Author: Constructech Editors

In the beginning, there was time sharing of computer resources. An IBM mainframe computer, located in an environmentally controlled room—somewhere—and multiple “green screen” monitors in restricted areas of the client company. Later there was client-server, a similar format but with the computer onsite, not miles away. Then the desktop PC came along and the buzzword was “networking.” Cables on the floor, on the ceiling, hanging from the rafters, all indicating the company was networked. If the cables didn’t go between the right computers, however, the option was “sneaker net,” where floppy discs were run—literally run in some cases—between computers by…

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Some call it “being woke.” Most think of it as being practical in this age of the impractical. It, in this case, is ESG investments. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance. ESG investing is a way of investing in companies based on their commitment to one or more ESG factors. It is often also called sustainable investing, socially responsible investing, and impact investing. The environmental factor might focus on a company’s impact on the environment, or the risks and opportunities associated with the impacts of climate change on the company, its business…

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New technology is often greeted with suspicion by its target market. Getting over the skepticism requires years in some cases all while the early adopters are gaining the benefits. Developers can field various ways to convince market leaders to try their technology, but demonstrations are probably the best method. That’s one reason trade shows are so popular: cruise the floor, check out the demos, and get hands-on experiences. Although heavy equipment manufacturers put on demonstrations in those same trade shows, the add-on suppliers—those with technologies that work with that equipment but are not vended by the OEMs (original-equipment manufacturers)—to make…

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The 2022 World Cup for Soccer—or football as it’s known outside of the U.S.—was held in Qatar. A small Middle Eastern nation, Qatar became the center of attention, in the sports world, for a few weeks. A neighbor, also on the Persian Gulf, is working hard to become the center of attention in business and commerce far into the future. If focusing on outstanding buildings and environmental concerns is the way to achieve that goal, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) should succeed. The largest city in the UAE is Dubai and it has transformed itself from a sleepy backwater desert town…

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Because things are getting more normal, more “post-pandemic” even though COVID is still around, people are responding by going out and, hopefully, looking at new homes. But some developments from the past three years are still valid, including virtual tours of homes—the Zoom factor from months and even years of stay-at-home work. For example, UTour is an on-demand interactive self-tour platform that homebuilders can implement in their model homes, or existing inventory, to provide the convenience homebuyers want and the data their sales teams need. The self-guided tour platform lets skeptical buyers personally explore new homes on their own terms…

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Construction has been, and perhaps will continue to be, on a rollercoaster ride for several years. COVID-19 has been a major downer, both for individuals and companies. Inflation and interest rate increases are causing more people to re-evaluate purchases, especially the largest one, a home. Residential construction is taking it on chin depending on where you live and commercial isn’t doing much better. The NAHB (National Assn. of Home Builders) lamented that rising mortgage rates approaching 7%, along with declining builder sentiment stemming from stubbornly high construction costs and weakening consumer demand, pushed new-home sales down at a double-digit rate…

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Space, besides being the next frontier, is running out in many in-demand areas. Housing starts are stuttering where people want to live, and when the land is that desirable, it’s also much more costly. With a national housing shortage estimated at four million homes, many areas are especially difficult for builders due to diverse local zoning and code requirements, skilled labor shortages, high labor costs, and/or short building seasons. All of which dictate tailored solutions. One approach is modular or prefabricated buildings. While site construction is custom, most modular buildings are assembled from a catalog of parts, like building an…

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What will it look like? Will it blend in? In the architect’s world, renderings show the proposed site after construction. Some are so detailed they are photographic in realization of the future. Now companies are developing AR (augmented reality) applications to do that job in real photorealism. inCitu is a New York City-based company that shows interested parties future physical developments via AR. The company enables public-facing AR visualizations of proposed and upcoming development projects and counts cities, real estate developers, technology companies, and other stakeholders as their future customers. Facing climate change, severe housing shortage, public health threats, mass…

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Residential real estate agencies have been using virtual tours of their properties for a while now and finding that they are popular with buyers who can visit homes at their leisure. Commercial agencies, however, are catching up with an estimated 75% of commercial real estate professionals already use virtual tours — and 90% of them will do so within the next two years. Those numbers come from a research report from Resonai, a computer vision and augmented reality company. The rapid adoption of virtual tours within the real estate industry is being driven by the technology’s impact on the bottom…

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Apparently, every good computer-based technology has a bad guy waiting to hack it. The infrastructure hacks of a few years ago, where ransomware was used to cripple Colonial Pipeline and JBS Foods, are samples of what can come. There are vulnerabilities in most IoT installations, commercial and consumer oriented, that are waiting for someone to find them. Worse, many government and commercial installations are dependent on “old tech” such as ICS (industrial control systems) that were developed two or three technology generations ago. Take EVs (electric vehicles) for example. In 2008, Tesla released its first models, targeting sales of 100…

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