The title is drawn from the observation of a structural engineer explaining the secret to a novel building design: essentially, it's one, mid-sized office building in Toronto that's being designed, in part, as an insert to an existing structure that has historic-preservation status (and thus, cannot be removed or visibly altered.)

A critical point to the design is the use of 35,000-lb, cast steel nodes to link together a structural steel frame.

There are a few more interesting illustrations here.

"Supporting the tower on conventional columns wasn’t an option because of the large size and number of columns that would have been required," according to the report. "What consulting engineer Stephenson Engineering Ltd. and Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co. Architects Inc. decided on instead was a series of 70-foot-tall 'delta frames,' each comprised of 1-meter-diameter, tubular steel columns shooting up through the new development’s atrium (within the four-story structure) to support the new tower."

The report quotes Carlos de Oliveira, president and principal structural engineer for Cast Connex Corporation, which designed and will supply the cast steel nodes for the project, which he observed "provide for a more rational means of meeting all the structural and architectural requirements.”

“With steel castings, you put the steel where it needs to be for the flow of forces on the structure," de Oliveira said. "You are not confined to having to build up elements from plate.” He also said the castings provide "architectural elegance."

I've written several times that the ongoing economic recovery is so unsatisfying because we continue to see high levels of unemployment, but that unemployment is a feature of the economic recovery - not a defect. See this entry, for example. The point is that the Federal Reserve Bank's and federal government's economic policies are stoking economic stability and growth for businesses, but businesses will not hire more workers because their economic forecasts indicate they cannot afford to do so.

Why is that? Because there is no recovery for consumers, and thus a cloudy forecast on businesses' revenues. Here's more evidence of the conundrum.  

“World growth will slow in 2012—the only question is by how much.” That is the abrupt and sober opening from IHS Global Insight’s chief economist Nariman Beravesh in his Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2012. We cannot blame bad news on him, but it’s still a pretty grim outlook even with its “moving in the right direction” theme:

1. The United States will probably avoid a recession.
2. The Eurozone is headed for a second dip.
3. Asia will continue to outpace the rest of the world.
4. Growth in other emerging markets will hold up, for the most part.
5. Commodity prices will (mostly) move sideways.
6. Inflation will diminish almost everywhere.
7. Monetary policy will either be on hold or ease further.
8. Fiscal policy is set to become even tighter in the United States and Europe.
9. With the exception of the Euro, the dollar will keep sliding.
10. Most of the risks to the outlook are on the downside.

Readers should follow the link to the full presentation, because Beravesh offers some brief and insightful narration to each point. If you’re like me, you’ll get the sense of someone trying to avoid acknowledging the full impact of all these trends.

If these are “trends,” then they are leading in the wrong direction. More accurately, they are not trends at all but lingering conditions, and they are generally the same conditions we have been trying to overcome since 2008.

Respondents to FM&T's annual Business Outlook Survey registered a more generally positive outlook for their own organizations – suggesting that the excruciating process of regaining financial soundness is largely completed for metalcasters.

What remains effectively unrecovered is the consumer economy (encompassing retail and housing, and much of the financial sectors), and these consumers are unlikely to regain their vitality as long as federal and state governments squeeze us harder as a consequence of their excessive spending.

 So, let’s appreciate the manufacturing recovery now, because if Beravesh is correct then the scarcity of buyers for manufactured goods may make it hard to remember that it happened at all.

On November 30 the NLRB plans to vote on a new series of rule governing procedures for initiating unionization votes at workplaces. It explains that the changes will “simplify procedures, make them more uniform across regional offices, and reduce unnecessary litigation.” Effectively, it will  establish the Employee Free Choice Act (“card check”) without the difficulty of legislative endorsement.

Employers, of course, see things differently. These new rules would put significant restrictions on employers to keep them from arguing against unionization, while expanding the union organizers’ access to workers and speeding up the process of establishing unions — unions that by that very process would be hostile or obstructive to the employer’s plans. The Wall Street Journal called the new approach “Big Labor’s version of speed dating.” 

