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
Recent rendering of one of LightSquared's satellites Related Links: GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix FCC Announces Comment Period for TWG GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix The gloves are off in a standoff between the U.S. Global Positioning System industry and a satellite communications vendor seeking to light up a broadband satellite and terrestrial network to blanket the country.GPS interests say plans for the satellite and terrestrial voice and data network with 40,000 base stations will operate too close to GPS on the spectrum and cause damaging interference to the entire system. They accuse the vendor of
Construction industry players and other major users of precision Global Position Systems (GPS) say a new report released by an industry working group today confirms that a wireless broadband network proposed by LightSquared would cause major harm to most GPS equipment in use around the globe. Rendering of LightSquared's latest satellite. Related Links: FCC Announces Comment Period for TWG Report Save Our GPS Coalition Press Releases LightSquared's Press Release Efforts 'To Save Our GPS' Heat up in Congress The group also rejected a three-pronged proposal put forth by Reston, Va-based LightSquared, which it says would mitigate any interference the company's
Construction industry players and other major users of precision Global Position Systems (GPS) say a new report released by an industry working group today confirms that a wireless broadband network proposed by LightSquared would cause major harm to most GPS equipment in use around the globe.
A fight over a 4G network and competitor to the Global Positioning System is heating up in Washington, as a coalition that includes major construction industry groups and heavy-equipment manufacturers is trying to block a move by LightSquared, Reston, Va., to launch a wireless broadband network. An industry group called the Coalition to Save Our GPS contends that the LightSquared plan would involve building some 40,000 ground stations and create interference with the existing GPS signals, which would disrupt systems such as high-precision GPS used in dredging operations in U.S. ports, as well as GPS that is used to guide
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