We are experiencing a quiet, insidious crisis—one that will not receive much attention until it is too late to mitigate the impacts.

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

Two years ago, I reported that the construction industry was dead last in IT spend as a percent of revenue compared to 14 other industries as reported by Gartner Research.Now, Gartner has broadened the construction industry category to include materials and natural resources, but the results are the same.In 2013, IT spend was 1% as a percent of revenue, 1.2% as a percent of operating expenses, and last on both measures compared to the 19 other industries surveyed. Gartner also put Construction in one of 12 industries where revenue is growing faster than IT spend, implying that it is unlikely

Related Links: Fiatech's Three Year Strategic Plan Cyber Security Executive Order Fiatech, an industry group made up of stakeholders who want to transform the world's infrastructure through technology innovation, has adopted a three-year strategic plan to ensure its research is well-targeted and valuable to members.The plan follows a 16-month study by a strategic-direction member committee composed of 24 industry-leading owners, manufacturers, AEC firms and academic institutions from around the world. Retired Dow Chemical Co. executive Jerry Gipson led the endeavor.Fiatech has been engaged in a systematic process of identifying issues and setting goals and strategies for implementing technology innovation since

Enormous amounts of data about projects in development can be analyzed through a browser-based search customized for the user's role in the industry, geographic area of interest and project type. Related Links: Dodge Global Network Dodge International McGraw Hill Construction's Dodge Global Network, a suite of information resources built on a database of current project leads and detailed project information, is completing transition of its subscribers to a new technology platform. The user interface coincides with the release of several new features. Early feedback indicates the system is now more useful and user-friendly.The transformation is due to a shift from

Related Links: Ventev Outdoor Power Solutions Water Enviornment Award of Merit SCADA For years, large supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems have suffered from an annoyingly simple vulnerability: backup batteries in radio-signal extenders can die, causing a loss of communication. One large utility says a new monitoring device from Ventev Wireless Infrastructure solves the issue.The SCADA for Southern Co.'s electrical grid is a series of devices that sends signals to each other via radio, says Bob Cheney, team leader for the power-delivery test lab at the utility, based in Atlanta. If two of these devices, called "preferred sources," are

image courtesy of D-Link Little monster The DIR-510L router has an Ethernet port and two USB ports to charge devices and transfer data. Related Links: Wiki entry on 802.11ac D-link's 510L wireless router and charger Terms such as "256 QAM," "MU-MIMO" and "beamforming" might sound like jargon out of a "Star Trek" episode, but they are new tech capabilities to boost wireless router speeds. They are hitting the market in the wake of the new WiFi standard called 802.11ac by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association and the emergence, in January, of the first Wave 2 devices

Related Links: Intel's Smart Bowl Announcement The Magnetyze System Juicebar SunBar As construction users increasingly take up mobile devices, battery drain is becoming a drag. Fortunately, innovators are on it. Here are a few neat items that impress ENR as being particularly promising or useful right now, including one from Intel unveiled at the Consumer Electronic Show in January.Click to begin the slide show.

Photo by Tom Sawyer I-Search has an unambiguous interface. If you know your engineering, it is easy to use. Related Links: AISC Offers Win, Place or Show Cash for App Design Contest I-Search American Institute of Steel Construction steel tools Structural engineers often are asked to judge the adequacy of a beam or column under present loads or potential loads of a contemplated modification. This typically requires field measurements and a trip to the office to check references. Now, there is an Android app for making quick calls on the spot.Kip Ping, president of Pinnacle Engineering, Cincinnati, Ohio, developed the

Related Links: University at Buffalo's Bridge Engineering Program National Center for Pavement Preservation Two U.S. engineering schools have opened research centers to help bring the nation's infrastructure up to technological speed, but also to train a rising cadre of engineers."Innovation" and "professional development" are bywords at the new $3.7-million Institute for Bridge Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo."There's not a particularly fat pipeline of bridge engineers," says Andrew Whittaker, director of structural and environmental engineering.He says the institute aims to attract talent and develop strategies to help bridges resist natural and man-made hazards outside current design