Archive for category: Latest News

By Mark Coates

With survey results indicating that many businesses are still not working digitally, it’s time for construction and infrastructure professionals to ask themselves, Can machines help us think better?

It has now been seven decades since Alan Turing, the pioneer of modern computing and artificial intelligence, wrote, “I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’” Turing’s question has now been proven beyond doubt in many fields: In chess, the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat former chess grand master Garry Kasparov in 1997. In science, the HiSeq X genome-sequencing system can map tens of thousands of human genomes in a year — a task that initially took an army of scientists from 20 universities across the world more than 13 years to complete.

In the construction and infrastructure realm, professionals now need to ask these questions: “Do you believe that machines can help you to think better? Do you believe that information and data can help you to work smarter?”

What’s the Payoff?

As Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko said in the 1987 film Wall Street, “The most valuable commodity I know of is information.” Since that time, the value of information has been further amplified by an explosion of data: In the first 19 years of the 21st century, we have produced more data than in the previous 5,000 years of humankind.

The most important benefit that we derive from information is insight, which helps us make better decisions for ourselves, our businesses, and the wider world. And the resulting financial impacts can be massive: For example, a British government policy paper on data highlighted that more effective sharing of data within and between organizations can unlock GBP 149 billion of operational efficiencies, and GBP 66 billion of new business and innovation opportunities, in the UK alone.

Going digital can unlock these insights and make data the new currency. One only needs to look at the USD 110 billion of sales that Google made in 2017, or the USD 55 billion in revenue Facebook recorded in 2018, to know that it is true.

Why Do We Need to Redefine Working Practices?

Despite these compelling indicators, it seems that many people in our industry do not believe that technology can help them think better, or believe but are not acting accordingly. Bentley Systems’ survey of more than 720 business professionals across Europe, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Australasia, India, China, and Southeast Asia has shown that close to half of businesses (44.3%) have limited or no insight into company or project performance. These professionals are either not collecting data, or are collecting it manually instead of digitally.

It has never been more important for businesses — and all project delivery partners — to know what is happening on their projects. With 21st century construction projects becoming ever more complex, project partners are putting more money at stake while working to achieve tighter margins.

Making errors in project delivery can kill a business. Indeed, the results of our survey come just months after one of the British government’s largest contractors, Interserve, went bankrupt following spiralling project costs. A year earlier, the global contractor Carillion collapsed after losing GBP 470 million (USD 614 million) on contracts in the Middle East and Canada, and GBP 375 million (USD 490 million) on problem contracts in the UK.

It’s clear that the stakes are very high, yet our survey shows that many construction and infrastructure businesses across the world still do not have genuine oversight and understanding of their performance on projects, or of overall business performance. This situation needs to change, for their sake and for the industry’s sake.

We See the Value, but Are Not Able to Maximize It

While our survey has highlighted that many businesses are still not working digitally, what is heartening is that almost half of those businesses with little or no insight (45.2% of total respondents) understand the importance of collecting project data; they are just failing to make the most of it by not digitizing it. These businesses really value the importance of data, as they are investing the time to collect, collate, and report the information. However, they are taking longer by not going digital. This delay costs society: With USD 5.25 trillion a year at stake, taxpayers could be on the hook for USD 740 billion.

Collaboration is another case in point. 43.5% of respondents to our survey say that they have no capability for digital collaboration, or their information is paper-based and siloed. These companies are not realizing the full benefit of collecting this data, as they are not able to analyze and share it easily with their own organization or their project partners. They cannot properly collaborate and communicate with project partners, because they are unable to effectively share their valuable information. This system significantly impairs the productivity of a project and the project partners.

The global construction consultancy Mace estimates that in ten years’ time, the world will be spending USD 5.25 trillion on infrastructure a year. However, its analysis showed that around 80% of large projects experience cost or program overruns. Unless we can improve how we deliver infrastructure projects, Mace has calculated that taxpayers around the world could be left picking up the tab for an unexpected USD 740 billion worldwide. For taxpayers in individual countries, that translates into a cost of USD 229 billion to the United States, INR 9.1 trillion to India, AUD 59 billion to Australia, and GBP 19 billion to the UK.

To Unlock the Benefits of Digital Construction, Pick the Four Ps

Our industry has overcome many challenges to get to where it is today, including the creation of tools, industrial revolutions, and the improvement of health and safety standards. Now is time for us to work together to win the battle for the industry-wide adoption of digital construction. To help, we have created a set of guidelines — “The Four Ps” — that outline the journey construction and infrastructure businesses need to take when going digital.

