ConstructConnect Blog

Building product manufacturers, take note. As the demand for delivering healthier buildings grows, there is a greater need for transparency in building products and materials. We spend about 90% of our time inside and building owners are looking for ways to make buildings healthier for occupants. Architects and specifiers need to be able to identify building products that are healthy, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.

As technology adoption continues to ramp up in the construction industry, one area getting a lot of attention is improving safety. A strong emphasis is on using wearables to monitor workers and their environment to make jobsite safer. Wearable tech in construction is being embedded into apparel and personal protective equipment (PPE) already common on construction sites like hard hats, gloves, safety vests and work boots.

Technology is constantly improving the way the construction industry operates. Smartphones and mobile apps have made communication and collaboration on projects easier. Building Information Modeling (BIM) improves project visualization, makes scheduling more efficient and reduces waste and rework.

So, you’re a general contractor bidding a project and the contract requires an MBE participation goal of 8% and you aren’t sure where to turn. Maybe you’re a minority or woman owned company working in the realm of the construction industry and want to find more work. Today we’re going to look at some of the various programs available for contractors, subcontractors and construction suppliers that are women and minority-owned business enterprises. We’ll discuss programs from the federal level all the way down to local municipalities.

By now we should all be familiar with OSHA’s Fatal Four in construction: falls, being struck by objects, electrocutions and being caught in or between objects. These are top four causes of construction worker deaths each year.

Heavy equipment is a necessity on nearly every construction project. Unfortunately, they can be extremely dangerous when not used properly. Rollovers, struck by accidents and caught in or between accidents are common ways workers can be injured when working on or near heavy equipment.

There’s no question that mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have made our lives easier. Mobile construction apps allow you to get instant access to project information in the field and communicate real-time data back to the office or your client.

It’s Friday, so we thought we’d have a little fun and take a look at some of the unique and out of this world skyscraper ideas we’ve come across lately. We’ll also discuss the probability of each being able to make the transition from vision to reality.

It’s Safety Week 2017 (May 1 – 5) for the construction industry, which focuses on the shared responsibility of jobsite safety. This year’s theme is "It's in Our Hands" to emphasize the responsibility each worker has not only for their personal safety but for those around them as well.

Project AME (Additive Manufactured Excavator), the world’s first 3D printed excavator, made its debut last week at the Tech Experience at CONEXPO-CON/AGG and IFPE 2017 in Las Vegas. The project was a collaboration between the Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (CCEFP), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and researchers and students from Georgia Tech, the University of Minnesota and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.