Category: Construction
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Skender’s Modular Revolution: An Interview with Angela Spadoni
I had the pleasure of interviewing architect Angela Spadoni, the director of residential architecture at Skender. On this podcast episode, we discuss how the company is taking the industry forward with modular construction. Skender is one of Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2019”. Last year, the Chicago-based construction, design and manufacturing firm launched…
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Will Superusers Future-Proof the AEC Industry?
Design professionals who leverage tools and technology and, at the same time, have people skills, are essential to the future of the industry. They are Superusers, the protagonists of the latest book by Randy Deutsch. Randy Deutsch is an architect, educator, workshop leader, writer, and international keynote speaker. I had a chance to interview him…
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Locating Construction Equipment with IoT and Mobile Technology
It can take hours, or even days, to find a specific scissor lift on a large construction site – multiply that with hundreds of machines on the site and, then, you grasp the scale of the dilemma. Three companies joined forces to test an IoT solution that could fix the problem, cost-efficiently. Ramirent is a…
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Plehat Brings Natural Environments into Design Tools
Natural elements are an essential part of the built environment. However, BIM tools offer almost no support to landscape architecture. Plehat is introducing a new solution that helps architects and decision-makers to understand the dynamics of nature and make smart design choices. Plehat used photogrammetric 3D models of Uunisaari islands, to the south of Helsinki.…
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Plehat Brings Natural Environments into Design Tools
Natural elements are an essential part of the built environment. However, BIM tools offer almost no support to landscape architecture. Plehat is introducing a new solution that helps architects and decision-makers to understand the dynamics of nature and make smart design choices. Plehat used photogrammetric 3D models of Uunisaari islands, to the south of Helsinki.…
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Make Construction Contracts as Snappy Videos
Construction is a series of big and small contracts. A startup has developed a tool that allows you to make proposals and contracts in one minute with a smartphone. Tomas Westerholm “The concept dates back to 2013. We built an app that could show the same image on two smartphones simultaneously. One of the users…
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Testing Robotic Cleanup on a Construction Site
A group of people had gathered at a construction site in Vantaa, Finland, on February 25, 2019. On the floor of a large room, a robot was blinking lights, apparently waiting for instructions on what to do next. This was the first test of an industry-grade cleaning robot for construction sites. The test was the…
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Will International Standardization Make Data Flow in the Built Environment?
Some see standards as hindrances to development; others think the opposite is true. A Finnish strategy project argues that complying with international digital standards would both improve productivity and open up new business opportunities for built environment stakeholders. In early 2018, the Finnish Ministry of the Environment launched a project to devise a national strategy…
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Skender named one of “The World’s Most Innovative Companies”
Skender, a vertically integrated design, construction, and manufacturing firm based in Chicago, has been named to Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2019”. This year, more than three dozen editors, reporters, and contributors sought out the most notable innovations of the year in 35 industries and across every region of the world. They considered…
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Visionary and Disruptive – An Interview with Roger Nickells of BuroHappold
In this interview, Roger Nickells, Partner at BuroHappold Engineering, talks about the challenges and emerging opportunities of the built environment design and engineering. Roger is a serial engineer, and until recently CEO of the global engineering partnership, BuroHappold. He led the firm beyond the design of structures to the design of performance environments. “Engineering” at BuroHappold…