Sometimes even a popular place needs a makeover. Clearwater, one of the
most visited beach destinations in America, is getting one right now.
PLUS: Florida communities rank well in a new analysis of top U.S.
headquarters locations.
Since 2010, the real estate investment and redevelopment unit of Hilco
Global has been transforming industrial properties into repurposed
centers of commerce.
If workplace injury and illness rates play a role in your company’s site
selection matrix, then data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics in November can be useful. The Survey of Occupational
Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) revealed that private industry employers
reported 2.6 million nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses in 2021,
a decrease of 1.8% from 2020. The incidence rate of total recordable
cases (TRC) in private industry was 2.7 cases per 100 full-time
equivalent (FTE) workers, unchanged from 2020. The maps above and below
show which states led in total recordable cases and in rate of
recordable cases per 100 FTEs.
As one might expect, the decline was due to a drop in illness cases,
respiratory illness in particular. The BLS said there was a 37.1%
decrease in employer-reported respiratory illness cases in 2021 at
269,600, down from 428,700 in 2020. “In 2019, there were 127,200 illness
cases and 10,800 respiratory illness cases,” the agency said by way of
comparison. Meanwhile, total reported injury cases increased by 6.% to
2.2 million cases in 2021, up from 2.1 million cases in 2020.
The largest increase in cases came in retail trade and in transportation
and warehousing. Despite having a decrease in cases, however, the health
care and social assistance sector had the highest rate of respiratory
illnesses in 2021 with 99.2 cases per 10,000 FTE workers. “This rate,
however, is 52.7% lower than in 2020 when the rate was 209.8 cases per
10,000 FTE workers,” the BLS said.
Click here to access a full range of BLS charts
and infographics related to workplace injuries and illnesses in private
industry. The Sustainability Rankings in the July 2023 issue of Site Selection will include
data from the Fitwel certification standard for healthy buildings. —
Adam Bruns
You can access all 208 pages of the May issue now. Inside
you’ll find the Global Best to Invest and Prosperity Cup rankings, as
well as the recipients of Mac Conway Awards for Excellence in Economic
Development. See which projects made the list of Top Deals of 2022. Read
industry reports on the North American automotive scene and global
health tech and life science project trends. Hear one leader’s candid
perspectives on tribal economic development. Gain an understanding of
why Asian investment into the U.S. is climbing from our partners at
Tractus and on what’s driving or blocking economic development in Latin
America from our friends at Deloitte. Take notes on the importance of
shovel-ready sites to one company’s major site selection process. Learn
what’s driving project activity in Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Kentucky,
Colorado and Utah, as well as in the Northeast and New England. Dive
into the Costa Rica Investment Report and Iowa Intelligence Report. And
in the latest Site Selection Investment Profiles, get the lowdown on
opportunities involving Consumers Energy in Michigan; San Joaquin
County, California; Portugal; Hilco Redevelopment Partners; Indiana
Municipal Power Agency; and Salt River Project in Arizona.
PROJECT WATCH
Portugal
German tire manufacturer Continental opened its new Solution Center in
Lousado, Portugal, in April, next to its tire plant. The company has
enlisted specialists from the fields of IT, AI and applied analytics,
e-commerce and industrial engineering to provide “global support for the
digitalization of tire solutions, production processes and business
workflows at the Continental Tires group sector.” The center’s 80
employees are part of a global team of various IT specialists and
related functions whose number is to be doubled by 2026. Pedro Carreira,
head of the Continental tire plant in Lousado and one of the board
members of the Solution Center, noted that “the nearby universities of
Porto and Braga are ideal for the recruitment of highly skilled new
employees.” Now in Portugal for more than 30 years, Continental is one
of the biggest employers in the region and Portugal’s fourth largest
exporter.
Thales in April announced that it will develop a new National Digital
Excellence Centre in the Cyber Centre at Fredericton’s Knowledge Park to
strengthen its cybersecurity capabilities in industrial systems. It is
the second digital hub of the Group in addition to the NDEC based in
Ebbw Vale in Wales. NDECs are R&D facilities that “enable small- and
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro-enterprises to test and
develop digital transformation projects alongside large corporations,”
Thales explained. “They are places of innovation to develop major
technological breakthroughs.” This NDEC, projected to contribute up to
$63 million in direct provincial GDP over a five-year period, is being
established in partnership with the University of New Brunswick’s
McKenna Institute and local economic development agency Ignite, with
support from Opportunities New Brunswick (ONB) and from the Government
of Canada, through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). “New
Brunswick is an ideal place for Thales to invest and grow in Canada,
where we are among the Top 100 corporate R&D investors,” said Chris
Pogue, CEO, Thales Canada, in thanking all parties. “Together, we will
collaborate across a talent-rich innovation value chain — educational
institutions, academia, start-ups, small- and medium-sized businesses,
industry and governments — to develop the cyber technologies,
capabilities and resilience Canada needs to build a future we can all
trust.”
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) Board
of Directors this week approved the
organization’s 2023 Top Research Priorities,
beginning with one that anyone driving the nation’s
Interstates will recognize: Expanding Truck Parking
at Public Rest Areas. “The lack of available
truck parking is perennially ranked by drivers as their top
concern,” the ATRI said in a release. “This research will
identify and map truck driver needs to rest stop attributes,
develop best practice case studies and utilize truck driver
data to identify strategies for expanding truck parking
capacity available at public rest areas.”
Other priorities include identifying barriers to entry for
female truck drivers (less than 10% of the truck driver
workforce); examining the diesel technician shortage; and
the cost of driver detention.
In March, the American Trucking Associations applauded the introduction of the Truck
Parking Safety Improvement Act by U.S. Senators
Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in the U.S.
Senate and Representatives Mike Bost (R-Ill.) and Angie
Craig (D-Minn.) in the U.S. House of Representatives. The
bipartisan legislation would authorize $755 million in
competitive grant funding to expand commercial truck parking
capacity across the United States.
PHOTO OF THE
DAY
Photo courtesy of EUMETSAT/ESA
The European Space Agency this week released the
first image of the full Earth disc from the Meteosat Third Generation
Imager, which the agency said reveals “a level of detail about the
weather over Europe and Africa not previously possible from 36,000 km.
above Earth.” The higher-resolution images (including this one taken on
March 18) provided by the instruments on board give weather forecasters
“more information about the clouds cloaking much of Europe and visible
in the equatorial region of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Sand and
sediment in the waters off Italy are also visible, as well as dust or
smog being carried from south Asia.”
