I have finished reading the ENR cover story, “Ten Electronic Technologies That Changed Construction,” and wanted to send my congratulations to the multiple authors for accurately capturing the state of technology in our industry today (ENR 6/21 p. 24).

It is always a difficult task to capture all the details of any subject, let alone such a personal subject like technology. What one person cannot live without, another could care less about. Being that CAD may be critical to one group in our industry, another group may think that using Internet tools is a higher priority. Given the diverse and complex nature of our industry, writing about technology and its usage in an industry context is a formidable task to say the least. This cover story does the best job that I have read in a while of providing a synopsis, taking the temperature if you will, of our industry’s true use of technology. I will begin to use it as a baseline.

Hopefully continued coverage like this will provide the continued growth of our industry’s less mature technologies like Web-based Project Management, Interactive, Holographic Environments and Multi-Enterprise Workflow solutions to warrant their own sections in the future.

PAUL DOHERTY, AIA
Executive Vice President and CIO
TMG Real Estate Technology
A Division of The McLain Group
San Diego, Calif.

CM Works

Scotland’s auditor general may feel that construction management is not an appropriate strategy for public projects but public owners in the U.S. have had a very different experience (ENR 7/19 p. 16).

The U.S. General Services Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Postal Service and innumerable state and local agencies are among the public owners who have benefited from relying on professional construction management. Schools, transit systems, airports, water and wastewater systems, and other projects are all being completed more quickly, safely, and smoothly thanks to CM.
GSA, possibly the world’s largest manager of construction projects, strongly encourages its own personnel to pursue CM accreditation and recognizes this designation as a positive factor in evaluating project bidders.

The fact is, public agencies that may build infrequently have great difficulty in maintaining adequate construction expertise in their permanent professional staffs. In such a setting, professional CM can make a major contribution to saving taxpayer money and achieving the best possible project outcomes.

The United States may be leading the rest of the world in applying CM right now, but its value surely will be recognized worldwide as it continues to perform and achieve for public owners everywhere.

BRUCE D'AGOSTINO, CAE
Executive Director
Construction Management Association of America
McLean, Va.