Viewpoint

RSS

Related Links: Practical Wisdom: Blog Post by Sharpe and Schwartz Ingenuity is an integral aspect of engineering. In fact, "ingenuity" and "engineering" are linked etymologically. However, it seems to me the latitude for engineers to inject imagination and creativity into their work has been steadily diminishing. Why is this happening? Greek philosophers recognized three distinct knowledge categories:"epistime," knowing that something is the case; "techne," knowing how to achieve a predefined outcome; and "phronesis," knowing how to act in a contextually sensitive, appropriate way.The first survives today in terms like "epistemic" (of or having to do with knowledge) and "epistemology" (the

Image Courtesy The Lego Movie Related Links: Bridginess: More of the Civil Engineering Life, by Brian Brenner, P.E. The Lego Movie The idea of making an entire movie about Lego toy building blocks seemed far-fetched and a bald-faced marketing ploy. It didn't appear to have much of a chance at success. Who would watch it? And after a movie about Legos, what next? Maybe a movie about toothpaste ("The Colgate Movie") or toaster ovens? With the expectation bar set pretty low, the reviews came in.Rotten Tomatoes, a website with aggregated movie ratings, reported the reviews to be 96% positive. For

Related Links: New Corps Commander Taking Stock Lt. Gen. Bob Flowers, who commanded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 2000 to 2004 and is now retired, tells a humorous anecdote about a Mississippi landowner in the mid-1990s who was especially impatient about a future flood-protection project. Flowers was commander of the Mississippi Valley Division and agreed to meet with him."We had just received authorization for the project, and I told him I would request an appropriation of $28 million, which would allow the Corps to proceed," he said. "The gentleman then reached in his pocket, pulled out his checkbook

Related Links: Some Insurance Exclusions May Surprise Contractors Hotel Razing and Defects Trial Could Be Best Shows in Vegas For years, some state courts and insurance companies have been telling contractors that the construction defect claims they face aren't covered by their insurance because faulty work is not an "accident" that insurance is intended to guard against. This situation is rapidly changing, however, as more and more courts are concluding that defective construction is an "accident." This has opened the way for these claims to be covered by insurance.There are four questions that must be answered to determine if a

Related Links: Amtrak Chief Declares Highway Trust Fund 'Dead' Barely a month into the new year, several industry trade groups and no less than three widely read construction publications, including ENR, have sent up smoke signals that the battle over one of the most significant threats in decades facing the U.S. transportation design and construction market already is finished.Even more alarming, the white flag is being waved before we have had a serious fight.RUANEI am referring, specifically, to the reauthorization of the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) and the crisis facing the federal Highway Trust

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: House Bill Would Hike Gas Tax Over Three Years Since the 1950s, America's infrastructure development and maintenance program has depended in great part on an end-user tax on fuel. More efficient auto and heavy-truck fuel consumption, combined with an ever-enlarging and aging infrastructure system, have brought us to the limit of the end-user fuel tax as a sole source of revenue. The public has little appetite for increasing the end-user sales tax to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. Although industry and government have pushed new sources of financing and tried to cut costs, little real progress will be

One of the hot topics in the industry right now is predictive analytics. Clients are asking:  “Is this a trend? Is this a paradigm? Should I be concerned about this or doing something?” The answer is: The practice of Predictive Analytics is here to stay and is important for the engineering and construction industry. Predictive analytics is the next generation of analytics. Data makes up the building blocks for analytics. But instead of using data analytics to make sense of the past — to understand what we’ve done and what trends we can pick out from our past behavior —