Drone Surveys Improve Automated Road Construction

Drone Surveys Improve Automated Road Construction

Automated machine guidance (AMG) links construction equipment with on board computers that use data from 3-D models and GPS to guide operations. The Oregon Department of Transportation is exploring surveying with unmanned aircraft for construction projects using  an Aibotix Aibot X6 Hexacopter. The hexacopter can fly programmed flight paths autonomously and carry 4.4 pounds of cameras and sensors.

Ron Singh, chief of surveys at ODOT, is using the drone to generate 3-D maps from orthorectified imagery that accounts for topographical variations in the surface of the Earth and the tilt of the drone. Specifically, they produce digital terrain models via structure-from-motion technologies that estimate 3-D structures from multiple, overlapping 2-D images.

“From my perspective, a drone is like a tripod for surveying, only you can place it 200 feet in the air over a particular spot,” Singh said.

Singh brings a unique drone usage skill set and is known to have a very progressive approach towards AMG and drone use. Singh says AMG technology is dramatically improving construction projects in Oregon. “One contractor, K&E Excavating, has invested heavily in AMG,” Singh said. “In 2010, they were only getting a few projects from ODOT, but now they’re getting almost every project there is because they can get their bids lower. They’re coming up with bids lower than our engineers’ estimates.”

How does he do it? Read more on how he's using unmanned systems in Charles Choi's article "Drone Surveys Improve Automated Road Construction" published in Inside Unmanned Systems.com.

How a 31-year-old general contractor built a multimillion-dollar company in 2 years

Josh Downing always wanted to start his own construction company — but with a young family to think about, an entrepreneurial career didn't seem like it was in the cards.

The 31-year-old's dream became reality in 2014, he tells CNBC, when he stumbled upon Thumbtack, a platform that connects customers with professionals for any job they need done, from photography to strength training.

While still working full-time at a Construction development company, Downing signed up as a general contracting "pro" on Thumbtack.
"I got lucky out of the gate and landed a $6,000 kitchen remodel in April 2014," he says. "It was a small job, but a $7 risk [the cost to submit a quote to the customer] turned into an $800 profit. The rest is history."

Once he saw how quickly he could lock down gigs, Downing thought there was an opportunity to build his own company using the platform without incurring too much risk.


His thought was solidified when he secured a $900,000 project, he explains: "I was thinking, if I could get a quarter to a half million dollars a year from this website, that's all I need. I never would've thought that I'd be able to generate millions of dollars from this website, let alone one lead that turned into a $900,000 custom home build on the beach."

In September 2014, Downing launched his own construction business, Direct Movement Group. Two months after that, he left his previous position to focus on DMG full-time.

While Downing got lucky initially, his continued success hasn't been a cake walk. "In anything that you're going to be successful in, it's going to take time," he says. "I put in the time and effort, and now it's really starting to pay off."

The Jacksonville-based company, which now employs 24 subcontractors and recently launched a new division in Orlando, earned $2.3 million in sales in 2015. Downing projects $5 million in sales for 2016. While he gets most of his leads from Thumbtack, he uses other lead generation websites such as HomeAdvisor.

The key to succeeding in his business boils down to highlighting what work you've done in the past, Downing explains: "People want to know what you did last, when you did it, and where it was. Provide validation that the work you've done is high-end."

As for succeeding in the entrepreneurial world, Downing has two pieces of advice. One, "you should be taking someone to lunch every day." The more people who know you and what you're doing, the more opportunities you'll create, he says.

Secondly, "figure out what it is that you love, and try to form a business around it. You'll put so much into it that it'll be hard to fail."

Builders battle extreme weather with next-level construction tech

Aerage temperature: 11 degrees below zero. Typical wind speed: 140 kilometers per hour. No roads in or out. Active permafrost that’s either frozen solid or defrosted into mud 3-feet-deep, and polar bears — the earth’s largest land predator — roaming the tundra. It’s Iqaluit, Nunavut on Baffin Island, Canada, and for Edmonton-based Stantec, it’s just another place to build a state-of-the-art international airport.

The History Channel was recently on site shooting for a show about "impossible engineering projects," according to Stantec lead architect Noel Best. "There are only three Sealift Ocean transports that bring material in when the bay is free of ice between August and September, and you can’t build directly on the permafrost or your project will sink during the brief summer thaw," he said.

To complete the impossible build at Iqaluit, Stantec employed a combination of old and new technologies to model building performance, mitigate exposure to extreme climate and optimize the foundation and building envelope that came directly in contact with an unforgiving natural environment.

Stantec isn't alone in the construction industry effort to create more resilient buildings and complete large and complex projects in extreme weather conditions. As international delegates gathered at the COP22 climate summit in Morocco this week to further solutions to climate change, AEC firms are on the front lines of climate resiliency and are leveraging construction technologies to reduce the impact of increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

Water world

Mark Hoekzema, chief meteorologist and director of meteorological operations at Germantown, MD-based Earth Networks — which provides global weather forecasting services to corporate clients for operational strategy and business continuity — said the last 30 years have seen a rise in significant weather events. "For instance, in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic there has been a 74% increase in rainfall for events categorized as very heavy, and elsewhere the numbers and statistics likewise show that there is something dramatic going on related to climate," he said.

"There is something dramatic going on related to climate"

While Hoekzema acknowledged the worth of COP22 and other conversations focused on climate change mitigation, he stressed the critical role of the construction and engineering sector to safeguard people and property from extreme weather events. "It’s unknown how much humans can do to slow climate change, and we need to prepare for things like sea level rise as much as we are trying to figure out how to stop them," he said.