Prepare for it. The single largest barrier holding us back from implementing digital construction is not the technology; rather, it’s the mindset and psychology of the people working in the industry. As Nietzsche said, “The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself.” The industry needs to challenge itself, and each one of us working in the industry must question whether our outlook and preconceptions are holding back our businesses and our industry, as well as ourselves.

The tactical objections over monetary cost, time, effort, human resources, and education can all be overcome if we are prudent and prepare our businesses for change in an orderly fashion. First of all, we must submit ourselves to the answer of the strategic question – do I believe that machines can help us think better? Once we have defeated our own objections and prepared ourselves for change, we need to prepare our businesses for going digital by defeating the objections of our colleagues and the leaders of our industry. It is crucial to get the buy-in of the entire senior leadership team to successfully instigate change.

Pilot it. Every business, and every business’s encounter with digital construction, is slightly different. To make going digital a success, first pilot the initiative among a small portion of the company on a single project, and take the time for team members to become familiar with and understand the technology.

Long-lasting, sustainable change happens slowly. Winning over a small portion of the company to new ways of working is the most effective method of enabling that change to spread throughout the organization.

Probe it. To win over advocates, we must demonstrate the benefit of going digital and probe change. We need to measure and quantify success to prove that going digital has saved team members time, made their jobs simpler, and improved their productivity.

We need to monitor and evaluate the performance of the project at frequent stages to capture progress and refine and improve our working practices. Hold open forum meetings and get people thinking collectively about the changes they are implementing; it is important for empowering team members to think and analyze how they work and to discuss whether there are any ways that they can do it better.

Showcased at Bentley’s Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference, Infraero – Empresa Brasileira de Infraestrutura Aeroportuária, an airport operator in Brazil, needed a better way to organize its data for the fourth-largest airport in southern Brazil. For this estimated BRL 330,000 project, Infraero wanted to create a digital twin that would act as a reality mesh and a central repository for all airport data, including infrastructure, buildings, building systems, facilities, and maps and management data. With the digital twin completed in 2018, Infraero saw maintenance cost savings and improved airport operation at SBLO. The project team expects to save over BRL 559,000 per year with its digital twin, and expects to see an increase in commercial profitability and the availability of critical equipment.

Process it. To create and maximize impact across the whole organization, we need to be able to process it. We need to capture changes, understand how we achieved results, and be able to repeat them. Reviewing and improving existing organizational processes is an important part of going digital; otherwise, organizations will continue to replicate the same problems.

Adopting and embedding digital ways of working needs buy-in at all levels of a business. Organizations should develop board steering groups so that the top of the business can see and understand the benefits of going digital. Businesses should also nominate digital champions for each department and each project to ensure that processes become embedded and that the results of going digital are communicated to all team members.

Taking on Going Digital

As an industry, it is important for us to remember that a construction project is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Project partners who are not working digitally do not have the level of productivity, communication, and assurance necessary for 21st century project delivery. Businesses that embrace and master The Four Ps, in contrast, are setting themselves up to be at the forefront of construction over this century.

We need to challenge ourselves, our businesses, and our project partners to spread the benefits of going digital and to stop the deployment of 18th century (and even older) working practices on 21st century projects. As the former American Davis Cup captain and French Open, Australian Open, and Wimbledon champion Arthur Ashe said, “You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards, and when you reach your limits, that is real joy.”

Let’s take on the task of going digital. There is too much at stake for us all not to.

 

Source: Cadalyst

 

 

The Solar Trade Association underlines current scope for action on “Groundhog Day” CCC 2019 Progress Report to Parliament

 

Commenting on the CCC 2019 Progress Report to Parliament STA Chief Executive Chris Hewett said;

“For four years now the Committee on Climate Change has been urging the Government to get behind the most popular and cost-effective renewables. In what is now surely a national Groundhog Day, we again fully support their calls for technology neutral auctions that provide a secure route-to-market for large-scale solar. On the publication of last year’s Progress Report we said the Government must now surely listen and act. Not only has nothing happened but the policy framework has actually gone backwards for solar.”

The STA is disappointed that there has been no progress in levelling the playing field on market access for large-scale solar, nor progress on a ‘subsidy free’ CfD. Since last year the STA has had to fight off complex and potentially costly changes to transmission balancing charges that would have further damaged the progress of subsidy-free solar schemes, which carry notable risk. The scale of the threat has been reduced, but still remains.

