Halliburton Co. will buy Baker Hughes Inc. for about $35 billion in cash and stock, Reuters is reporting.

The combined entity could challenge oilfield services market leader Schlumberger as customers begin to cut spending due to falling oil prices.

Halliburton expressed confidence that the deal would clear regulatory hurdles, but Baker Hughes shares were trading well below the offer, suggesting that investors were not so sure.

Reuters reports that Halliburton also said it was ready to divest businesses that generate revenue of $7.5 billion to satisfy regulators and would pay Baker Hughes $3.5 billion if the deal was not cleared.

Read the story.

Engineering News-Record presents a complimentary on-demand webinar designed to provide a roadmap for arriving at a high-performance building team capable of the collaboration and innovation necessary to compete.

“Help has arrived for building teams that are itching to collaborate using conventional project delivery models—and contracts—rather than risk-and-reward-sharing integrated project delivery,” Engineering News-Record says on it website.

Speakers in the webinar are contributors to a new e-book titled “Advanced Integrated Practice: Create a Culture of Deep Collaboration,” published recently by the Alliance for Construction Excellence.

Speakers will describe all of the features, principles and practices necessary to implement AIP on projects.  They will lay out the somewhat intimidating changes in corporate culture required to fully implement AIP.  For this, they will offer techniques to use to immediately to manage scope, cost, schedule, quality and safety.  They will also present tools to prepare for enhanced performance.

Register for the on-demand webinar.

Baker Tilly will present a free webinar to help participants better understanding construction contract controls and construction audit best practices.

The webinar will be Wednesday, Nov. 12, beginning at noon Eastern time.

On its website, Baker Tilly says all construction contracts have general conditions provisions. These are project terms that govern how project management costs, mobilization, site clean-up, information technology, and other project support costs are budgeted and billed. Analyzing these contract terms enables the construction contract auditor to build the project audit program and contribute to on time, under budget project delivery.

This case study presentation will illustrate to webinar participants typical general conditions terms, contract red flags, and risk mitigating recommendations.

Register for the webinar.

Baker Tilly has posted a free on-demand webinar on how to assess a unit priced construction contract for project risk and develop an audit program for unit priced projects.

Tony Ollman is presenter for the webinar.

The topics include risk analysis, audit plan development, red flags and case studies.

The goal of the webinar, according to the firm, is to help participants learn to recognize when to use unit price contracts, to learn how to identify unit price contract risk, and to understand the primary audit plan elements to minimize risk.

Watch the on-demand webinar and see the presentation slides.

Baker Tilly has posted an on-demand webinar on strategies and approaches to participating in and performing continuous monitoring of active construction projects.

The complimentary webinar discusses risky areas of the construction process including change order control, pricing, and scope, as well as progress reporting, project controls, contract accounting, business ethics compliance, document compliance, and design, plan, and specifications compliance.

On its website, Baker Tilly says the goal of the webinar is to learn new ideas to help integrate construction auditing techniques into your audit plan such that they become a routine part of your organization’s control oversight process.

Panelists are Tony Ollmann, Director, Baker Tilly, and Erik Schuchardt, manager.

Watch the on-demand webinar.