Los Gatos, CA-based Arx Pax co-founder and CEO Greg Henderson is focused on that task, funneling monetization from the company’s hover-board engine technology into building system technology for developing floodplain real estate by floating super structures on a network of post-tensioned concrete pontoons.

In fact, the Arx Pax SAFE Building System doesn’t merely anticipate flood conditions, it aims to introduce them preemptively via canals, boxed culverts or containment foundations to maximize base isolation and create projects resistant and resilient to both extreme flood and seismic events.

Precast pontoons the size of shipping containers provide a broad, stable base for construction, Henderson said, offering developers a foundation that can handle massive loads while allowing for significant horizontal displacement. When it comes to construction limitations, Henderson pointed to the MS Allure of the Seas cruise ship as an analogy, a 236-foot-tall, 16-story, mixed-use, high-density real estate development that weighs 100,000 tons and sits on a 4-and-half acre site floating in water just 30 feet deep.

By comparison, the SAFE foundation system is designed to float residential, institutional and commercial projects in 3 feet of water, drawing notice from AEC players including Doug Robertson, president of structural engineering firm Daedalus, who said designers and builders in seismically active, flood-prone and coastal areas need to take notice of the technology as a "foundation alternative to ensure long-term sustainability."

Pushing the building envelope

Foundational and building envelope technologies and systems figure significantly into projects confronted with extreme construction environments or designed for extreme climate event resiliency. At the Iqaluit airport build out, Stantec was charged with using windows for over 20% of the building façade to maximize the meager natural light in the Arctic Circle.

"Getting the daylight deep into the building was one of the critical design drivers," Best said. "We did a lot of computer modeling on daylight data to achieve the amount of windows mandated by the client."

Despite the preponderance of glass, thermal issues faced by Stantec on the project involved dissipating building heat rather than retaining it. With the 32,808-square-foot building sitting directly on grade, thermal siphons were required to keep the building heat from melting the permafrost and sinking the entire project into the ground. Below a layer of insulation, 5 miles of piping filled with CO2 capture heat and transfer it to above-ground, 6-foot-high vertical radiators where it condenses back into liquid.

Construction projects even in normal environments may have to eventually retrofit to account for the effects of extreme climate on the building envelope. "We’re already seeing a ton of cladding retrofit and anticipate using more systems like THERM as well as aerial drone imaging for envelope thermal modeling," said Matthew Smith, head of the resilience group at Toronto, Canada-based structural engineering firm Entuitive. "Given higher temperatures, more frequent rain and snow, how all of these glass curtain walls will perform is suspect, and being able to model that performance will be huge."

Wind tunnel and water tank modeling

Based in Gelph, Ontario, engineering and scientific consulting firm RDWI has learning labs in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia where firms like Entutive and Stantec are utilizing water tank and wind tunnel test beds to model extreme wind conditions for optimizing lateral building loads or — in the case of the Iqaluit airport project — minimizing snow accumulation that can drift on and adjacent to the roof.

"Being able to model that performance will be huge"

By immersing a scale model of the airport into a water tank and introducing sand and current, the Stantec team was able to determine the need to add snow scoops on the roof to force wind eddies that push snow drifting several meters away from — instead of flush against — the airport’s leeward façade. "It’s very simple technology, but very graphic and visual," Best said.

Smith said contemporary design aesthetics, particularly for urban residential high-rises, are forcing engineering teams to take a closer look at lateral loads in anticipation of both seismic activity and higher winds associated with extreme weather. Wind tunnel testing on scale models has enabled the team in many cases to move from prescriptive to performance-based design models by inputting test data into ETABS and Perform 3D modeling software.  

"A lot of the high-rise engineering in Toronto, New York and London is being driven by wind performance for super tall, super slender towers with small bases," Smith said. "So we really have to model performance under movement."

While much of the technology being applied to extreme climate construction is intended to optimize building performance, contractors and engineers are also relying on systems and equipment simply to keep projects moving in adverse environments in places as germane as Rochelle, IL, where Miami, FL-based Dominion Builders was forced to excavate through 4 feet of snow and frozen ground to keep construction of a 177,000-square-foot hydroponic green house on schedule.

"The build started in October, but by the time design was complete, we were in January with temperatures hitting minus 30 degrees," said Dominion Director of Operations Marc Finch. "We used a network of glycol heaters covered with blankets to thaw 45,000 square feet of ground at a time, and then excavated with a back hoe."

Stantec relied extensively on Autodesk BIM 360 to optimize project team logistics at the Iqaluit airport and keep a consistent and reliable flow of materials that Best described as critical given the geographic isolation of the project. "If you are missing a section of pipe, you can’t go down to the local hardware store," he said. "The planning and coordination of electrical and mechanical through BIM allowed us close coordination in advance so the contactor could do detailed take-offs and avoid cost overruns from having to fly materials to the job site."

Continuity has also become a primary driver of sustainable and resilient design and construction overall, particularly after the devastation of Super Storm Sandy put major corporations on the East Coast either out of business or out of operation for long periods of time. The 2012 storm caused $71.4 billion in U.S. damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"One of the things that came out of Sandy wreaking havoc on the Northeast was an increased attention on businesses to add extreme weather forecasting and consideration into business continuity plans," said Hoekzema, who added that construction teams are also increasingly looking into "now-casting" for real-time weather information, particularly as it relates to lighting probability at high-rise job sites. 

According to Smith, the resiliency conversation in building design has shifted from determining whether or not a property can sustain an event like Sandy to how quickly the building — particularly hospitals and essential service buildings, but also office and commercial properties — can be back up and running. "So it is designing with that in mind, to help asset owners reduce the risk of their tenants going out of business," Smith said.

