Bottom: PHoto courtesy of Lantronix, TOP: Photo courtesy of Air Burners Inc. Good FIT Air Burners Inc. puts QR codes on new equipment to get manuals, and sends out stickers for old rigs, too. At all hours, the staff at Air Burners Inc., Palm City, Fla., answers phone calls and e-mails about maintenance and repair questions from operators of the company's waste processing units around the world.The company's air-curtain burners cost up to $150,000 and are used in rugged environments such as landfills, construction sites and military operational zones—which leads to a problem. "They're usually far from where the manuals
Rendering Courtesy of Cornell University The Cornell-Technion team will receive a 99-year lease and $100 million in city funding to help with building and related costs of the campus. New York City is on its way to becoming the "world's capital of technological innovation" with the selection of Cornell University and its partner Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a state-of-the-art applied sciences campus, says NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Cornell-Technion team's proposal for an 11-acre, $2-billion-plus campus on Roosevelt Island beat out several other proposals under the mayor's Applied Sciences NYC initiative, which aims to boost the city's global
Related Links: LightSquared's Press Release LightSquared Faces Critics, Floats GPS Plan Changes GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix The ongoing fight over the future of LightSquared's plans to build a broadband satellite network using GPS spectrum entered a new phase this week.The Reston, Va.-based LightSquared filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 20, seeking a declaratory ruling on whether it can make use of the spectrum it has been licensed for its proposed 4G LTE broadband network.The network plans would occupy frequencies adjacent to those used by most of the GPS receivers currently in use. GPS
Related Links: Make Way for App Builders in Construction Top Paid and Free Construction Apps Tablets Take Off in Construction Even though tablets and smart phones are spreading onto jobsites at a swift pace in construction, chief financial officers from major A/E/C firms say technology purchases must come with solid returns on investment as part of that adoption. This was one of many technology issues highlighted during the two-day ENR FutureTech conference held by McGraw-Hill Construction in San Francisco this week.Two panel discussions, "Chief Information Officer Roundtable" and "IT from the CFO Perspective," on Dec. 13 reinforced the industry-wide movement
Related Links: Software Roundup: Make Way for App Builders in Construction MWH Global Spin-Off Innovyze Leads With 'Wet' Infrastructure Apps Top Paid and Free Construction Apps As part of its ongoing review of productivity apps for construction professionals, ENR reached out to its readers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends and other social network users for their favorite construction and productivity apps.Listed here are some of the apps that came through ENR's social graph, including some apps from engineering students at George Mason University.Although by no means complete, this latest review will be published and updated online on at ENR.com/technology/social_media with the
GRAPH COURTESY OF CURT A survey conducted by a committee of young professionals in the Construction Users Roundtable offers a profile of technology use, adoption and attitudes across four age groups in the industry, suggesting strong engagement among the youngest but also the oldest, with a sag in the middle.The results of the 30-question survey, conducted by CURT's Young Professionals Committee, are being analyzed. A report will be available on the CURT website soon, but a peek at the data is provocative.Of 304 respondents, the largest number, 110 (36%) came from the cohort 51 years old or older. The second
By ENR Art Dept. Whats in your app? ENR asked developers of construction apps for tablets and smart phones what features are most desired and requested in field management and productivity. Related Links: Top 10 Construction Apps by ENR Readers Top Paid and Free Construction Apps MWH Global Spin-Off Innovyze Leads With 'Wet' Infrastructure Apps Tablets Take Off in Construction iPad App: Learning Curve for All Ages Tablet adoption is exploding on construction sites. Amid the blast radius of that adoption, a new generation of applications is following, many designed by construction firms using in-house teams or partnering with vendors."It's
Related Links: Software Roundup: Make Way for App Builders in Construction Top 10 Construction Apps by ENR Readers MWH Global Spin-Off Innovyze Leads With 'Wet' Infrastructure Apps ENR asked Apple to query its developer community in a quest to help idenfity the most popular construction apps in the App Store.It was a tricky call.Although plenty of apps are considered useful in the A/E/C realm, Apple doesn't have a specific A/E/C category as it does for business and productivity. But it's fair to say that these are among the more noted amid a rise in construction industry apps, and our list
The digital native generation—people born since about 1985—grew up immersed in digital technologies. They are now starting to become dominant in the employee and consumer pool and as those in older generations seek to maximize their interactions with them, it is important understand their values.Five observations about the mindset of digital natives will help employers harness their distinct worldview to achieve business objectives.Observation 1: Digital natives live publicly online.Businesses must address the expectations of a generation raised in the social networking world; one that routinely shares the details of activities and opinions online with potentially limitless groups of people.How to
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
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