There is no reconciling these two points of view. Employers see unions as a drain on their competitiveness; they easily cite the ordeals of Boeing or the domestic automakers, and they take every opportunity to avoid hiring union workers, notably by locating their operations in places that do not stipulate union representation as a requirement for employment. Unions and their supporters see employers, like Boeing, as the reason that union membership is down from historic highs. They interpret any financial success by these companies as income generated at their own expense, and they want regulations to restore their former influence in the private sector.

Rather than stand between these two points of view, the NLRB is trying to regulate employers into a new reality, or rather an old one – one in which resources, information, finances, competition, and consumers, are not globally relevant. No, their outlook, just as in 1935, is that all these variables are within the power of the employer to optimize. By stipulating how employers may select and maintain their workforces, the NLRB assumes all the other market inequities will be stabilized.  If everyone just played by the rules it will set, the board seems to assume, then workers would be treated fairly and employers can continue to operate, sharing their successes more equitably.

The world has changed since 1935 – and even since 1995. It will be different next year than it is now. The NLRB may succeed this week, but its new regulations won’t turn the clock back on global competition. Rather, the proposals seem likely to accelerate job relocations and raise the cost of doing business for those employers caught in NLRB’s time warp.

I screen all sorts of links related to metalcasting, but this is a novel one: first-hand accounts of the survival of foundries in an oppressed and depressed country. Most of us probably don't think much about the misery of life in Cuba since 1959, where the goods and resources — like coffee pots — can be scarce or impossible to find. Or, where engaging in an activity that is an extension of one's own skill or ingenuity — like metalcasting — can be restricted or regulated out of existence.

I've never thought about metalcasting in Cuba 'til now, but it's obvious on reflection that such a fundamental industry would survive, one way or another.  As our own economy stumbles along, as our technologies grow more refined and more mechanized, it's still impressive to note the endurance of these people and these processes. 

Having written recently about the importance of recognizing the good works of people around us, I'm glad to be able to point readers to this article about one of the recent greats of the metalcasting industry. It happens that he's a member of the FM&T Hall of Honor, too. The article is a revelation to me, and another reminder of the hard work and determination that fill a person's life. 

It causes me to realize, too, how in the present time we are too casual to ascribe a judgment to people - and very often it's one based on a particular merit or demerit that we find important. We don't pause for reflection; we don't wait for further developments.  It takes so much more, and so much more time, to know the truth about someone.

Worth noting, too, is that be valuing hard work and sacrifice we not only credit worthy people, we encourage more of the actions and achievements that make all of our lives better.
 

In a few days we'll announce who has been named to the FM&T Hall of Honor for the current year. I am always a little tense about this effort, because we want to be sure that the individuals we identify are worthy of the recognition, and of the company that is already installed in our roll of distinguished metalcasters.

As it happens though, for as long as I have been involved with this process, I have never failed to be relieved that our selection has been exceptionally worthy of the recognition — and impressed by the accomplishments each one can claim, and heartened to know that such estimable people are in our midst. The 2011 Honoree is no exception to this pattern. 

But, it seems to me that there must be dozens more such persons at work in our midst. They deserve recognition, and the metalcasting industry at large deserves to know more about the brilliance, the determination, and decency around us. 

There are a handful of folders on my desk documenting the individuals who we considered but did not add to the FM&T Hall of Honor this year. I have no doubt they are exceptional people, and might be worthy of this recognition. We will keep their records for future consideration.

But, to be frank, we need more information, and they need more support, more backing, more recognition from their friends and colleagues in order for us to understand better how valuable they have been to the industry.

And undoubtedly there are many more individuals who have escaped our attention because no one identified them for us.

The FM&T Hall of Honor has been in place for 19 years, and this year's addition brings the total enrollment to 48. A number of these are no longer living, and each time the news arrives that another of these Honorees has passed away I have to fight the impulse to wonder if the metalcasting industry can ever replace the ingenuity, the determination, and the spirit that has been lost, too.

The better, more optimistic side of me knows that there is as much talent and goodness at large in the industry now as ever there has been. But, all of us need to recognize it, and identify it. And honor it.