How a Georgetown Law Professor Became a Cult Construction Blogger

Wallace Mlyniec, the Lupo-Ricci Professor of Clinical Legal Studies at Georgetown Law School, has devoted his career to defending the rights of young people accused of crimes. He led Georgetown’s Juvenile Justice Clinic for four decades, receiving prestigious awards for his work.

But there’s another side to 71-year-old Mlyniec: He is fascinated by everything to do with buildings. Over the years, as he mentored future attorneys, Mlyniec (pronounced “Milenick”) accrued a vast knowledge of architecture, construction, and Washington lore on the side.

He shares this knowledge in “Construction Notes,” updates about buildings-in-progress that have become cult reading material. The typical note might run eight or 10 pages. It starts with a status report on a construction project on or near the Georgetown Law campus and warnings about noise or other disruptions. Then it plunges into the mechanics of a building technique or a colorful episode in D.C. history. There are lots of links and images and usually a short bibliography at the end. Sometimes research assistants help Mlyniec compile the information.

Between Georgetown students, staff, and Mlyniec’s personal friends, close to 3,000 people receive Construction Notes by email (they’re also posted online). Each one has a title and a theme. Not tempted by “Swamps and Sewers?” Try “Caissons and Slurry Walls.” Then chase it with “Caissons and Slurry Walls II.”

Although his writing is full of technical arcana, Mlyniec doesn’t get bogged down in that. He ranges across centuries and continents in his descriptions of how pile drivers work or why builders celebrate “topping off” a new structure (answer: the tradition comes from ancient tree-topping ceremonies to appease the gods).

“He has this uncanny knack for pursuing a question in a way that is just so interesting,” says Judith Areen, a Georgetown Law professor and the school’s former dean. “I can still remember one of his early notes on concrete. Who ever thought about concrete? He went back to how it was developed in ancient times.”

Mlyniec, who lives on Capitol Hill, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. He remembers taking the L downtown as a boy to look at buildings. (“If you grow up in Chicago, you can’t ignore the architecture around you.”) He went to college at Northwestern and watched as workers filled in a lake for a campus expansion. But he put that interest on hold as he embarked on law school at Georgetown and then an academic career.

In 1973, Georgetown Law hired him as its first-ever clinical instructor. Two years earlier, the small school had moved into a building, McDonough Hall, off New Jersey Avenue NW, in a neighborhood east of downtown that all but the Salvation Army and flophouse hotels deserted. (The Georgetown Law Center is separate from the undergraduate campus, and not in Georgetown at all.)

The school grew, and before long, McDonough was overcrowded. Mlyniec joined the committee to plan for a larger campus. His interest in buildings was renewed.

At first, he channeled it into professional validation. This was the era when the legal establishment sniffed at clinical law as intellectually unserious, hippie do-gooderism. Clinical faculty were working in spillover space off-campus. Mlyniec realized they needed to be on campus to win respect. “The law school would not accept clinical faculty unless they could see us,” he says. (By 1989, his clinic had settled into an expanded McDonough Hall.)

Mlyniec had a big hand in the campus that grew around him, becoming the law school’s point person for architects and construction managers. “I think in another life, he would have become an architect,” Areen says. He started writing Construction Notes in 2002, chronicling the build-out of the school’s international law and sports centers.

Originally, the idea was simply to alert people to inconveniences during construction. There was going to be noise early in the morning, and students and professors would be annoyed. “In order to keep a lid on the complaints, I thought this was a good idea,” he recalls.

So he started writing. “Everything just exploded after that,” he says. “I couldn’t put my pen down.”

As the notes became more ambitious, people from as far afield as Indiana and California asked to be added to his mailing list. In 2006, a small press managed by one of Mlyniec’s friends published a collection of the notes as a book. Mlyniec describes this period as probably the happiest years of his life.

Building the two campus centers was a major enterprise. But those structures seem like baubles compared to Capitol Crossing, the current $1.3 billion project to erect a seven-acre deck over a sunken stretch of I-395 between 2nd and 3rd Streets NW, from Massachusetts Avenue to E Street, reconnecting the divided East End neighborhood.

Years ago, craving a hands-on role with a major infrastructure project, Mlyniec tried unsuccessfully to embed himself with the team building the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge. Then Capitol Crossing came along—a perfect fit. Mlyniec is Georgetown Law’s liaison with the developers and the city on the megaproject, which won’t be finished until at least 2021.

He has written more than 20 notes on Capitol Crossing, touching on the geology of the Atlantic Coastal Plain; the life of 19th-century Washington politico Alexander “Boss” Shepherd; the invention of the steam-driven steel hammer; and much more.

One note explains that the I-395 ditch next to campus is a remnant of the postwar Center Leg Freeway, which displaced 1,600 residents but was abandoned partway through. Another retraces the journey made by the steel girders that will support the Capitol Crossing deck: from a mill in North Carolina, to a flatbed truck, to a crane, and finally onto columns over the roadway.

Carole Wedge, president of Shepley Bulfinch, the Boston architecture firm that designed Georgetown’s international law and sports centers, says she always learns new things from the notes. When they worked together, Wedge was so impressed by Mlyniec (“his inquisitiveness is really quite remarkable”) that she hired him as a consultant, and he advised on the design of a law school building at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

If you visit Mlyniec on the Georgetown Law campus, he’ll take you to the top of Gewirz Residence Hall, where you can look down on Capitol Crossing. It’s an incredible vista of labor: cranes, backhoes, stacks of lumber and pipes, and workers in fluorescent vests crawling over the site like ants. Not everyone geeks out to this stuff the way Mlyniec does. But his writing unlocks what is easy to forget as we go about our daily routines—that modern city building is pretty awe-inspiring.

