Image Courtesy Openroute Inc. OpenRoute's wireless signal repeaters, housed in "yellow Pelican cases" for durability, can be strapped onto anything, from cranes to pillars. Image Courtesy Openroute Inc. As a building rises, repeaters are added, one by one, around the site to ensure continued wireless connectivity and scalability to reach every level of the evolving building. Related Links: OpenSource's Website Two Ways to Quickly Connect to a Remote Jobsite A new hardware system allows a jobsite's wireless signal to grow with construction. Called OpenRoute, it functions as a series of synchronized wireless signal repeaters, strategically placed and moved around the

Courtesy UC Berkeley Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley create a wearable device that maps a building's geometry and energy heat map. What began as a reconnaissance project for the military, developed into a new, wearable device, scheduled for field testing this summer, which quickly maps the three-dimensional geometry and energy efficiency of buildings.“Our focus was to recover the floor plans of a building in one walkthrough,” says Avideh Zakhor, professor of electrical engineering at the University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif., whose research began as a Department of Defense project in 2007, with the goal of creating a

Photo Courtesy of Sumitomo Mitsui Construction With digital, high-definition cameras and LED lightsevery one blinking in a unique, identifiable patternresearchers can achieve automated, highly accurate, 3D positioning data day and night. Related Links: Haruyama and Nagamoto's White Paper Details the System Video: LED Technology Today Six years after a Japanese construction company deployed a light-emitting-diode surveying system to collect continuous, three-dimensional positioning readings, researchers say the technology is now cheaper, easy-to-operate and an automated version of total station systems. It also performs in the dark or light 24 hours a day.The work is the brainchild of Shinichiro Haruyama, professor at

By Tom Sawyer Attendees at ENR's FutureTech conference gained a deeper appreciation of the technology shifts that are changing the character of the built world as the needs of the occupants change. Related Links: Construction Tech Companies Forecast a Cloudy Future Exploring the Future of Construction Through Science-Fiction Stories It is axiomatic that accurate forecasting should build on an understanding of the past and, particularly, of the economic drivers that shape the way we live, work and produce, said Paul D. Saffo, a technology forecaster, in a keynote presentation at ENR's FutureTech conference in San Francisco on March 19. "As

Related Links: Electronic Stability Control System Rule State DOTs Focus on MAP-21 Policy Changes, and Next Transport Bill Under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), the Federal Highway Administration's is promoting state-of-the-art technology, such as 3D modeling, by awarding up to 5% additional federal project funding to state transportation departments that use the technology. Other programs under the law require state departments of transportation to have an approved highway asset management plan in place."Using innovative technology can take the project from 95% to 100% federal funding," says Steven Stanfill, business development manager, civil engineering, Autodesk

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

A fleet-tracking company's new plug-and-play vehicle-monitoring device delivers detailed engine-use and driver-behavior reports to a cloud server and at lower costs than the competition.“I’ve seen a 25% increase in labor productivity and a 25% decrease in fuel consumption since using the device,” says Chris Parisis, president of CG Appliances, San Francisco. He says he chose Azuga’s G2 vehicle-tracking technology because it was plug-and-play.“A lot of our workers lease trucks. [Using the G2] we don’t have to spend $750 installing a vehicle-monitoring device on every one,” he says. The device plugs into a vehicle’s OBDII port under the steering column and

Some 1,500 photographers submitted images for the Year in Construction issue. Although we could not publish them in the magazine, we want to be honor as many as possible that judges selected for publication. This slideshow displays all the photos of the runners-up from the Year in Construction issue that clearly deserve exposure and show the work that goes on behind the camera, as well as in front of it. 

Zak Kostura This 4,000-lb stainless-steel structure, called Sky Reflector-Net, will help orient passengers as they walk through the Metropolitan Transportation Authoritys Fulton Center, its refurbished transit hub in lower Manhattan. The determination to capture a perfect image is on display in the work of the participants in ENR’s 2013 Images: The Year in Construction Photo Contest. From squeezing into a tiny aluminum cart strung across the Colorado River Gorge to dangling in a lift basket high above a fabrication yard, these photographers show what it takes to get a great shot. This year, ENR is awarding cover photographer Thiel Harryman