Letters from Smart Engineering 2021 Issue
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Future Forward Full Interview: Lobbying for the Future of Engineering
Linda Bauer Darr is president and CEO of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). V1 Media: Please briefly summarize the ACEC, what it does, as well as your role in the organization. Darr: The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) is the voice of the business of engineering. We have approximately 5,500 firms that we represent, mostly in the civil engineering space, infrastructure, buildings, facilities, just a whole range of things that are in the built environm...
How to Manage Routine Maintenance Work on a Busy Construction Site
With multiple contractors and disciplines working separately yet simultaneously, a construction site can be a hectic place. It can be difficult for a construction manager to keep up with everything that’s happening, including budget, schedule adherence, safety hazards, material inventory, labor availability and more. Maintenance may not always be at the forefront of a manager’s mind, but a poor maintenance program can sink a construction project. In fact, each of the worries previously listed a...
Dubai: Mapping the Smart Path to Happiness
The city of Dubai takes its smartness and its happiness very seriously. In fact, happiness is the stated end goal of all the ambitious and clever initiatives the city launched since the start of its Smart Dubai program in 2013. The all-encompassing strategy influenced the creation of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first-ever Minister for Happiness and Wellbeing, and it’s ultimate aim is to transform Dubai into the smartest and happiest city on Earth. A significant part of Smart Dubai has been...
Automation Is Coming to Your CMT Lab
In the field, technicians sample fresh concrete and cast cylinders to cure in the testing lab. Specimens tagged by hand. Results written on clipboards. Data entered, line by painstaking line. Materials testing has always been overly manual. Then COVID-19 happened. The traditional construction materials testing (CMT) workflow is, unequivocally, a human-dependent process. Humans write things down. Humans hand things off. Humans read what’s been recorded by other humans. Pretty much every st...
Digital Twins: Cutting Through the Hype From Concept to Operations
A digital twin of a pump room and its operations dashboard. (KCI Technologies, Inc.) The Future, Now In a brand-new highrise office building in the heart of Chicago, a facility-maintenance manager gets a notice on her cellphone that a pump is operating outside its normal parameters. After reviewing the pump specs on the mobile dashboard, she notes a failure is imminent and shuts down the pump. Viewing a 3D model of the pump room, she notes the location, model number and warranty informati...
Future Forward: Lobbying for the Future of Engineering
Linda Bauer Darr is president and CEO of the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC). The ACEC represents approximately 5,500 firms, associations and organizations in the civil engineering and infrastructure space. It works to market its members as well as lobby local, state and federal government to demonstrate the value and “essentiality” of engineering. “Lobbying is the government form of marketing,” explains Darr. She believes engineers, by nature, tend to be “joiners,” and...
Code Update: Updates to ACI 301-20: Specifications for Concrete Construction
In October 2020, the American Concrete Institute (ACI) published ACI 301-20: “Specifications for Concrete Construction,” which expanded and revised many of the requirements in previous versions of the standard. A notable change was the specification’s title (previously ACI 301-16: “Specifications for Structural Concrete”). The new title recognizes that the specification covers diverse topics, including industrial floor slabs and architectural concrete as well as the minimum requirements of ACI 3...
Executive Corner: Back in the Saddle for the AEC Industry
It’s hard to believe we’ve crossed the one-year milestone of the global coronavirus pandemic. Populations have endured and adapted to the day-to-day changes in societal norms, business practices and lifestyle patterns. As we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel, many important macro forces and challenges are reshaping our industry in dynamic ways. Will these be temporary or permanent? Beneficial or detrimental? Recent conversations with dozens of AEC leaders offered insights into what...
From the Editor: Smart Engineering Urgently Needed to Improve Our Infrastructure
The American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) recently published its “report card” for America’s infrastructure. I read through the summary, and this is what I learned: We received an overall grade of C-. That’s an improvement from D+ in 2017, but not much of an improvement, especially when the total investment gap grew to more than $2.5 trillion through the next 10 years. The United States scores mediocre at best (and we’re the ones doing the scoring). Of the 17 categories graded, the best w...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
TriMet’s Banfield Type 1 Substation Replacement Project
February Issue 2026