“Unless you practice construction or real estate law, you will probably never have a chance to view a project as massive as this so close up,” Mlyniec told readers in a 2015 note, “Pile Driving and Lagging Boards.” “I encourage you to take a few minutes … to step outside and watch the work. This combination of human labor, machinery, and technology shows us the immense capacity of the human imagination.”

Why Architecture Is a Career for 'the Young and Childless'

Being a woman in a white-collar job often means navigating office cultures that make it difficult to rise to senior positions. It also in many cases means making some sort of peace with pay gaps, insufficient parental-leave policies, and inflexible hours that are incompatible with society’s expectations about child-rearing.

Female architects feel these burdens particularly acutely. In a study earlier this year, the American Institute of Architects found that female architects largely believe that there isn’t gender equality in their industry, and cited familiar concerns about work-life balance, long hours, and inflexible schedules as reasons for the under representation of women in the field. When The New York Timessurveyed some female architects among its readers in April, one woman noted, “As a new mom, I feel like I must choose between advancing to a principal, or being there for my child.”

Julie Engstrom, an architectural designer, agrees with these representations of the demands of her industry. For The Atlantic’s ongoing series of interviews with American workers, I spoke with Engstrom about her job, the industry’s difficulty with retaining female designers, and how she stays motivated through months-long projects.The interview that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Survey: Women, minorities missing from architecture leadership

Dive Brief:

• The American Institute of Architects San Francisco Equity by Design committee released select findings from its 2016 Equity in Architecture Survey and found that women and minorities do not have equitable representation in the profession's leadership roles, according to Architect Magazine.
• The survey also found that women are not paid as much as men, with women earning only 76% of what their male counterparts made, even those in lead design positions.
• Although many of the survey results were split along gender lines, the report made it clear that gender was not the only deciding factor of success. Work and mentor-mentee relationships, feedback, a transparent promotion process and shared values were also factors.

Dive Insight:

The survey found that firm culture — social activities, quality standards, educational opportunities, company reputation — was the biggest factor in accepting a job, while pay, career opportunity and no potential for advancement were the main reasons for leaving a job. Mentor relationships were more common among women, who cited those collaborations as a reason for optimism in their careers and views on work-life balance.

Earlier this year, the AIA released the results of a 2015 study on diversity and found that women believe there is gender inequality in architecture but only half of men hold that same view. Both men and women responded that they believe there is a lack of diversity concerning people of color and said that new initiatives could bring a wider variety of professionals into the industry.

Some experts have cited the ongoing labor shortage as a motivating factor that is getting AEC industry executives to take notice of the lack of diversity and, possibly, take steps to improve it. With retention problems exacerbating the current dearth of qualified laborers and professionals, construction companies are being forced to re-examine their policies and find ways to both recruit experienced workers and keep them.

Is e-commerce taking a 'huge bite' out of the retail construction sector?

ere's no arguing that the internet has changed the way people live, as they are increasingly paying their bills, getting to know each other, and working via online tools. However, the greatest convenience might be the ability to shop the world's markets and retail outlets from the comfort of home. From household staples to furniture, food and artwork, anything can be bought with a credit card and the push of a few keys.

In fact, according to Internet Retailer, on an adjusted basis, eliminating items like cars and restaurant purchases, online shopping — or e-commerce — accounted for more than 10% of all 2015 U.S. retail sales and totaled $340.8 billion. Internet sales have increased approximately 15% annually for the last six years and are expected to hit $523 billion by 2020.

This booming industry is great news for online retailers, but what does it mean for the construction industry?

Warehouse construction on the rise

E-commerce has kept warehouse construction alive, and, according to the Dodge Data & Analytics 2017 Construction Outlook report, that segment will grow another 2% next year in an effort to keep pace with demand. Almost 100 big-box warehouses, representing 60 million square feet in total, saw completion in 2015, leaving only a 7.4% vacancy rate for the segment, according to National Real Estate Investor. Those strong figures are obviously good news for construction companies in the warehouse sector.

"Warehouse construction is built for two reasons — to stock live stores and for e-commerce. With the proliferation of e-commerce, (retailers) are commissioning more warehouse distribution," said Carl Oliveri, partner and construction practice leader at Grassi & Co. Even large store chains like Macy's, he said, are moving toward hybrid models and developing warehouse distribution strategies. "To stay relevant, they have to compete in that space," he said.

A decline in brick-and-mortar building

However, online sales are growing at five times the rate of brick-and-mortar stores, according to a Colliers International report. It doesn't take an expert to read those signs — fewer in-store sales equals a potential decline in new retail construction projects and renovations.

Adding another layer to the problem for contractors: Some retailers who are planning renovations or building new stores are opting for smaller, local contractors in order to save on construction costs and boost an already-injured bottom line."Anecdotally, we definitely feel that e-commerce has taken a huge bite out of retail sales," said Chuck Taylor, director of operations for Illinois-based Englewood Construction. Englewood, which performs a significant amount of retail ground-up and renovation work nationwide, has seen a downward deviation in this sector in the last several years, according to Taylor.

Taylor said that by not hiring contractors like Englewood who have brand experience and know the stores inside and out, those retailers are subjecting themselves to a possible bumpy ride on the learning curve with new contractors and are putting more pressure on the architect or corporate construction managers who have to watch the project — and unfamiliar contractor — more closely.