The CCC report also underlines the growing importance of flexibility in the electricity system, but again the STA is fighting off damaging VAT changes that can apply to new solar when it is combined with battery storage for domestic homes. After sustained campaigning by the STA the Government has published its Smart Export Guarantee policy, but has failed to enforce a fair floor price for exported power and there is currently only one market participant.

However, the economics of rooftop solar in commercial and industrial installations is now clearly attractive and the Association is championing investment in solar by the public sector, as well as by households. The STA has long urged the CCC to consider the value of rooftop solar in its analyses, given these markets dominate across most of Europe where the technology plays a major role in delivering Net Zero buildings in all climates. Solar technology also puts the power to act in the hands of a range of players, including councils, businesses and individuals, which is enhanced by synergies with battery storage, EVs and renewable heat technologies.

Chris Hewett said, “Many organisations in the UK will once again share the CCC’s deep frustration at Government inaction. However, we urge the CCC and concerned parties to look very carefully at what can be done right now with rooftop solar, which can be economically attractive and which answers their call to put people at the heart of policy design. For those that are unable to invest in rooftop solar, there are further opportunities to support new solar parks through Power Purchase Agreements and genuine green tariffs. Of course we need to see Government get its act together on climate and energy policy, but the need to act is urgent and we must not wait on them when there is so much that can be done today.”

 

The Solar Trade Association

Why the octogenarian engineer Max Fordham claims ventilation is the worst excess of the building industry.

 

Max Fordham’s house is “simple and practical” and mostly all natural.

There has long been skepticism about Passive House, or Passivhaus in the original German. Passivhaus expert Monte Paulsen listed some of the misconceptions in a Green Building Advisor article a few years ago, including “too expensive” or “too stuffy” or “too complicated” or “too rigid” or “too ugly”. But in the years since it has become clear that none of these are true, and a lot of those skeptics have been won over.

According to Jason Walsh, writing in Passive House Plus, physicist and engineer Max Fordham used to be a bit of a skeptic and critic of the Passive House concept. But he independently developed his own approach to building energy efficient buildings, and it was looking more and more like Passive house. Fordham tells Passive House Plus that ventilation is the source of “the worst excesses of the building industry.” He then goes on about one of my regular gripes, radiant underfloor heating:

In particular, once you’ve solved the ventilation problem you’ve got a building that doesn’t really need any heating. What’s happening a lot with passive houses we’re seeing built is that people are demanding things like underfloor heating… I think it’s a conservatism: people are afraid, but it’s [passive house] then being adopted and people are adding underfloor heating to the brief. That’s the worst kind of heating to have, in a way, because if you have a thermally heavy [passive] building it doesn’t actually need any heating. So, if you don’t need any heating, you’d better not put in a heating system that is difficult to control and slow to control. It may look very luxurious and nice, but you can’t really turn it off. It’s just wasting heat.

Justin Bere, architect for the house, explains a bit of Max Fordham’s conversion:

Throughout his career he has, in his own way, developed his own version of passive house. He was on the same wavelength but didn’t know about it, and in this he brought together what he was doing and what the Passive House Institute was doing, saying: ‘Were both on the same mission to fight for the planet.’

One very interesting thing about this house is that it is on three levels, and there doesn’t appear to be much of a concession to the fact that Max Fordham is in his eighties, other than the stairs do not have winders in them. Jason Walsh writes that “there is a focus on accessibility; it is possible to live entirely on the ground floor, for example, while cork flooring provides some safety against falls.” And the bathroom door on the ground floor opens outwards, but that is about it, and it is a tight ground floor suite.

But it is a very small mews site and Fordham almost seems to be treating this more as a physics experiment than a house. He tells Passive House Plus:

I’m just getting some feedback on the energy use. It’s very interesting: the top has the most glass and is getting the heat. It’s very cosy. The ground floor tends to need a little heat so I’ve just written a note that says that we need to increase the internal air flow. It’s very exciting getting some real feedback.

Readers should visit Passive House Plus for the technical details, but the house hits only .38 air changes per hour (PH limit is 0.6) and costs almost nothing to heat. It is built with natural and renewable materials including wood fibre insulation and wood cladding. There is a little electric heater coil in the Heat Recover Ventilator and a heat pump domestic hot water system.

One of the reasons that there used to be so many of the misconceptions about Passive House is that there really wasn’t a lot of experience with them. That has now changed. The builder, Bow Tie Construction, notes that some architects still don’t understand it.

