Related Links: NY Tech Meetup FieldLens I am not sure when a meetup becomes an institution, but a 10-year-old monthly gathering of tech heads in New York City called NY Tech Meetup has definitely crossed the bar. It has more than 40,000 members and claims to be the largest tech meetup group in the world.Every session I have attended has had more attendees than the previous one, although the format remains the same; three batches of three presenters describing their breakout tech inventions and then answering questions from the audience, plus one bonus presentation to mix things up.The audiences are
Related Links: BuildingReports A new service leverages quick-response (QR) code technology to give workers instant access to historical compliance data for a facility's building systems."We saw a need to eliminate the paperwork still associated with life-safety work in a facility," says Jason Kronz, president and chief technology officer for Building- Reports, Atlanta, the building safety-compliance firm that developed the QR service LiveArchive.When used with a mobile device such as an iPhone or Android, LiveArchive allows inspectors, managers, owners and emergency responders to scan a QR code to access an equipment report for up-to-date, historical data on fire, life-safety, security and
Image Courtesy of Softree Softree Optimal ingests laser scanning, soil composition and the cost of cutting and filling dirt in various topographies and soil types to compute the path of least resistance (shown in red) for infrastructure projects such as roads, railways and pipelines. Related Links: VIDEO: SoftreeOptimal in Five Minutes A new corridor-based, infrastructure-alignment software product aims to automate optimal vertical alignment work by using topography data to compute the path of least resistance.Developed in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, Softree Optimal, created by Softree Technical Systems Inc., Vancouver, B.C., finds the lowest-cost vertical alignment for infrastructure
Photo Courtesy of kcstreetcar.org In Kansas City, streetcar project teams are using PDF collaboration software by Bluebeam and mobile devices to coordinate relocation of utilities' systems. Related Links: iPads and Tech Support: Time Saved Vs. Time Spent Bluebeam, Citrix Tie-Up Extends Desktop Power to Tablet Apps It has been only a couple of years since Kansas Dept. of Transportation (KDOT) engineers began using online storage for plans and project files. Washington state DOT just last year launched a website that publicly displays its projects' status and data. Until recently, the Iowa Dept. of Transportation did not have tools such as
Related Links: Roxbury Landfill Greenlight Portal At Fenimore Landfill in Roxbury, N.J., where rotting debris is blamed for the release of dangerous amounts of hydrogen sulfide, real-time monitoring is providing a warning system for nearby residents should the releases spike, as well as valuable data to those evaluating solutions.Emilcott Technology Inc. has developed a system of real-time air monitoring, called Greenlight, which integrates cloud computing to make the data publicly available online instantly. It is currently deployed at the Fenimore Landfill.Bruce Groves, president of Emilcott, says the monitoring system is the first of it’s kind.“It’s really the future of detection,”
The latest in a series of reports about concerns over construction defects in the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge suspension span involves cracked welds in the girders that form the span’s roadway. Others that have emerged include suspect foundation concrete, rusted tendons in the skyway that connects the suspension span to Oakland, broken anchor rods, and corrosion on the main cable. Many of the issues were first reported by The Sacramento Bee.As a “fracture critical” structure, in which some vital structural elements lack redundancy or backup, the bridge would seem to be a perfect candidate for an installed system for structural
Related Links: Box Inc's Full Report A new report from a cloud service provider illustrates how the construction industry communicates.“We thought the software industry would be highest in terms of mobility, but we were floored when we saw the trends of construction,” says Stephanie Hagio, a strategic project lead at Box Inc., Los Altos, Calif., a cloud content-management service.Construction proved to be both the most mobile and the most externally collaborative of the five industries included in the study: software, media and entertainment, manufacturing, financial services and construction. Measuring communication data from 300 of its customers, Box monitored data-sharing devices,
Courtesy of BP Drone weighs 13.5 lbs and can stay aloft for three hours. Related Links: FAA Appeals Drone Ruling as Use Soars FAA Drone Information Page The Federal Aviation Administration’s recent approval of BP’s flights of a commercial unmanned aircraft system (UAS), or drone, over northern Alaska, which began on June 8, is a step toward legalizing commercial UAS flights elsewhere in the nation. Until now, legal commercial use of UAS over land has been restricted to the military, law enforcement and scientists engaged in research and development.FAA spokesman Les Dorr says the agency is talking to commercial industries
Related Links: 3D RFIs, Collaboration With BlueBeam's Latest Revu 10 Contractors Go High-Tech for Daytona Racetrack Rebuild PDF mark-up tool maker Bluebeam and virtualization software provider Citrix are on a mission to reduce the amount of paper that is often chased on major projects. Their latest partnership could do more of that and help users collaborate across different platforms with more ease.The companies say they have integrated Citrix's ShareFile cloud storage service with Bluebeam's Revu iPad app. It works like this: After files are synced with Revu for the iPad, ShareFile users work on project PDFs using Revu's Bluebeam Studio,
PHOTO Courtesy of Michigan State University Nizar Lajnef installs a battery-less, vibration-powered sensor to record asphalt cracking, creating a data time line of its breakdown. Related Links: How Sensors on I-10 Twin Span Bridge Reduce Unknowns Bridge Owners Toolbox: Sensors, Gauges, Radars, Models Researchers are testing novel infrastructure-monitoring sensors on roads. The new sensors are powered by passing vehicles.The test could address a major flaw in sensors that are embedded to monitor degradation of infrastructure: They lose power, says Nizar Lajnef, assistant professor of civil and environment engineering at Michigan State University."Battery-powered sensors last only two to three years, max,"
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