Private nonresidential construction spending decreased 1.6 percent for the month, but is up 14.5 percent year over year. Public nonresidential construction spending fell 1.7 percent for the month and is down 0.7 percent compared to February 2011.

Twelve of the sixteen nonresidential construction subsectors experienced decreases in spending for the month, including amusement and recreation, down 3.9 percent; lodging, 3.2 percent lower; water supply, down 2.8 percent; highway and street, down 2.7 percent; and commercial, 2.6 percent lower. Subsectors posting the largest decreases in year-over-year spending include conservation and development, down 24.6 percent; lodging, 9.4 percent lower; religious, down 9.4 percent; water supply, down 7 percent; and transportation, down 5.5 percent.

In contrast, four of the sixteen nonresidential construction subsectors posted increases for the month, including religious, up 2.7 percent; manufacturing, 2.2 percent higher; public safety, up 0.9 percent; and sewage and waste disposal, up 0.5 percent. Eight subsectors have experienced gains in spending during the past twelve months, including manufacturing, up 40.3 percent; power, 22.1 percent higher; public safety, up 11.4 percent; health care, 7.7 percent higher; and commercial, up 5 percent.

Residential construction spending was unchanged for the month and is 4.6 percent higher compared to the same time last year. Overall, total construction spending – which includes both nonresidential and residential – was down 1.1 percent in for the month, but is 5.8 percent higher than February 2011.

“The Obama Administration is committed to bringing more good transportation choices to cities like Fort Collins so that hard-working families, students and seniors have affordable access to jobs, school, medical appointments and all the city’s downtown attractions,” LaHood said in a press statement. “This MAX BRT service is an excellent investment in Fort Collins’ future economic growth and sustainability.”

The Mason Corridor is a five-mile, north-south byway from Cherry Street to south of Harmony Road. It combines the MAX BRT corridor with a bicycle and pedestrian trail. The Corridor will help create opportunities for new mixed-use and transit oriented developments that avoid sprawl and enhance sustainability and livability.  Nearly two-thirds of area jobs are located within a half-mile of the corridor, which includes Colorado State University and its veterinary teaching hospital, the federal Natural Resource Research Laboratory Headquarters, and local government offices.

“This is a great example of modern bus rapid transit done right, offering thousands of riders a convenient, efficient ride from Cherry Street on the North end to the new South Transit Center,” said Administrator Rogoff. “It’s a reliable and desirable way to travel—and helps people keep more money in their wallets instead of paying it at the gas pump.”

The BRT is also expected to help revitalize the downtown shopping district by improving access to the area. To that end, a new university student housing center and a third new apartment building are under construction, and developers are purchasing land along the Corridor for future commercial and residential projects.

In addition to the agreement signed today, the Federal Transit Administration is also making almost $3.9 million available for the project through its Bus and Bus Facilities grant program. These funds supplement about $11 million awarded in FY2010 for project planning and related work, bringing the total federal commitment to about $69.4 million, or roughly 80 percent of the total project. The City of Fort Collins, the Colorado Department of Transportation, Colorado State University, and the Downtown Development Authority are contributing the remaining funds toward the $87 million BRT project

Ritchie Bros. says it intends to continue to grow AssetNation‘s core business as well as to leverage its e-commerce expertise and technology platform to develop and launch unique new services for equipment owners whose buying and selling preferences may not be met by the company’s live unreserved auctions.

“We are very pleased to have completed the acquisition of AssetNation and are excited to be working together with their team to develop and launch new business solutions to help the world’s builders easily and confidently exchange equipment,” said Peter Blake, CEO of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, in a May 16 press release. “We remain strongly dedicated to our core unreserved auction business and see many years of growth in front of us in this segment of the market. We also see a clear opportunity to create complementary compelling solutions to expand our addressable market significantly by appealing to a new market segment we have not traditionally reached with our unreserved auctions.”

The acquisition closed on May 15, 2012 for all cash consideration of about $64 million. AssetNation was purchased from the controlling shareholder Spire Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm.

In all, the 32 new projects will mean mobility improvements for dozens of Georgia communities, according to the GDOT.

With these awards, Georgia DOT has started 242 new construction projects valued at nearly $756 million in Fiscal Year 2012 with two months still remaining.

