Management at Standard Drywall

May 26, 2026 — Elaine Silver - Engineering News-Record
Peter Lupo has been safety director since 2019 at San Diego-based Standard Drywall Inc., a major wall and ceiling contractor. He draws on over two decades of safety experience across a wide range of commercial construction work, having previously served as safety director for general contractor T.B. Penick & Sons. He has also previously operated Peter Lupo Consulting, where he reviewed legal cases and provided expert testimony, and blogged on safety for ENR.com. Lupo recently spoke to ENR Correspondent Elaine Silver about the weight of drywall, heat hazard control, bilingual crews and how he supports safety creativity and learning on the Standard Drywall staff. The conversation has been edited. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Elaine Silver, Engineering News-Record
ENR may be contacted at enr@enr.com

Construction Companies Are Nearly Seven Times Safer With These Best Practices

June 15, 2026 — ABC - Construction Executive
WASHINGTON, May 4—Associated Builders and Contractors released its 2026 Health and Safety Performance Report, an annual guide to health and safety best practices on construction jobsites. The 2026 report shows the positive effects of participating in ABC’s STEP® Health and Safety Management System, which enables top-performing ABC members to achieve incident rates 686% safer than the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics construction industry average, reducing total recordable incident rates by 85%. Established in 1989, STEP is a proven system that provides contractors and suppliers with a robust, no-cost framework for measuring health and safety data and benchmarking with peers in the industry. This self-assessment tool helps participants identify real opportunities for scalable growth in their health and safety programs to lower their total recordable incident rates and become an employer of choice in a competitive labor market. Reprinted courtesy of ABC, Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved. Read the full story...

HHMR Attorneys Steve Heisdorffer and Dave McLain Named to 2026 Super Lawyers List

April 08, 2026 — Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell, LLC
Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell, LLC is pleased to announce that Steve Heisdorffer and Dave McLain have been selected to the 2026 Colorado Super Lawyers list for construction litigation. Mr. Heisdorffer has been consistently recognized in recent years for his work in construction litigation and related business disputes. Mr. McLain has been recognized by Super Lawyers each year from 2020 through 2026, following his earlier inclusion on the Rising Stars list from 2009 through 2012. Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Higgins, Hopkins, McLain & Roswell, LLC

FERC Issues Show-Cause Orders: Impacts on California and Other Regional Power Markets

July 13, 2026 — Stephen J. Humes, Alicia M. McKnight & Jason Drogin Atwood - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law Blog
At an open meeting on June 18, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued show-cause orders under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act to the six FERC-jurisdictional RTOs/ISOs—PJM Interconnection, ISO New England, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Southwest Power Pool, New York Independent System Operator and California Independent System Operator—along with their transmission owners (TOs), directing each region and the TOs to justify or revise tariff provisions governing how data centers and other large loads connect to and receive transmission service from the grid. These show-cause orders will impact several power markets across the country, including California. Reprinted courtesy of Stephen J. Humes, Pillsbury, Alicia M. McKnight, Pillsbury and Jason Drogin Atwood, Pillsbury Mr. Humes may be contacted at stephen.humes@pillsburylaw.com Ms. McKnight may be contacted at alicia.mcknight@pillsburylaw.com Mr. Atwood may be contacted at jason.atwood@pillsburylaw.com Read the full story...

New Year’s Resolution: Engineering the “Tee-Up Day” for Complex Construction Mediations

February 17, 2026 — Joël Bertet - The Dispute Resolver
The construction industry is defined by its commitment to "Critical Path" scheduling. From the moment a project breaks ground, every stakeholder—from the MEP sub to the owner’s rep—is focused on sequencing. We know that you cannot hang drywall before the rough-in is inspected, and you cannot pour a slab-on-grade until the vapor barrier is verified. Yet, when these projects devolve into litigation, the legal community often abandons the logic of sequencing. We rush headlong into "The Mediation Day"—a high-stakes, expensive, one-day marathon where we expect dozens of parties, hundreds of insurance layers, and thousands of pages of expert reports to magically align into a settlement by 6:00 PM. As we open our calendars for the new year, it is time for a professional resolution. We must stop treating mediation as a single-day event and start treating it as a managed, sequenced process. The centerpiece of this resolution is the “Tee-Up Day.” Read the full story...
Reprinted courtesy of Joël Bertet, ResolveBertet
Mr. Bertet may be contacted at joel@resolvebertet.com

