Author: Peggy Smedley
What lies ahead as we move forward toward a quantum era? This is the question one new report looks to answer. Riverlane announced its 2024 Quantum Error Correction Report, which aims to provide an understanding of the current state of QEC (quantum error correction) development and the opportunities and challenges ahead. This guide draws on public data from 29 hardware companies, including interviews with 12 global industry experts. Let’s take a look at the state of quantum today, starting with this report and looking at other recent news. Here’s what we know. In 2024, QEC gained significant momentum as big…
We are at an interesting convergence in the construction industry today. Projects are becoming more complex, as the need for sustainability and resiliency puts new requirements on projects. All this comes amid overarching labor shortages and ongoing supply-chain disruptions that are causing the construction industry to reconsider how to be more productive. Enter digital transformation, which is no longer a nice-to-have, it is a must-have on today’s construction projects. I unpack some of the biggest trends facing the construction industry today in a discussion I had with Paul Connell, senior strategy and enablement consulting lead, Hexagon and Mark Mehta, senior…
If there is anything I have learned in my almost three decades of covering data/digital transformation, M2M, the IoT (Internet of Things), and the AI (artificial intelligence) space, it is that we must embrace technology or be left behind. Industries today must recognize gen AI and LLMs (large language models) bring huge opportunities, but they must also proceed in a way that is ethical and secure. It is a very fine line that enterprises and companies of all sizes must walk today, but the good news is the technologies are emerging, transforming our ability to communicate and collaborate. Last week,…
The opportunities gen AI (artificial intelligence) brings to most industries are significant—dare we say remarkable? But let’s be clear, there are still some challenges. For example, most LLMs (large language models) are trained on publicly available data and the vast majority of enterprise data remains untapped, and much work needs to be done to address this. And again, dare we say address this sooner, rather than later? Enter Granite 3.0, IBM’s third-generation Granite flagship language models, which was announced earlier this week at IBM’s second annual TechXchange event. By combining a small Granite model with enterprise data, especially using the…
National Nanotechnology Day was October 9, and the 2024 NIOSH Nanotechnology Health and Safety Summit was last week. Nanotechnology offers a lot of opportunities for several industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, energy, automotive, and a few others. But let’s not put the cart before the horse. And as much as we all want to start celebrating, we still need to climb some tall mountains that are more than creating a few hurdles now. Following the development of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in 2000, the United States has been investing in nanotechnology, with the total proposed investment reaching $2.2 billion in…
We have come a long way with safety. If you journey back to the year 1960 and walked a construction jobsite, you would see very different work conditions than you see today. Hard hats were not mandatory yet and PPE (personal protective equipment) wasn’t the common three-letter jobsite acronym that it is today. Workers would be hanging from the top of buildings, with little gear to protect them. We have certainly come a long way, right? Yes and no. The reality is every year, one in 100 construction workers still get hurt bad enough to need time off work. We…
Construction is an industry that is best served when individuals learn from a mentor. Here’s what is really happening behind the scenes. In a blog I wrote over at Constructech, I noted two things can be true at the same time: a shortage of construction workers and so much ridiculous infrastructure that needs to be built. If I had a nickel, okay a $1, for every time I talked about this worker shortage issue in the last decade, I would bet we could have enough money to seriously assemble some cool people to mentor middle managers and help skill tomorrow’s…
The digital twin offers big opportunities for the construction industry, and it will change how contractors construct cities, buildings, homes, and infrastructure for many years to come. To help, the ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) has released a report, Digital Twins in Construction and the Built Environment. The objective is to provide practical implementation strategies, while addressing the challenges of moving to an increasingly digital built environment. It digs into predictive maintenance, examples such as digital twin-enabled health monitoring of construction workers, and it also explores how BIM (building information modeling) can be integrated with digital twins for enhanced…
The manufacturing industry is facing a labor shortage—which is expected to have a significant impact on productivity and output for more than 39% of organizations throughout the next five years, according to research by Visual Components. This has been a big concern for many manufacturers for many years. In fact, The Manufacturing Institute suggests 78% of companies have even heightened concerns about this trend, with 75% struggling to fill roles. This is just not fodder for my column every week. What can be done? A lot. First and foremost, this should be a concern for every manufacturing executive in every…
In last week’s blog, I walked through many of the important questions we need to be asking before we make a big technology investment: who, what, when, and why? Once we address those, a bigger question becomes more prominent: the how? That’s right! Now we are critical juncture of asking how do we implement this technology? What key steps do we take? Answering this question is a bit more complicated but is critical to a successful technology implementation. Let’s assume you already know you are going to implement a piece of technology. You recognize there is a need inside your…