GDOT Commissioner Keith Golden says that many of the projects awarded are expensive, large-scale improvements to major interstatehighways and other major arteries. Other projects are smaller jobs on less-traveled city streets and county roads.

However, each project, “regardless of its size or cost, represents an important enhancement to the safety, growth or maintenance of Georgia’s transportation network,” Golden says.

The largest single project of the 32 announced today is for the construction of a new Interstate I-75 interchange at Union Grove Road south of Calhoun in Gordon County. The $16.8-million job will be done by Sunbelt Structures, Inc., of Tucker, and should be finished in September, 2014.

Also awarded was a contract for the replacement of the closed Broad Avenue Bridge in Albany. PCL Civil Constructors Inc., of Tampa, FL, will replace the Flint River span for $11.9 million; the new bridge to open in July, 2015.

Other projects include the following:Widening two miles of State Route 347 near Interstate Highway 985 and Lake Lanier in Hall County; $11.6 million; C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., Inc., of Marietta; $3.7 million for widening and bridge joints repair on seven miles of Buford Highway/SR 13 from Spring Street in Fulton County to the Dekalb County line; also C.W. Matthews; and, The replacement of the decorative canopy fencing on the 17th Street Bridge above Interstates 75/85 (the Downtown Connector) in Atlanta; $1.4 million; Massana Construction, Inc., of Tyrone, Ga.

Groundbreaking for the new cable-stayed bridge is expected in early 2013, approximately 48 years after ground was broken for the original through-arch bridge. The existing Gerald Desmond Bridge, which connects the Port of Long Beach and the city’s downtown business district, was not designed to manage the traffic load that is carries today. The new bridge will be wider, with emergency lanes, and have a higher clearance for cargo ships.

The bridge, which is being built under a design-build contract, will be the first cable-stayed vehicular bridge in the state of California, with 200 feet of vertical clearance, 45 more than the original structure. It will feature two towers approximately 500 feet high and will be 2,000 feet long, with the main span about 1,000 feet from tower to tower. Construction will include approaches, ramps and connectors to Ocean Boulevard and the I-710 Long Beach Freeway.  Once the new bridge is completed, the existing structure will be demolished.

Parsons Brinckerhoff is responsible for program management, construction management, utilities coordination, specialty materials testing, submittals management, surveying, community outreach, project controls and document control, cost estimating and scheduling, funding and grants support, and traffic engineering.

Adjusted net earnings is a non-GAAP financial measure and is defined below. The company’s auction revenues for the first quarter of 2012 grew 14 percent to $101.3 million compared to $88.5 million for the same period in 2011. The company conducted 38 unreserved industrial auctions in nine countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Central America and Australia during the first quarter of 2012. All dollar amounts are in U.S. dollars.

Gross auction proceeds and auction revenues
For the three months ended March 31, 2012, gross auction proceeds were $865 million, 2-percent higher than the same period in 2011.Gross auction proceeds is a non-GAAP financial measure and is defined below. The company’s auction revenue rate (auction revenues as a percentage of gross auction proceeds) was 11.71 percent during the three months ended March 31, 2012 compared to 10.39 percent in the same period in 2011. The Company’s revised fee structure, which came into effect on July 1, 2011, contributed $10.8 million to auction revenues for the first quarter of 2012. The company’s at-risk business, comprised of guarantee and purchase contracts, represented 29 percent of gross auction proceeds in the first quarter of 2012 (2011: 32 percent).

Net earnings for the quarter

Summary comments
“We are pleased to have achieved record first quarter gross auction proceeds and auction revenues during the first quarter; our performance was in line with our plans,” said Peter Blake, Ritchie Bros. CEO, in a press release. “During the quarter we saw strong equipment pricing at our auctions and competition remained intense for good quality, low hour used equipment. This was reflected in our at risk business, which remained above historic levels. We saw improving optimism among our customers and ongoing original equipment manufacturer backlogs have created pent up demand for new and near new equipment, driving strength in the used equipment market. We remain confident that our performance for 2012 is on track with our plans.”

Blake continued: “Our strategic initiatives are also progressing well as we continue our efforts to develop innovative solutions to enable the world’s builders to exchange equipment easily and confidently. In the first quarter we completed a key strategic initiative, our organizational realignment, and we are already seeing the positive results of this.”