The AI Knows Too Much: When Employees Feed Trade Secrets into Generative AI Tools

April 14, 2026 — Kazim A. Naqvi & John V. Mysliwiec - Sheppard
Every time an employee pastes proprietary source code, a customer list, or a confidential business strategy into ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini, they may be quietly dismantling the legal protections that make those secrets worth protecting. Courts and regulators are only beginning to grapple with this problem, and right now, the burden of preventing it falls squarely on employers. The Legal Stakes Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”) as adopted across most states, a trade secret plaintiff must show that the information at issue was subject to reasonable measures to maintain its secrecy. Courts have historically credited measures like confidentiality agreements, physical access controls, and employee training—but those safeguards were designed for a world of thumb drives and disgruntled employees. They were not built for a world where a well-meaning engineer can, in seconds, transmit an entire corpus of proprietary data to a third-party AI platform operating under terms of service that may permit the provider to use inputs for model training. Reprinted courtesy of Kazim A. Naqvi, Sheppard and John V. Mysliwiec, Sheppard Mr. Naqvi may be contacted at knaqvi@sheppard.com Mr. Mysliwiec may be contacted at jmysliwiec@sheppard.com Read the full story...

Amended Again?! Critical Changes to RPAPL § 881: What New York Contractors and Construction Managers Need to Know

March 10, 2026 — Mark A. Snyder & David Polazzi - Peckar & Abramson, P.C.
Recent amendments to New York’s RPAPL § 881 will significantly change how project teams obtain and maintain access to adjoining properties for construction-related work. The 2025 amendment signed into law by Governor Hochul, and the newly enacted 2026 revisions, will directly impact general contractors (GCs) and construction managers (CMs), as well as their trade contractors who regularly confront neighbor‑access, support‑of‑excavation, and protection‑of‑adjoining‑property challenges. Although we do not advise that GCs and CMs get involved in the “weeds” of license agreements or the prosecution of an action to obtain access pursuant to an RPAPL § 881 action, which are typically owner responsibilities, GCs and CMs should understand the change in law, as there may be circumstances where they are responsible for securing access. This alert outlines the key statutory changes and explains the operational, scheduling, insurance, and risk‑management implications for the New York construction industry. Reprinted courtesy of Mark A. Snyder, Peckar & Abramson, P.C. and David Polazzi, Peckar & Abramson, P.C. Mr. Snyder may be contacted at msnyder@pecklaw.com Mr. Polazzi may be contacted at dpolazzi@pecklaw.com Read the full story...

Protect Your Projects By Identifying and Controlling Hidden Contract Risks

March 10, 2026 — Larry Borda & Daniel Lund III - JD Supra
In a recent webinar entitled “Spreading the Risk and Avoiding Killer Contract Clauses,” Phelps lawyers Daniel Lund and Larry Borda examined contractual provisions that most often expose construction professionals to unexpected financial and legal risk. While construction contracts may appear routine, each contract serves as the primary mechanism for managing, allocating, and mitigating risk among parties involved in complex projects—often valued in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. When parties fail to fully understand the terms they sign, costly and avoidable consequences frequently follow. Contracts as Risk-Transfer Instruments Construction contracts are the primary method for transferring risk. While contracts authorize work and define scope, they also allocate responsibility for the risks inherent in construction projects. Some may imagine a world where a one-page agreement and a set of plans would suffice. In reality, modern construction requires detailed agreements—particularly provisions designed to anticipate problems, distribute burdens and reduce disputes. Reprinted courtesy of Larry Borda, Phelps and Daniel Lund III, Phelps Mr. Borda may be contacted at larry.borda@phelps.com Mr. Lund may be contacted at daniel.lund@phelps.com Read the full story...

HARPERS FERRY IOWA CONSTRUCTION EXPERT WITNESS DIRECTORY AND CAPABILITIES