Buckland & Taylor

One of my favorite weekly columns is Creating in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal.  Each week the columan profiles an individual in a creative or innovative endeavor.  About half the profiles are of engineers (the WSJ should publish a book with the best profiles).  Put Creating on your reading list.

This past week covered bridge engineer Murray Johnson of Buckland & Taylor.  Mr. Johnson excels at the art and science of truss sliding - - a process described in the article as " performing open-heart surgery on the runner while he's running a marathon."

This is a great observation from the article, especially in the context of our fixation with a paperless profession and industry:

"Mr. Johnson goes through a lot of paper, drafting thousands of pages of calculations, drawings and diagrams."

Link to the article in the Journal - - Feats of Bridge-Building Bravura.

MEMCOR CP Membrane Water Filtration System

 Siemens' pressurized pre-engineered MEMCOR CP Membrane Water Filtration System - - Link.

Additional information on the membrane/filtration markets - - Link.

A Paragraph to Ponder

I found this interesting in a book review (Nature's Fortune by Mark Tercek and Jonathan Adams) in the April 4, 2013 issue of the Financial Times:

"Heavily water-dependent Coca-Cola, for instance, has vowed that by 2020, it will return to communities as much water as it uses to make its beverages.  Pepsi says it will put back more water than it uses."

It would be nice to see the water balance for a typical Coke bottling plant - - just to see how you can do this.  The key term in the goal is probably ". . . uses to make its beverages" versus the total water including that in Coke itself.

Coke does have a massive effort in responsible and sustainable water stewardship - link to excellent information about what Coke is thinking and going in the context of water sustainability.  Many companies in similar water intensive industries and water resource risk locations ought to take note of Coke's efforts in developing water vulnerability assessments at all of their locations.  These types of risk based assessments will be extremely important and insighful in the era of extreme weather events.

This is picky, but in the section on "Recycling Wastewater" - Coke presents data on 5-day "Biological Oxygen Demand."  There is no such thing as biological oxygen demand - - it is "Biochemical Oxygen Demand."

Syncro

Syncro is a software firm that is on the right track of integrating project planning, management, and scheduling into a data and visually rich environment. This will enable integrated tactical project planning, supply chain collaboration, production tracking, and improving resource utilization.  The integration of 5D with the era of big data with graphical visualization with simulation animation will be key on many of our complex projects.  Construction is rapidly starting to look and be managed in the fashion typically associated with the Toyota Production System.

 

 

From their website:

 

Our advanced 4D/5D application delivers traditional project scheduling and controls reporting, custom 4D animation and advanced AVI production. Our database enables advanced systems integration, reusable project and component libraries, and support for the ever increasing data in the BIM model to enterprise data management envisioned by the industry. Synchro is unique in its ability to enable full round trip data synchronization (Import, Export, Synchronize To and From) to facilitate work flows for both upstream and downstream delivery processes. If that isn’t enough, Synchro is also leading the industry with 4D spatial coordination for static and dynamic analysis and conflict resolution.

 

Synchro Ltd brings award-winning, 4D BIM software to construction companies globally for building, civil infrastructure, roads, bridges, healthcare, high-rise towers, industrial process, oil and gas, alternative energy and mining. Among our 300 customers are 32 of the Top 50 Contractors in the USA, 50 of the Top 225 in the world producing great results and over 100 Universities are researching and teaching construction today. Start your evaluation today and your journey into the future of construction project delivery.

 

For construction project delivery teams around the world, Synchro Professional is the 4D visual planning system that creates amazing awareness and vision because our software is the CPM project management system that puts 3D first.

 

OpenStreetMap

The free wiki created world map project - OpenStreetMap.

MapBox

MapBox sells access to interactive street and satellite maps that may be embedded in websites and apps in the style pioneered by Microsoft and Google.

Certified Public-Private Partnership Specialist

The list of certifications is increasing - - but training/certification/experience/interest in anything P3 will have considerable value as the public and private sectors work together to close our infrastructure deficit.

Link to the certification is here.