Quarterly dividend
The company also announces the declaration of a quarterly cash dividend of $0.1125 per common share payable on June 8, 2012 to shareholders of record on May 18, 2012.

Online bidding statistics
Ritchie Bros. sold over $275 million of equipment, trucks and other assets to online bidders during the first quarter of 2012, representing a 23-percent increase compared to the same period in 2011 (first quarter of 2011: approximately $223 million). Internet bidders continued to comprise more than 50 percent of the total bidder registrations at Ritchie Bros. industrial auctions during the first quarter of 2012. Since launching its real-time online bidding service in 2002, the Company has now sold more than $5.5 billion worth of trucks, equipment, and other assets to online bidders, confirming Ritchie Bros.’ position as the world’s largest seller of used equipment and trucks to online buyers.

Website statistics
The Ritchie Bros. website attracted roughly 1.3 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2012, a 30-percent increase compared to the same period last year. Unique non-English speaking visitors increased 30-percent in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the first quarter of 2011.

“We achieved the upper range of our guidance for the quarter, even though we experienced some weather and pricing challenges,” said Terry D. Hildestad, president and chief executive officer of MDU Resources, said in a press release. “That is a good indication of the strength of our diversified business and a solid base on which to continue building our estimated $3.7 billion capital growth program over the next five years.

“Our exploration and production business is well on the way toward its 2012 target of increasing oil production by 20 percent to 30 percent over last year,” he said in the press releasse. “Led primarily by growth at Fidelity’s Bakken operations, overall oil production increased to approximately 10,500 barrels per day in the first quarter, a 19 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.”

Fidelity currently is operating 10 rigs, eight more than a year ago. Five are working in the Bakken, where the company holds approximately 124,000 net leasehold acres, including an additional 27,000 Richland County acres that were acquired earlier in the first quarter. The company plans to invest nearly 40 percent of its $400 million capital budget in its Bakken acreage this year.

Hildestad said that Fidelity is seeing some improvement in Bakken wellhead oil pricing spreads compared to WTI prices. The price spread widened in March and negatively affected first quarter earnings but narrowed in April, and forecasts indicate continued improvement throughout 2012. Fidelity also was affected by average realized natural gas prices that were 32 percent lower than the first quarter of 2011.

“In addition, we are excited about the recently announced significant appraisal well results in the Paradox Basin where we own 75,000 net leasehold acres,” Hildestad said. “The potential of this play appears substantial. The Cane Creek Unit No. 26-2H well was tested at a stabilized rate of 647 barrels of oil per day and 561 thousand cubic feet of natural gas per day following two weeks of production. These results are based on a significantly restricted flow allowing our team to properly manage production operations, gather performance data and minimize natural gas flaring.”

ABC reports that nonresidential fixed investment in equipment and software increased 1.7 percent for the quarter after a 7.5 percent increase in the previous quarter. Overall, nonresidential fixed investment fell 2.1 percent in the first quarter of 2012 following a revised 5.2 percent increase in the previous quarter, according to ABC’s April 27 Construction Economic Update report.

ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu says that this GDP release shows that nonresidential construction momentum stalled during 2012’s initial quarter. In addition, Basu notes that output was down substantially in a number of key economic segments, apparent in the 12 percent decline in nonresidential fixed investment in structures.However, he says, because the economy has improved since last September, the expectation is that nonresidential construction data will be more upbeat during the months ahead.

“Overall, today’s report was disappointing,” Basu says in his analysis in the Construction Economic Update. “The consensus forecast had called for 2.5 percent GDP growth during the first quarter on an annualized basis, but the actual figure came in at 2.2 percent, and much of the disappointment showed up in the nonresidential construction category.”

Basu notes that this GDP report “extends the string of negative data releases for nonresidential construction activity in America” and that previous releases showed declines in employment, backlog, and construction spending.

“Overall, today’s report was disappointing,” Basu says in his analysis. “The consensus forecast had called for 2.5 percent GDP growth during the first quarter on an annualized basis, but the actual figure came in at 2.2 percent, and much of the disappointment showed up in the nonresidential construction category.”

April 2012 Price Producer Index (PPI) data are scheduled to be released on May 11, 2012, at 8:30 a.m. ET, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.