CONTECH Construction Products Inc., is expanding its national sales force, adding 40 new employees "to respond to rapidly growing geographic market gains as well as new business opportunities." The company expects to have new employees in place and trained in preparation for several new product launches in 2008.

Following acceptance into Bentley Systems’ Developer Network, First Trace, Inc., began work on an add-in to provide Microstation users with comprehensive engineering document and data management capabilities. This cooperative relationship will allow Microstation users to automate document management, design change tracking, and task and process management, as well as provide unified data management to distributed enterprises.

Hydro International plans to expand its service portfolio to offer maintenance contracts for its stormwater control implementations. Hydro reached a deal to subcontract its stormwater maintenance support services to Drainage Protection Systems of Murietta, Calif.

Structural Preservation Systems opened a new location serving Long Island, N.Y. The Long Island office will provide several repair and strengthening services for Long Island and New York City projects, including parking garage repair and waterproofing, plaza deck repair and waterproofing, concrete repair, structural strengthening, façade restoration, and geotechnical services.

Propex Geosynthetics reached an agreement with NAUE GmbH & Co. KG to be the exclusive distributor for Secugrid and Combigrid biaxial geogrids in the United States effective Jan. 1, 2008. As the exclusive distributor of NAUE biaxial geogrids, Propex will be responsible for all sales and marketing of these products in the United States, including inventory of products, generating specifications, and providing installation assistance.

VRTX Technologies was awarded a conservation grant by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to study the potential water savings from cooling water blowdown used for landscape irrigation. The grant will fund a study at Pomerado Hospital in Poway, Calif. After the installation of the VRTX system, daily fresh water consumption is expected to be reduced by nearly 25 percent, resulting in an annual savings of more than 2.2 million gallons. To further reduce fresh water consumption and wastewater discharge, Pomerado Hospital intends to use blowdown water from the cooling system for landscape irrigation.