Earth Day 2021 & BuiltWorlds
This year’s Earth Day falls on Thursday, April 22nd. Now in its sixth decade of observation, Earth Day reminds us of the impact we have on the environment. Our vision here at BuiltWorlds is to leverage emerging technology to improve the way we build and the built world around us. This Earth Day, BuiltWorlds will be reviewing sustainability in infrastructure and the impact it has on the environment. To celebrate, we will be releasing member-only talks free to the public, pulled from our archives of over 500 BuiltWorlds videos from our Analyst Calls, Summits, and Conferences.
The $2T Infrastructure Proposal
Many within the construction industry are closely watching the proposed $2 trillion ($2,000,000,000,000) infrastructure plan. That’s twelve zeros. This proposal outlines plans to improve the infrastructure of our communities. This would have a far-reaching impact from roads to buildings, housing developments to power grids.
Crucial considerations in this plan are clean energy grids, sustainability initiatives, and green building materials for infrastructure. It is oft-discussed that construction and buildings are contributors to pollution. This Earth Day, considering this unprecedented infrastructure proposal, we would like to look at what advice our expert community has regarding how to best build tomorrow’s infrastructure today, sustainability in mind.
Credit: SOM
Sample Discussion – How Master City Planner Phil Enquist Approaches Responsible Urban Design
Phil Enquist resides at the vanguard of city planning. As a partner of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s Global City Design Practice, one of the world’s most awarded urban planning groups, Enquist and his studio have improved the quality and efficiency of city living on five continents by creating location-unique strategic designs that integrated nature and urban density within a framework of future-focused public infrastructure. Before he was nominated for a Mavericks Award at the ’18 BuiltWorlds Summit in April, at our Cities Conference, he delved into the planning and development of China’s Chongming City and SOM’s approach to the ecology of a city.
2020 Infrastructure Conference – Israel’s Transportation Innovation Ecosystem
Upgrading legacy infrastructure and integrating new technology is a global challenge. In this session, a preview of the kinds of talks we will be hosting in our Global Summit in October, we will examine Israel’s approach to smart infrastructure development. Yogev Katzir, Managing Director of leading Israeli construction tech incubator and accelerator, InfraLab, founded by Enel, the world’s largest energy infrastructure company, and Shikun & Binui, Israel’s leading Construction and Infrastructure Group will sit down with Tomer Jakov of Advanced Solutions Road Systems (Derech Eretz Group) and Hilla Haddad of Netive Israel – National Transport Infrastructure Company to discuss different approaches to infrastructure technology investment and development in and from Isreal’s vibrant tech and industry ecosystem.
2020 BuiltWorlds Summit – Innovation in Heavy Infrastructure
Technology is changing how we design, build, operate, and maintain the built world’s infrastructure assets. Hear from a key stakeholder in the heavy civil space to discuss the innovative practices he’s implemented to drive efficiency across a number of projects. We hear about Vinci’s use of BIM in infrastructure for coordination between trades. We also hear about how they developed their own software for analyzing rebar and its density, especially as they examine what it looks like in concrete and how they leverage BIM to respond to owner’s needs, balancing putting models together during construction relative to quality and inspections linked to the model and to help create an easy reference for owners for maintenance, while avoiding too much complexity.
Specifically, Christian Tricoire, CEO of Vinci Construction, tells us about his use of Six Sense Systems to manage projects like their $5.8 billion light rail project in London to do things such as evaluating the noise limit requirement on projects before starting work so they can develop alternative approaches. In London, they were able to use Six Sense to arrive at appropriate noise mitigation solutions. He gave us another case study of a proactive assessment they were able to conduct to plan for an explosives operation in relation to a project near a theater in the US.
On the Autonomous equipment front, he highlighted work in tunneling and mining and certain excavation activities where they are leveraging autonomous equipment that can work 24/7, even if at a slower rate to complete work more quickly. He also spoke about GPS II technology to manage the fleet on site. In Norfolk, they will be using a tunnel boring machine with the software they have developed linked to GPS to provide them with mobile access to the productivity and pace of excavation.
2018 Analyst Call – How Our Cities of Tomorrow Will Look
A visionary trio of minds, Paul Doherty, John Tolva, and Peter Ellis sought to flip the script in order to make our concrete jungle less concrete and more jungle.
Earth Day, Sustainability, & Infrastructure
With so much attention paid to the $2T infrastructure plan, the construction industry is evaluating how to best proceed. Indeed, how contractors calibrate their ability to meet the sustainability initiatives baked into the proposal will play a large role in determining who thrives and who struggles in the upcoming decade. Learn more about how BuiltWorlds’ community of experts can position your firm to be successful in times of rapid change. To learn more about infrastructure and changes the industry is embracing to be successful, sign up for our 2021 Infrastructure Conference.
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