A heightened focus on the customer experience

The exception occurs when the very large retailers look to companies like Englewood for a turnkey experience. "They want to teach the learning curve once and get those expectations out there and recreate (their store model) every time," Taylor said. Of those stores that are still adding to their stock of physical locations, he said, "They are focused on and have shifted to remodels in order to refresh the brand. Everybody is talking about creating a new customer experience."

Of course, millennials are playing a role in this new shopping environment as well. Taylor said retailers are trying to appeal to the millennial desire for convenience in addition to offering the community and social component that demographic wants as well. Muoio said the millennial draw to walkable cities and an urban, mixed-use experience has also changed the brick-and-mortar dynamic. "This is very clear in both the pricing and transaction volume for 'urban storefront' versus big-box or mall properties," he said.And it's creating that experience that is a challenge. Peter Muoio, chief economist and executive vice president of commercial real estate firm Ten-X, said the constant battle to drive customers to a physical location makes for a "more effective and competitive" environment in the long-term. "Some retailers are increasingly using a 'showroom' approach, where you can try on clothes and feel the fabric but then get the clothing delivered to your door," he said. "This cuts down on the inventory they need to carry, reducing costs, but also reducing square footage of their stores."

What's next for the retail construction sector

These experts emphasized that no one should count brick and mortar out yet. E-commerce is just one of the factors affecting retail construction, according to Richard J. Burstein, partner at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn in Michigan."The e-commerce factor is obviously affecting retail sales to some extent, but not as dramatically as some predicted," he said. The retail sector is experiencing a "new normal," Burstein said. "The trend (toward) smaller stores (isn't all attributable) to e-commerce, but a changing retail marketplace out there is for sure."

Looking ahead, Muoio said that more retailers will likely be turning to the experience-focused business model and expanding into salons, gyms, restaurants and even doctors’ offices. "This will change the look and layout of brick-and-mortar retailing, but it will still be there," he said. "As retailing evolves, there will still be plenty of brick-and-mortar stores." 

Burstein said he's seeing a significant amount of infill development and predicts new building will rise as populations relocate. "But it's certainly not going to be a heated environment for a while," he said.

Perhaps the relocation of millennials is what's responsible for what Oliveri has seen with his clients. "We handle a number of contractors renovating Macy's stores, and they've never been busier," he said. Millennials who have moved to the suburbs and need access to retail have also led to building in those areas.

Taylor said retail renovations still keep Englewood's retail business busy, as their customers struggle to obtain the perfect combination of in-store sales and e-commerce. "Our retail sales from a general construction standpoint have been reduced significantly but are still a component of our business and will continue to be," Taylor said. "It's just different."

Italian firm creates solar panels that look like regular building materials

Dive Brief:

• Italian firm Dyaqua has unveiled a line of solar panels designed to mimic common construction materials and exterior building products to help photovoltaic systems better meld with a finished building's aesthetic, Fast Co.Design reported.
• Individual photo voltaic modules are incorporated into usable building elements including tiles, blocks and shingles, with simulated clay, stone, wood and concrete finishes made from a polymeric compound that allows sunlight penetration.
• The company's Invisible Solar panels can only generate one-quarter the energy of a conventional photo voltaic panel per square meter, but the components can be used in vertical applications and are compression- and impact-resistant enough to handle loads. The product is available for 30 days through the company's website.

Dive Insight:

Dyaqua is concurrently running a $20,000 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to help advance and commercialize its components. Clean-energy power generation is a high-growth business in construction, particularly on the residential side where Dyaqua’s product line could see significant uptake. Residential rooftop solar installations are on half a million houses already, and the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that number could reach 3.8 million by 2020.

Homebuilders like Lennar, Meritage and KB Home are responding by offering solar packages — formerly available only to higher-end, custom buyers — in their production projects, Construction Dive previously reported. 

In April, San Francisco passed an ordinance requiring commercial and residential structures up to 10 stories tall to include solar panels in response to a state mandate requiring 15% of roof area atop this class of buildings to be able to accommodate photovoltaics. 

Still, residential solar is facing pushback due primarily to the cost of purchasing or leasing the systems. Congress is aiming to ease the cost burden on homeowners while encouraging adoption through the 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill, which extended the Solar Investment Tax Credit through the end of 2016.

America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2016

America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2016

Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) has been identifying historically and culturally significant areas around the U.S. that are at risk of disappearing completely. Its intention has been to bring awareness to at-risk places in order to increase urgency and support for their preservation. This year highlights 11 sites that are each threatened in different ways, with an emphasis on urban areas in dire need of conservation efforts. In the past 29 years, the NTHP has helped save 270 sites, losing just less than five percent. From the effects of climate change to the threats of demolition, 2016's focused sites add to NTHP's expanding list of jeopardized locations that could be lost forever if action isn't taken.

Lions Municipal Golf Course in Austin, Texas

Affectionately called "Muny," this civil rights landmark was the first municipal golf course that desegregated its players in 1951. The property's lease, jointly held by the City of Austin and the University of Texas, is now in limbo and could be the new site for commercial properties.
Azikiwe-Nkrumah Hall at Lincoln University in Lincoln, Pa.
Built in 1865, it is the oldest building on the Lincoln University campus—the first institution to grant degrees for higher education to male African American students. The now vacant and crumbling structure "faces an uncertain future," according to the NTHP.
Bears Ears in Southeastern Utah
This natural and national treasure holds 12,000 years of human history within its grounds. The 1.9-million-acre site is "home to cliff dwellings, prehistoric villages, and rock art panels of ancestral Puebloan peoples, as well as Ice Age hunting camps," according to the Grand Canyon Trust.

Charleston Naval Hospital Historic District in North Charleston, S.C.
As a pivotal Naval base during both World War I and II, this district served to treat injured soldiers coming back from Europe. Five of this historic district's buildings are now threatened with demolition in order to make way for a new rail line.

