Nashville’s recent development boom has sparked worries among construction industry leaders about a looming worker shortage.

With teens being pushed toward college and older workers entering retirement, many construction companies, such as Nashville’s Shaub Construction Co., are finding that there are not enough skilled workers to fill the positions available.

“We are pursuing skilled carpenters and knowledgeable superintendents,” said Bic Parma, vice president of Shaub Construction. “We place ads, but many of the candidates we see simply do not have the experience that we need.”

For full story found on The Tennessean click here.

A Travis County grand jury indicted G&M Construction and Glenda Gail Miller Howell on workers’ compensation fraud-related charges, according to Texas Mutual Insurance Company. For full story found on Claims Journal click here.

As you may have heard, the Heartbleed Bug is causing panic as it has recently been discovered that 80% of websites that were thought to be secured, have in fact been vulnerable for over two years. The amount of possible information theft is staggering. Rest assured, your proqualverified.net site has never been vulnerable to this bug, as we use a different cryptographic software library and have TLS disabled. Unfortunately, we can not say the same for websites you’ve visited, so please take a look at the following links to get more information.

http://www.heartbleed.com
http://arstechnica.com
http://money.cnn.com

Information on ProQual’s security can be found here.

Regards,
The ProQual Team

ENGINEERING NEWS RECORD.  The U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration on Dec. 19 cited two Texas contractors with eight serious violations and proposed $46,800 in fines, following the June collapse of a structure in an $80-million equestrian center under construction at Texas A&M University that injured four workers. For link to full story CLICK HERE.

Pleasant Prairie, WI (PRWEB) January 02, 2014

Building off the successful launch of the heralded Pantera Project Insight, an end-to-end construction project management platform, Pantera Global Technology is pleased to announce the acceleration of the deployment of their Risk Management Portfolio of services. “We noticed companies like Textura (TXTR) and ISQFT and their offerings and realized there was an opportunity there” said President and CEO DeWayne Adamson. Mr. Adamson goes on to state that “We have key pieces that our competition simply doesn’t have already incorporated within our existing solutions. This technology puts Pantera in a unique position to offer a complete package to help reduce risk for our customers.”

The expansion into risk management was aided by a partnership between Pantera and ProQual Verified, a Texas based Subcontractor due diligence firm with outstanding risk management expertise. President and COO Karen Herrera-Adamson, no relation to DeWayne, mentioned that working together with Pantera was a “no-brainer”, adding “Mr. Adamson and his team have built a unique foundation of rock solid solutions and demonstrated profitability. By working together we are building an unparalleled Risk Management offering; facilitating major risk reduction across the industry.”

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

CHICAGO—Two defendants who were convicted at trial earlier this year were sentenced today to federal prison for fraudulently running a sham minority-owned cable television installation business that obtained $8.3 million in subcontracts from a cable company that serves residents on the city’s north side. The defendants, Guy Potter and Matthew Giovenco, neither a minority, actually controlled and operated the now-defunct ICS Cable Inc., which they and others fraudulently disguised as a minority-owned business to obtain city-mandated minority sub-contracts under the lakefront cable franchise held by RCN Telecom Services of Illinois LLC.  For full story click here.