Yesterday I spoke to an architect who said to me, ‘I don’t want to have to learn all this [in advance]. I want you to show me.’ One really interesting thing that comes to mind is that we try to specialise in passive house but [some] architects look at the costs and see us as too expensive or unapproachable. We’d like to see more co-operation between builders like us and architects.

When builders, engineers, architects and clients all understand what they are doing and why, most of those problems and extra costs will just disappear.

 

by Lloyd Alter

 

SOURCE: Treehugger

Rare archive images showing engineers working on a secret construction project that became pivotal to Britain’s success at the D-Day landings have been released as part of a new film marking the 75^th anniversary of the campaign.

The Mulberry harbours were artificially-constructed floating docks that enabled ships carrying vital supplies, military vehicles and troops to safely anchor off the French coast, on a stretch of land lacking any safe harbours. They were designed and constructed in secrecy by around 200,000 British engineers in the seven months leading up to the landing in June 1944, and helped soldiers who recall ‘fighting the sea’ at the same time as they battled against the German army.

British construction company Wates Group has now unearthed a series of rare images from its archive of its engineers constructing the harbours in the lead up to one of the most significant moments in the Allied war effort. Wates made a significant contribution during the war building aerodromes, army camps and factories. Having developed a specialty in pre-cast concrete structures, Wates supplied the concrete pier and pierhead pontoons for the Mulberry harbours.

The harbours were designed and built at yards and docks across the country including at Southampton, in Mitcham and the West India Docks, before they were assembled at Selsey in Sussex and towed across the channel to Normandy in sections after completion in April 1944.

Wates was among an alliance of British companies that joined forces to build the harbours. Wates was particularly involved in the construction of the concrete piers and pontoons known as ‘Beetles’. While one harbour was destroyed in a storm after just a couple of days, the second was operational for 10 months, making a significant contribution to the Allied war effort. In total, the harbour enabled 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and 4 million tonnes of supplies to land before it was decommissioned.

As the international community marks the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Wates has worked with D-Day Revisited – a charity established to commemorate the anniversary – to create a film celebrating the harbours.

MEMORIES OF MULBERRY  click for video

The film, titled “Memories of Mulberry”, includes rare photographs from the Wates archives, showing engineers working on the huge concrete and steel parts, as well as insight from leading historian Guy Walters.

Ted Cordery, 95 and from Oxford, who served on board the Royal Navy’s HMS Belfast from 1943-1944 as a Leading Seaman Torpedoman, is one of two D-Day veterans interviewed for the film about their memories of the historic landings. He said: “When I look back on my career in the Navy, I felt I spent more time fighting the sea than I did the Germans. You could never rely on it. It always turned one way or the other. The harbours minimised the possibility of this and you can’t have a better contribution than that in my opinion.”

Jack Quinn, also 95 and from Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire, who was a Corporal in the Royal Marines, added: “We wondered what they were at first, when we saw them. ‘What are they going to do with them? They are going to load men and vehicles on them.’ We were surprised they towed them all that way. But the soldiers were glad to get in a lorry and drive off a Mulberry harbour instead of getting in a landing craft and getting wet through. Speed was the essence.”

Historian and author Guy Walters added: “When you think of inventions during the Second World War you think of the bouncing bomb, you think of radar, but for my money Mulberry harbours are right up there. They’re a classic example of British ingenuity and inventiveness.”

The video, which has been published on the Wates website, ends by thanking the servicemen and women who played their part.

James Wates CBE, Chairman of the Wates Group, said: “Wates has a proud history as an innovator in construction, and nowhere is this more evident than our involvement with building the Mulberry harbours. I remember my grandfather [Sir Ronald Wates] speaking to me about them when I was a boy, and I know he was so proud of what we were able to do.

“As we mark the 75th anniversary of the D Day landing, we look back with pride at our role in bringing an end to World War Two, and supporting our armed forces. Our purpose today remains as it was then: to work together to inspire better ways of creating the places, communities and businesses of tomorrow.”

To this day Wates Group continues to support the work of the armed forces, working with the Ministry of Defence and its supply chain – including building the base of the new Lightning jets at RAF Marham; BAE System Submarines’ new training base for apprentices; and maintaining housing for services personnel and their families.  Wates has also pledged to honour the Armed Forces Covenant, including a commitment to provide work opportunities for veterans.

 

Wates Group