Delta Queen in Houma, La.
Built in 1925, Delta Queen is the last steam paddle-wheeler with overnight accommodations still running. Fans and preservationists continue to seek exemption from the Safety of Life at Sea Act , an international maritime treaty, in order for the steamboat to remain operational.

El Paso’s Chihuahuita and El Segundo Barrio Neighborhoods in El Paso, Texas
Both historic neighborhoods, known as the "Ellis Island of the Border," have played major roles in the cultivation of El Paso's cultural identity, which has a history of immigration. Now, homes and small businesses alike are faced with potential demolition plans due to lack of protection.

Historic Downtown Flemington in Flemington, N.J.
Home to the Union Hotel, built in 1877, the building served as the epicenter of the infamous Lindebergh Baby trial of 1935 as it was where press, officials, and individuals related to the trial were served. The town also houses three other buildings listed on the National Register of Historic places that could be demolished in favor for an 8-story mixed-use structure.

James River in James City County, Va.
The state of Virginia's largest river, once home to America's first permanent English settlement in 1607, could lose its picturesque charm due to a transmission line project by private utility company, Dominion Virginia Power.
Mitchell Park Domes in Milwaukee, Wis.
A jewel of Mid-century Modern architecture, these three domes each host different climates from around the world, as well as house flora fauna. The tropical and flower show domes are currently open to the public (with the desert dome expected to reopen in the next few weeks), but a special Mitchell Park Domes Task Force will help determine what comes next for these stunning structures, which are in need of significant repairs.
Embarcadero in San Francisco, Calif.
The famous port of San Francisco is another coastal setting fallen victim to the globe's biggest danger: climate change. The earthquake-prone area also requires a stronger seawall to secure effective coastal resilience.
The Sunshine Mile in Tucson, Ariz.
Abundant in Mid-century Modern architecture, this two-mile-long stretch of quirky commercial buildings are now faced with possible demolition plans in order to make way for a city transportation project—a sad outcome for a street that once aimed to symbolize the "American Dream."

Engineering Giants-How Megatall Skyscrapers Are Built

Engineering Giants-How Megatall Skyscrapers Are Built

According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats (CTBUH), the authority on skyscrapers, we are entering the era of “megatall” buildings. Megatall buildings are those taller than 1,968 feet. Currently, there are only three such structures: Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,717 ft., is the world’s tallest building and was completed in 2010, the Shanghai Tower completed in 2015 in Shanghai, China stands at 2,073 ft. and the Makkah Royal Clock Tower at 1,972 ft. in Mecca, Saudi Arabia was finished in 2012.

By 2020, the number of megatall buildings will more than double with the completion of Shenzhen’s Ping An Finance Centre in Shenzhen, Greenland Center in Wuhan, Merdeka PNB118 in Kuala Lumpur, and Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia which are all currently under construction. In order to build these giants, engineers have to find new and innovative ways to defy gravity, wind vortices and lateral and seismic loads.

The world’s first skyscraper, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago, was the first tall building to make use of skeleton construction using structural steel to support the weight of the building. The quest to build taller had begun and there appears to be no end in sight to how tall we are willing to build. In a few years, we’ll see the first building to top 3280 ft. (1 km.), while taller still have been proposed. One day we may even see a mile-high skyscraper. Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned one back in 1956 called The Illinois, which he said was technically possible at the time.

The load bearing structural steel frame created by architect William Le Baron Jenney for the Home Insurance Building led to the development of the Chicago skeleton. The tube structure developed by Fazlur Khan in the 1960s involved columns along the exterior of a building which are connected to each other and the core of the building. This allowed for more usable floor space in the building since fewer interior columns were needed and were used extensively for buildings over 40 stories for decades.

Various incarnations based on the tube were developed over the years such as the trussed tube and the bundled tube which was used for the Willis (Sears) Tower. One limitation to the tube system is that the base of a building has to grow proportionally to the height meaning a much larger footprint is required for supertall buildings.

Structural systems have continued to evolve and be improved upon. For the Burj Khalifa, the buttressed core system was developed, featuring a hexagonal central core with three triangular buttresses for stability. The Kingdom Tower will feature the next evolution of this structural system with a stayed buttressed core.
Tall buildings sway in the wind, they’re designed to. To mitigate the amount of sway that building occupants feel, some skyscrapers have mass dampers installed near the top of the building. The damper is basically a giant pendulum that acts as a counterweight and is often made of giant concentric steel plates stacked on top of each and welded together. When the wind hits the building, the damper will swing in the opposite direction at the same frequency to reduce the movement of the building.

The Shanghai Tower has a 1,200-ton mass damper suspended over an eddy current damper. The eddy current damper is made of a large copper plate covered in magnets. The electromagnetic charge created when the mass damper passes over the magnets amplifies the damping effect. Other methods for mitigating wind vortices include tapering the design of the building as it rises, putting in notches or varying cross-sections to confuse the wind or having openings through the middle of the building to weaken the vortices.

Another obstacle engineers have to tackle is the building’s transportation system. Heavy steel cables used to lift elevators limit the height an elevator can safely travel to about 1,640 ft. due to the weight of the cables. Any taller and the size of the motor and the power needed to lift them along with the structure needed to support the weight becomes unfeasible.

Getting occupants to higher floors without it taking forever or having to stop at multiple sky lobbies to switch elevators is challenging. Double-decker elevator cars and computerized controls are used to efficiently get passengers to their desired floors while minimizing wait times. New breakthroughs in vibration reduction and pressure regulation are making faster travel speeds more comfortable and less vomit-inducing.

