The film and construction industries have a common production model. Both work on projects that have an overall vision from the owner (or executive producer) and onboard highly experienced contractors to complete a difficult project in a short amount of time.
A proposed standard to create smart facilities supporting smart grids, written by ASHRAE and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, is open for public review until Oct. 6. ASHRAE/NEMA Standard 201P, Facility Smart Grid Information Model would provide a common basis for electrical energy consumers to describe, manage and communicate about electrical energy consumptions and forecasts.The 201P also is being considered for adoption as an international standard through the International Organization for Standardization. In addition, the standard coordinates with and uses content from the International Electrotechnical Commission’s Common Information Model (CIM) standards. It also coordinates with the North American Energy Standards
Courtesy Remix Remix is an app that delivers forward-looking public transportation bus routes. This detailed look at a possible plan for Oakland, Calif., includes total cost, number of buses and separate bus lines. What began as a hackathon program that allowed users to design their own fantasy bus routes recently grew into a real-world, transit-planning application called Remix. The users are now mostly departments-of-transportation workers, and the lines they're designing are helping save time and money on real transit routes."We have been using Remix to help us develop maps that show proposed routes and service scenarios," says Vanessa Rauschenberger, director of
Change Readiness is the means of understanding and increasing the likelihood of innovation adoption by stakeholders in the capital projects industry. Research from Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of Kansas (KU) shows that even when a compelling innovative solution is implemented, there is 70% likelihood that by the time a fifth project is executed, the innovation will have been forgotten and practices will revert to what was as been done in the past. The implications of this finding help explain the slow evolution of the capital projects industry. Fiatech is addressing this problem. The first step in the process
A recent ENR survey of design firms, general contractors and subcontractors included two questions about technology. One asked what percentage of revenue the firms invest in research and development, and the other asked how the respondents feel about their data security. The responses suggest there might be a correlation.Overall, of 208 executives who responded to the questions, 42% say they spend less than half a percent on R&D. Take the investment up to just under 1% and 14% more join the club. Add another half percent investment and the group expands another 10% before dropping back to a 6% increase
Related Links: Bentley Adds Cloud Support to Its Design Software With Connect Vendors Serving Construction Comment on Cyber Security Concerns Today The world’s largest cloud-services company is offering $250,000 in prizes to local governments that enter and win its cloud-computing competition. The competition is open to entries until August 21 from any municipality in the world. In its "City on a Cloud" competition last year, Seattle-based Amazon Web Services Inc. gave away Amazon cloud credits to eight winners that harnessed cloud computing in a new or innovative way. This year it will do the same. The eight winners are grouped in
Photo Courtesy of NRCS Arkansas' 116-ft-tall Lake Alma Dam impounds 8,000 acre-ft of water. Since construction in 1970, the community has flourished below it. Graphic Courtesy of DamWatch A national view of DamWatch shows alerts blooming as storms move through the Midwest in late June. Each flag is tagged to facility specific data. Related Links: DamWatch The precurser to DamWatch, ScourWatch Hartford, Conn.-based USEngineering Solutions unveiled on June 23 a national system to detect incidents that could imperil nearly 12,000 dams across the country. It integrates multiple data streams, including sensors and national seismic and meteorologic data, to issue alerts
Related Links: Bitdefender Box Keeping a network secure on a large corporate scale is a full-time job for a team of IT security professionals. But when running a busy network for a small business or offsite office, there often isn't the space or money for that level of security management.Bitdefender, a firm best known for its antivirus software, is getting into the hardware game with Box, a stand-alone network gateway that scans all incoming and outgoing internet traffic for suspicious activity. Unlike a firewall, the Box does more than allow or deny internet activity; it actively scans network traffic for
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