Image courtesy of Berkeley Research Group Related Links: Probabilistic Risk Analysis Generates Big Returns Construction CPM Trends: 4D BIM Claims Taking Off Virtual design tools are a real growth trend for illustrating delay claims in construction, say contractors and practitioners—with good reason.For one, adding a project's CPM schedules to the finished project's 3D building information model to create a 4D BIM as-built model is a much easier way to tell a complex construction story to a lay audience—and build a delay claim. That's in addition to the obvious perk of improving scheduling and optimizing site layouts, among other benefits."I call

With the theme of  "Optimizing Design with BIM," the BIMForum carried into its Spring gathering in Boston a goal of "shining a light on design and engineering and showcase the best examples of collaboration, optimization and sustainability."

Related Links: Robots on the Jobsite Advancing in Construction Can a Robot Do Your Job? It Depends Within five to 10 years, a majority of construction workers will be interacting with real-time data on projects and deploying wearable, pervasive computing devices on jobsites, according to a survey of ENR readers.But readers are split on how much of a difference in productivity will result from all that real-time data and gadgetry.The survey went out to about 54,000 subscribers of ENR's FutureTech newsletter in early March and garnered 317 replies, three-quarters of which completed all the questions. (The results were unveiled on

Photo courtesy of Manhard Consulting Donald Willemarck, director of technology at Manhard Consulting, is looking forward to cutting the servers he maintains in his main office as a Nasuni customer. Related Links: Cloud-Integrated Storage Adds In-House Encryption BIM-in-The-Cloud Has New Competition With Newforma New distributed workforce collaboration systems rising in the AEC market are making an end run around crippling latency and bandwidth issues suffered by users sharing work on huge building-information-modeling file sets. They are doing it with hybrid systems of local and cloud servers, along with synchronization schemes that give everyone the speed of working locally, even among

Photo courtesy of Balfour Beatty U.S. Despite the large national footprint of the U.S. division, Balfour Beatty's "success will come through every one of the firm's local businesses," says Layman. Photo courtesy of Balfour Beatty U.S., copyright Aerial Photography Inc. The firm is part of the joint venture upgrading the 2-million-sq-ft, 862-bed Parkland Hospital, a test bed for innovation. (function(){ var aid=(KitCloudAPI.parseQueryStringWithDefault("asset",2095923)); var width = "300"; var height = "180"; var uuid = "g7jdx5x7"; var swfURL = "http%3A//appassets.kickstatic.com/compiled/mediasuite_3187/AppShell_g7jdx5x7.swf"; var jsonURL = "https%3A//player.piksel.com/templates/AppStudio/CustomPlayer/3/1/3187/g7jdx5x7/g7jdx5x7.json"; var autoPlay = "false"; var deliveryType = "protocol_rtmp"; var htmlvars = 'mediaSuiteURL=http://player.piksel.com/ws/get_asset_project/asset/'+aid+'/'+deliveryType+'/api_f4d84551-2e85-103a-a1ba-00e08655b9fc/apiv_3.5/gft_0/'+aid+'.xml&autoPlay='+autoPlay+'&revision=1&scaleMODE=letterbox&width='+width+'&height='+height+'&getEmbed=http%3A//player.piksel.com/ws/get_single_asset_embed/a_'+aid+'/p_'+uuid+'/h_'+height+'/w_'+width+'/ap_'+autoPlay+'/dt_'+deliveryType+'&src='+swfURL; var flashvars ={ mediaSuiteURL:"http%3A//player.piksel.com/ws/get_asset_project/asset/"+aid+"/"+deliveryType+"/api_f4d84551-2e85-103a-a1ba-00e08655b9fc/apiv_3.5/gft_0/"+aid+".xml", autoPlay:autoPlay, revision:"1",

Why the Best CPM Schedulers Don't Rely on Software (All That Much) Readers of technology trends in construction are well aware that building information modeling software tools are moving from 3D to 4D in terms of merging project schedule data with a 3D model to create a 4D schedule with animation. These tools are becoming more common on mid-sized and even smaller projects of $25 million or less, experts and BIM providers say.It's also gaining in dispute claims and claims resolution, according to an expert in scheduling and construction litigation."

Related Links: U.K.s BIM Mandate Driving Major Shift in Digital Tools Adoption Advancing 3D Printing Capabilities Excite Construction Leaders 2013: A Year of Better BIM Collaboration on Jobsites ENR's Construction Science Fiction Collection He’s often called Autodesk’s thought-leader, a futurist about global construction trends, a big ideas man, probably unfailingly polite and, as of late, a construction science fiction author. (See ENR's Imagining Construction's Future collection.)Dominic Thasarathar, a directory of strategy at the design and collaboration software provider, would chuckle at the titles, given that the Londoner still thinks of himself as a technology manager from his days with firms

Photo from Autodesk University Holder Construction works with Autodesk Navisworks and other modeling tools to create 3D plans for site layout and logistics planning. This example is one part of a model designed to plan the work layout for an airport project. Slide courtesy of Turner Construction from Autodesk University Example of a metric that the Turner BIM team came up with to track their rate of effectiveness on clash detection with 3D models. Related Links: UK's BIM Mandate Driving Major Shift in Digital Tools Bentley: BIM Also Means Information Mobility Autodesk University 2013 BIM Presentation by Tyler Goss and

Related Links: Imagining Construction's Future: ENR's Science Fiction Collection FutureTech Event Program The theme may have been "Imagining Construction's Future" at ENR's Nov. 7 FutureTech conference in New York City, but, for many panelists and attendees, what once seemed like tomorrow's technology is used on many projects today—and driving innovation."It's a fascinating time to be in our industry," said Matt Harris, a senior vice president with Viewpoint Software. "It's astonishing how cheap and scalable things are becoming, from a cloud [computing] environment." Although it's early in the era of mobility in construction, many firms are looking at real-time sensing data

Related Links: Contractors See Gains, Gaps With Growth of Mobility Tools To Rent or Buy AEC Software Tools? Vendors Add More Choices Bentley Press Release UK Government Strategy, BIM Mandate Latest Bentley App Brings Geospatial Data to the Field Bentley Picks Up Ivaras Asset Performance Management Tools Data integration with building-information-modeling tools and cloud services is accelerating across the United Kingdom, thanks to the government's mandate that all public projects use BIM, including handover data for asset management, by 2016.For Bentley Systems, which counts some 36% of its annual revenue from its customers in the European, Middle East and African