In 2013, KONE, the Finnish elevator company, introduced UltraRope which features a carbon fiber core encased in a high-friction coating. This new cable weighs 90% less than equivalent steel cables, lasts twice as long, would reduce energy consumption by 15% and would allow elevator cars to travel up to 3,281 ft., twice the distance of the current maximum effective height of steel cables. The UltraRope was first installed at the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore.

Elevators using the UltraRope technology are being installed in the Kingdom Tower currently under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This megatall skyscraper is expected to be the tallest building in the world when completed, reaching a height of 3,281 ft. The building will use UltraRope to achieve the world’s tallest elevator rise at 2,165 ft. and feature the world’s fastest double-decker car that will travel at 22 mph.

multi
MULTI/Image Credit: ThyssenKrupp
ThyssenKrupp, on the other hand, is tackling the heavy steel cable issue by getting rid of them completely. By completely eliminating the use of cables to lift and lower the elevator cars, ThyssenKrupp’s MULTI will mean elevators will be able to reach heights far beyond those allowed by KONE’s UltraRope technology. In addition to freeing elevators from height limits, it would remove the restriction of only being able to travel in two directions, up and down. The technology will allow elevator cars to run horizontally as well as vertically and for multiple cars to operate in each shaft simultaneously.

Last year ThyssenKrupp unveiled a 1:3 scale working model of their MULTI system at their Innovation Center in Gijón, Spain. They plan to have a full-scale model ready for public demonstrations next year at their new test tower in Rottweil, Germany. The test tower is expected to begin trial operations in December.

The MULTI uses the same magnetic levitation linear motor technology used in the Transrapid Shanghai Maglev Train. Transrapid International is a joint venture between ThyssenKrupp and Siemens. The control systems and safety features for the MULTI will be based on ThyssenKrupp’s TWIN elevator system which allows two elevator cars to operate independently of each other in the same elevator shaft. The self-propelled elevator cars will feature a multi-level brake system and inductive power transfers from the elevator shaft to the individual cars.

Technology is also playing a role in designing and building taller buildings. 3D printing technology has allowed engineers to easily prototype multiple building components and test them in wind tunnels. Building Information Modeling (BIM) and 3D computer modeling allow architects and engineers to accurately assess how the building will perform in real-world environments, which can lead to a reduction in redundant structural elements that skyscrapers of the past had to rely on.

Whether the trend of megatall buildings continues is anyone’s guess. Cost will continue to be a factor in going taller. While there are only four megatall buildings currently under construction, there are more than 140 supertall skyscrapers, those over 984 ft., currently being built around the world.

Maybe one day the CTBUH will have to create a new classification, like “hypertall” or “gigatall.” The proposed Bride of the Gulf  at 3,780 ft. in Basra, Iraq is set to surpass the Kingdom Tower, which is still under construction, as the world’s tallest.

For most tall buildings, experts agree that it isn’t so much a question of how high a structure can be safely built, but more of a question of how much money someone is willing to pay to get there.

Seattle skyline is tops in construction cranes — more than any other U.S. city - seattletimes.com

Seattle’s crane count has surged in the last year, overtaking New York as the city with the most such construction rigs transforming the urban landscape.

Seattle’s crane count has surged in the last year, overtaking New York as the city with the most such construction rigs transforming the urban landscape.

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By Mike Rosenberg

Seattle Times business reporter

Seattle is — for the moment, at least — the crane capital of America.

As the city transforms with taller and taller buildings, Seattle this summer had 58 construction cranes reshaping the skyline — more than any other city in the country, according to recent data.

The city has more cranes than New York and San Francisco combined. It has twice as many as Chicago, Washington, D.C., or Portland.

Matt Haider, a crane operator for five years, lifts a hopper of concrete onto a building under construction on Dexter Avenue North, in Seattle's South Lake Union area. He sometimes works more than 60 hours a week and spends his entire day in the cab 185 feet above the ground. It shakes like a rickety subway car as he pivots, and on windy days, it's harrowing. (Ellen M. Banner/The Seattle Times)

In the catbird seat

Seattle construction-crane operators cope with stress, no bathrooms

And it has an 18-crane lead over second-place Los Angeles, according to Rider Levett Bucknall, a firm that tracks crane counts across the world.

Seattle’s crane count has grown 38 percent in the past year, creating a shortage of both cranes and operators. And while they’re most tightly concentrated in downtown and South Lake Union, the cranes are soaring hundreds of feet above neighborhoods from Sodo to Fremont to the University District.

“It’s impossible to ignore right now,” said Julia Chamberlain, a local artist who was inspired by the boom to install a series of light-up mini-cranes in Westlake Park recently. “There used to be isolated pockets of them, but now it seems like the entire city is erupting.”

The towering yellow construction equipment is the most visible sign of Seattle’s ongoing makeover — for better or worse — as developers across the city continue to build apartment and condo buildings, new offices and hotels.

Just in downtown, the number of major buildings under construction has quadrupled in the last five years and is now at a 10-year high, while forecasts for future development indicate the frenzy won’t be slowing anytime soon.

Cranes usually stay up for six to 18 months, depending on the job.

Wait times rising

Tim O’Neill, a project executive for Skanska, which does major construction projects in Seattle and around the world, said the wait time for a crane locally is now eight months, about twice as long as normal.

“If you don’t plan ahead, you’re not going to end up with a crane,” O’Neill said. “That will cost everybody a whole bunch of money.”

A crane can cost from $15,000 to $55,000 a month, depending on the model, and despite the boom those prices have only gone up a little, he said.

