Construction Views and News For February 11, 2010

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John Poole, from the Constructonomics Blog,  and I talked about hard bidding and integrated project delivery, (IPD), as well as exploring some of the recent construction doom and gloom headlines. Listen in to the podcast for February 11, 2010. Just press Play, above.

Equipment Managers Lead Effort to Free Machine Telematics

Many construction companies that rely on fleets of equipment are encouraged by the promises of telematics.
Now being built into a high percentage of construction equipment, telematics takes the output from equipment monitoring systems, combines it with the GPS information that gives the location of the equipment, and sends the information wirelessly to a Web [...]

Leaders and Managers Sort Out Their Differences Somewhere Between the Head and the Heart

One thing’s for sure, there is no shortage of opinions on how to manage and lead a construction business. Opinions are most often born from experience so when we opine we are in effect speaking from the perspectives of our own experiences. If I’ve had good luck managing through fear, then I’m no doubt twice [...]

Views on BIM and its Evolution Highlight Benefits and Challenges to Come

(Picture by © Franckito | Dreamstime.com)
The future of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is arriving everyday but there are those close to the process that are looking well beyond next year.
When I spoke with Jonathan Widney, president of Solibri, LLC back in June while I was doing an article for Construction Software Review, he told [...]

New Player Brings More Specifics to the Specification Channel

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For all of those who spend large portions of their days sifting through product specifications, manufacturers’ Web sites, [...]

Ohhhh, The Difficulties of Constructing Nuclear Facilities

With the announcement by the leadership of Iran that it was set to begin the building of ten more nuclear enrichment facilities many who have followed the ups and downs of Iran’s nuclear attempts no doubt wonder if it’s really possible. The country has one finished enrichment facility at Natanz that has about 9,000 centrifuges, [...]

Shoulda Used Metal

Punch Lists: There’s Gotta Be A Better Way

The automation that mobile devices are bringing to construction makes me wonder some times how we ever managed to get anything done with the old, paper-based systems. From tracking employee time to accessing project documents on the run, these tools, with their associated software applications, keep begging us to get more efficient – and offering [...]

Digging Into The Tough Stuff About BIM and IPD

Gregory Arkin over at Revit 3D had some poignant things to express recently in his blog about resistance to BIM. In a way, the protectionism that is built into the AEC industries detracts greatly from everyone being able to really build, the very best they can build. And, that in a way is a shame [...]

Continued Rebellious Rantings About Retainage

It’s time to reopen this since it is an interesting topic, and one that people have a wide range of opinions on. The fact that “retainage” isn’t even recognized as a word by my spell checker ought to make you suspicious. And the fact that it sounds like a bad case of constipation ought to [...]