Normally, assessing wall thickness in a pressurized water or sewer line and main requires shutting down the line and cutting into it. But broadband electromagnetic scanning is finding increasing use as a viable, non-destructive testing alternative that does not interrupt utility service.This fall, BEM scanning contributed to a condition study of a 1970s-era force sewer main for the Metropolitan Sanitation District of Greater Cincinnati. Malcolm Pirnie, the water division of ARCADIS, Highlands Ranch, Colo., is the assessment contractor.The consultant hired InfraMetrix LLC, Tampa, Fla., to use BEM to scan select locations in the line where analysis and other tests predicted
Photo courtesy of Skanska The MEP manager on a Skanska site in Boston dropped plans for conventional lights and went to LEDs. He sees big benefits and no downsides. New product development takes money, ingenuity and patience. When the product is built around a new technology—such as light-emitting diodes—money, ingenuity and patience are needed in spades."We have learned people really need to play with it and test if for awhile before they believe you," says Daniel Lax, the 31-year-old vice president of business development for a division of his family's plastic injection molding company. In 2008, he branched out from
SOURCE: ACI 318-11 Structural concrete building code In a response to Bostons Big Dig failure, overhead, horizontal and slanted panels, installed using adhesive anchors, are included in the 2011 concrete standard for the first time. There are radical changes in the works for the concrete design standard of the American Concrete Institute. ACI committee members are about halfway through a six-year overhaul of the 502-page tome, aiming to validate its content and make it more user-friendly. It is the first major revamp in nearly 45 years.In a big departure, the 2014 edition of the ACI 318: Structural Concrete Building Code,
Physics problem or engineering challenge? Wireless networking company LightSquared argues that, with some technical engineering work, its $14-billion plan to expand wireless broad-band to millions of consumers can work without disrupting the majority of the industry's global positioning systems.But on Sept. 8, during a hearing in the House, major U.S. government agencies that rely on GPS disagreed, calling the company's plan a major physics problem that essentially would create too much signal noise in spectrum bands adjacent to sensitive GPS networks, causing widespread disruption.For example, the U.S. Geological Survey's David Applegate told the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Related Links: Tablets Take Off in Construction Nine Noteworthy Apps for Construction Pros Will tablets stick around on the jobsite? ENR Midwest Bureau Chief Tudor Van Hampton recently caught up with Houston Neal, a construction IT expert from Software Advice, about his take on the state of “the slate.” NEALQ: Are tablets tools or toys?A: Tools, especially in the field. Salespeople are using them out in the field, not only to retrieve prospect information from their CRM system but also for presentations. They can be used to scroll through slides or demo a website or software. I've heard of homebuilders
Drywall Calculator Jeremy Breaux Price: 99¢Platforms: iPhoneThis app makes relatively simple calculations even simpler. To figure out how many sheets of drywall will be necessary for a given room, all the user has to do is input the height and perimeter of the walls and the length and width of the ceiling. The tool can exclude some areas of the room and allow for slope. The app gives total drywall area in square feet and tallies the number of 4-ft-wide by variable-height sections needed. Users must enter fractions as decimal points, which one app reviewer thought preposterous. n9/11 MemorialNational
Photo courtesy Nitto Construction Co. In a departure from traditional rebound hammer designs, a test hammer developed by a Japanese construction firm has a built-in accelerometer to provide a baseline for its calculations. An electronic concrete test hammer, developed by a Japanese construction company looking to improve non-destructive testing tools, is now available in the U.S. market along with a stateside product representative.Nitto Construction Co. Ltd., Monbetsu-gun, Hokkaido, Japan, began to develop the hammer after concrete delaminated and fell in the Sanyo high-speed rail tunnel in 1999.The company was dissatisfied with testers based on the widely used rebound design developed
Image courtesy of Multivista Photographers integrate with the project team at an early stage to identify 'hot spots' in the plan and schedule. They then visit the jobsites on a regular basis to document the put-in-place work. They link the images to the plans on a web-accessible archive for the project team. A company founded by a former electrical subcontractor is successfully franchising a service to integrate digital photos with construction documents to create indexed, interactive construction databases.Multivista, Vancouver, British Columbia, sends photographers to capture project details in high-resolution images using high-end cameras and wide-angle lenses that can frame large
U.S. Dept. of Energy laboratories are finishing up work on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stimulus-funded infrastructure work that could accelerate research for breakthroughs in energy, medicine and other areas. However, transferring that research and development to the marketplace poses challenges. Image courtesy Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Electrical upgrades will help power accelerated magnetic fusion experiments at DOE's plasma physics laboratory in Princeton, N.J. The Princeton lab received nearly $14 million in stimulus funding. Photo courtesy of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Construction is nearly complete on a research building at DOEs Fermi lab in Illinois that expands R&D