The many cranes punctuating the skyline don’t simply move from one site to another. Each has to be sent back to the supplier after every use for testing, and the cranes around Seattle have come from across the country.

Reserving a crane is now like trying to get a table at a hot new restaurant: You have to put your name in and wait.

Taylor Mayfield, whose Mayfield Hoisting Service provides cranes and operators locally, said he’s already taking reservations for projects that will need cranes next April.

“As soon as they come down, they go right back up” after testing, Mayfield said. “Some of the ones you see on the skyline have already got contracts” scheduled for their next job.

Some of the cranes are so close together, especially in downtown and South Lake Union, that crews now have to dance through a sort of synchronized crane ballet to avoid hitting one another with the long horizontal arms. Developers also have to secure air rights over other buildings and coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees flight paths.

“You do have to be careful,” said local crane operator Matt Haider, whose current job in South Lake Union is across the street from two other cranes. “Especially downtown, it’s super tight on some of those jobs.”

Symbols of change

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Beyond the physical impact of the cranes and the related construction work — thousands of new housing units and jobs, plus temporary headaches for anyone navigating past the numerous building sites — they’ve come to symbolize how the city is changing.

That’s what inspired Chamberlain to come up with her crane art display after the Downtown Seattle Association put out a call to fund new public art.

It features a dozen colorful light-up cranes affixed to trees 11 feet in the air, poised above visitors eating lunch or playing games.

“I wanted to do something that was really Seattle and represented where the city was at right now,” said Chamberlain, who grew up in the area. “They’re these temporary visitors to the city that brings about this change,” she said, “in good ways and bad ways.”

In some spots near downtown, it’s possible to spin around and see a dozen or more cranes. From certain vantage points, they sometimes frame the view of the Space Needle. They’re one of the first things people see when entering Seattle, whether by freeway or ferries.

Haider, who’s currently a crane operator for a mixed-use building near Facebook’s new outpost on Dexter Avenue North, grew up in the area and has had a unique vantage point in his cab above the city to see the transformation.

“Coming down to Seattle now, it’s like a totally different place,” Haider said. “Driving through downtown with all the high-rises going up, it’s definitely turning into a big-city feel. And it changes every day.”

16 more than 2015

The Rider Levett Bucknall data, which looks at all tower-crane types, doesn’t go back far enough to show whether Seattle has surpassed its crane count during the last building boom, in the middle of last decade. But there was a crane shortage then, too. There’s also no data to know whether Seattle had ever previously been the nation’s crane leader.

Compared to a year ago, Seattle gained 16 cranes, while the average U.S. city lost two, although much of that drop occurred in New York, which had led the country in crane counts last year.

The majority of the tall buildings going up in Seattle are for apartments and condos, though office buildings for Amazon and other companies, as well as a few hotels, are also under construction. Sometimes big public-works projects require cranes, too.

A crane could be required for buildings as small as seven stories — though for high-rises, some wind up rising 600 feet or more in the air. Some jobs even require multiple cranes.

Seattle isn’t the only local city building up: As of the beginning of this year, there were about 20 cranes on the Eastside, according to Rider Levett Bucknall.

In Bellevue, developers launched 29 projects requiring cranes from 2013 to 2015 after having only 11 in the previous two years, according to city officials. Bellevue spokesman Brad Harwood said the current boom has lasted longer than the previous construction surge before the recession.

But there are signs the boom is starting to at least level off. Seattle has lost two cranes from the skyline compared to earlier this year, and Bellevue so far this year has added only two new projects requiring cranes.

And Seattle still has a long way to go to get to the top of the global crane standings. Internationally, cities tracked by Rider Levett Bucknall that have far more cranes than Seattle include Toronto; Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in Australia; and Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.

Design research seeing broader adoption — but challenges remain

Dive Brief:

• Architecture and engineering firms Perkins Eastman and Ewing Cole have released a white paper discussing the challenges and opportunities for successfully incorporating design research into improved design delivery.
• "Where Are We Now? Elevating Design Practice through Design Research" is based on findings from a 29-question survey on design research roles and responsibilities including students, educators, designers and design research professionals. Among survey takers, only 25% said incorporating research into the standard design process is either easy or very easy, while another 25% reported incorporating research is difficult, and an additional 17% said it’s very difficult (one-third of participants were neutral on the subject).
• While some survey respondents reported struggling with keeping up to date on technology and software to guide design research, finding workarounds and creating alternative tools helped with solution discovery and often led to unanticipated innovations.  

• Dive Insight:

  At the architectural end of the AEC universe, it can perhaps be easy to understand how research not only informs but incorporates a large portion of the design process. Since its formation as a discipline in the early 1960s, design research has sought to expand both the concept and the embedded role of research is design work, particularly as it incorporates interaction design — involving the human/computer interaction evolution — and software development.
  And yet enterprise investment into design research remains threadbare. The Perkins Eastman survey analysis found many firms simply don’t have enough billable work to support a research unit, creating staffing, overhead and salary challenges to fund research.
  Established BIM and design software firms have been successful in funding organic research design and also acquiring it, as Autodesk did with New York City–based architect and researcher David Benjamin’s The Living design studio in 2014 as a foray into construction typology and materials research.
  As it relates to construction technology, design research is frequently battle-tested in the 3-D printing arena, most notably at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which in the past several months announced active research and development projects to create a 3-D-printed excavator as well as set a new world record for the largest 3-D printed component using robotic arm technology.
  Post-occupancy property and asset management isn’t bereft of its design research adherents either. Case in point: coworking space developer WeWork, which in August 2016 began an exhaustive analysis of the architectural planning, programming and design of the modern workplace.