ENR New York held its annual Regional Best Projects breakfast on Nov. 15 at The Lighthouse on Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers. The event recognized team members who worked on projects located in New Jersey or New York that received  the following honors: Best Project or award of merit in their respective categories; 2021 Project of the Year; and Project of the Year Finalists.

Pictured are members of various project teams as ENR’s publisher, Scott Seltz, seen at the top of the photo, addresses the audience. After a networking coffee hour and breakfast, attendees also viewed videos of the winning projects and posed for photos with award plaques and crystals.

ENR New York’s regional Best Projects contest opens every spring. Keep abreast of submission details, as well as of other events and surveys, by signing up for the regional newsletter. Please visit: https://www.enr.com/newsletters.

Photo courtesy New York Dept. of Buildings

The New York City Dept. of Buildings on Nov. 18 announced five winning ideas from its second annual Hack the Building Code Innovation Challenge, launched in partnership with the NYC Economic Development Corp. and the Urban Tech Hub @ Company Ventures.

The winners, featured during a remote online event, were:

• Future Insight and AoRa Development together developed a digital platform that can expedite building permit approvals using BIM drawings that can be checked automatically against building codes and development regulations. AoRa co-founder and managing partner Aundre Oldacre is pictured top row, second from right; Future Insight founder and chief creative officer Rick Klooster appears in the third row, right.
• SafeRise, whose founder and CEO Darrin Porch is seen in the second row, far right, created a lockable steel barrier that can prevent worker and material falls in elevators and other shaftways.
• Noya CEO and co-founder Josh Santos, pictured in the bottom row, middle, touts a new direct air capture technology for retrofitting existing cooling towers to capture carbon emissions from HVAC systems.
• Kwant.ai, which is an interactive network of smart badges, sensors and cellphone alerts to track construction workers’ locations as well as any falls or hazards, stores and displays compliance documentation and collects data for predictive analytics.
• SiteSafety, a construction safety management company proposed that the city require horizontal safety netting to be installed every 30 ft in shaftway openings on active construction sites.

Commenting on benefits of the challenge event,  NYC Buildings Commissioner Melanie E. La Rocca told viewers that it “is a reminder that we should never stop striving to think of ways to improve our industry.” She shared a video box with First Deputy Commissioner Gus Sirakis, shown top left, during the event.