This week’s cover story on “The New Guard”—how technology is changing the security equation at construction sites—was written by three of ENR’s “millennial” staff members. As millennials, they are digital natives who can’t remember being alive before computers. Each of them has an affinity for writing about technology.
The team was led by ENR’s multi-media editor, Luke Abaffy, who creates many of the videos you have watched on ENR.com. He also has been active in technology coverage, writing news stories about software, research and mobile apps. “When I got the assignment for this story, I wanted to find a construction project with the highest security possible where the team would describe the technology,” Abaffy says. That idea led him to the 2012 London Olympics project team. “Even two years after completion, they still had many fine points under wraps,” he notes.
Abaffy, 26, came to ENR as an intern from Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism, where he majored in magazine journalism. After his freshman year, he spent two years in Los Angeles working on commercials and short films before returning to OU to finish his degree. In 2010, we hired him. He thinks technology can increase construction’s productivity and decrease downtime through automation. “The story gives some good examples of that,” he adds.
Abaffy pulled in two colleagues to collaborate. In her “Big Brother? Workers React to Monitoring” sidebar, Carolina Worrell, 28, discusses whether new security tech is an invasion of privacy. She says security measures have become so commonplace on the jobsite, they are now as familiar as the security protocols of the Manhattan building that headquarters ENR. Worrell joined ENR’s New York regional-edition staff in 2011.
Jeff Rubenstone, 29, became ENR’s product news editor in February. In his “Tracking Gear on the Jobsite, Big and Small” sidebar, he explores how remote security can manage assets. “Technology use on the jobsite is only going to grow, so manufacturers want to be sure they are adding something useful,” he notes.
