To select the next class of ENR Newsmakers, our editors searched the magazine’s web and print pages for individuals who had served the “best interests of the construction industry and the public” in 2017.
In 2015, Stephen Muck was sitting in a Carnegie Mellon University seminar on robotics, and he could not stop thinking about how the technology might benefit the construction industry, which suffers from a labor shortage, especially for backbreaking work like tying rebar.
Containing debris and providing a safe worksite were the key goals of the Despe Top-Down demolition system, a self- contained, six-story metal cocoon that can hydraulically lower itself around a tower as the structure is demolished floor by floor.