CETI Award 2008

Jury

• Steve Makredes, Director, Construction, Target Corporation
• Sami Kazi, Ph.D., Chief Research Scientist, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
• Ed Koch, Construction Automation Specialist, Bechtel
• Tom Sawyer, Information Technology Editor, ENR
• Duane Toavs, Director, Ease of Use Center of Excellence, Emerson Process Management
• Iris Tommelein, Ph.D., Professor, University of California-Berkeley

2008 Recipients

Scenario-Based Project Planning Category

Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley IPD Team: Projects as Laboratories, Early Results from $320M Hospital Replacement Project

The Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley is a new 130-bed hospital. An integrated project delivery team (owner, design teams, general contractor, and trade partners) is working on designing and planning the $320 million project within an extremely accelerated schedule and aggressive budget targets. The team is utilizing lean design and construction project management methodologies enabled by emerging 3D virtual design and assembly technologies. Notable among those is Value Stream Mapping, which enables the team to visually represent its workflow processes and continuously look for opportunities to streamline them to deliver value faster, better, and less expensively.

Automated Design Category

Alliance Engineering: Fast-Track the World's Largest and Deepest Energy Projects with AVEVA PDMS

Alliance Engineering's impressive portfolio of projects includes some of the world's largest and most visible onshore, deep offshore, and floating production, storage and offloading projects. One example is the ConocoPhillips Magnolia TLP Project, the world's deepest TLP at the time of installation (August 2004; 4,744 foot depth). Alliance responsibilities included conceptual and detailed engineering and design, procurement, and fabrication and construction support. Alliance was also responsible for equipment layouts, piping design, stress analysis, piping isometrics, construction drawings, safety and materials handling, and operability (HAZOP) analysis.

Intelligent and Automated Construction Job Site Category

LATISTA Technologies: LATISTA Field

LATISTA Field is the first job-site total quality automation solution. With software specifically designed to run independently on a portable tablet PC in the field, users can enter construction issues directly into a database and organize results into reports. Owners can follow progress and performance and subcontractors can receive deficiency notifications faster and with more detail. On the Washington Nationals ballpark, Clark Construction used LATISTA Field to help manage its quality and punch list processes and expedite work onsite. Using LATISTA Field, Clark managed thousands of punch list issues, reduced issue resolution time from one week to two days, and reduced its transcription team by 50 percent.

New Materials, Methods, Products and Equipment Category

U. S. Army ERDC, ElectroTechCP, and the Structural Group: Electro-Osmotic Pulse Control of Moisture in Below-Grade Concrete Structures

EOP technology combines the novel application of an asymmetric, dual-polarity pulse and innovative ceramic-coated electrode materials. The basic research for optimizing the EOP process has led to significant advances in the field of electro-kinetics for systems containing multiple material interfaces. An ability to control seepage-related humidity permits mitigation of occupant health risks from mold, mildew, and bacteria, with associated health and lost work-time costs. A recent cost analysis for rehabilitating two identical basements at Fort Bragg, NC, using EOP and conventional methods, showed the cost of EOP to be $133/linear foot and the cost of conventional water intrusion rehabilitation to be $262/linear foot.

Technology and Knowledge-Enabled Workforce Category

FIGG: The New I-35W Bridge

Designed and built in 11 months, the new ten-lane interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has a 504-foot span across the Mississippi River. The bridge achieves the Minnesota Department of Transportation vision of safety, quality, and innovation through the use of sustainable materials and state-of-the-art technologies. The design/build team of Flatiron-Manson, JV, with FIGG as the bridge designer, led to the successful completion three months ahead of schedule. The 120 segments of the main span were assembled over the Mississippi River in just 47 days. Opened to traffic on September 18, 2008, the bridge is an example of rebuilding of America's infrastructure.

Life Cycle Data Management and Information Integration Category

ARX (Algorithmic Research): Braun Intertec Implementation of the CoSign Digital Signature Solution

Braun Intertec implemented the CoSign digital signature solution in order to facilitate secure collaborative work and streamline processes by allowing engineers to digitally sign e-drawings and other electronic documents. Since CoSign's signature verification does not entail any software installation on the receiving end, the company uses it in its communication with partners in addition to internal needs. Braun Intertec estimates its overall savings at over $100,000 in less than three years. The average cycle time for the delivery of one key report went from six weeks to three days and, in some cases, report turnarounds have been reduced from days to minutes.

Outstanding Student Researcher Category

Dr. Amir H. Behzadan, University of Michigan

An alternate approach of visualizing simulated operations is Augmented Reality (AR). It is used to create mixed views by combining real existing jobsite features with virtual 3D CAD models of construction resources. The AR-based methodology has two primary components: 1) ARVISCOPE, a general purpose AR animation authoring language; and 2) ROVER, a mobile computing AR hardware framework. When used together, they can create 3D AR animations of any length and complexity. ARVISCOPE takes advantage of advanced Global Positioning System (GPS) and orientation tracking technologies. This research concludes that the addition of contextual, computer-generated information spatially located relative to the user has significant potential for improving the performance of several scientific and engineering tasks.

Outstanding Early Career Researcher Category

Dr. Carlos H. Caldas, The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Caldas' current research efforts are: intelligent and automated construction job site, leveraging information technology to improve construction processes, and knowledge discovery and transfer techniques. His project portfolio has been supported by federal agencies, state departments, and industry consortiums, including FIATECH, CII, NIST, NSF, NIST, and TxDOT. One research project is identifying and validating initiatives, technologies, or methods that, if implemented, would result in significant improvements in craft productivity. Dr. Caldas is a past chair of the ASCE Technical Committee on Database and Information Management, a member of the ASCE Construction Research Council and the ASCE Technical Committee on Intelligent Computing, and serves on the CII Academic Committee.

Outstanding Researcher Category

Dr. Arto Kiviniemi, Olof Granlund

Arto Kiviniemi led the Finnish national technology program "VERA" with a budget of $62 million. The program established Finland's position as one of the leading countries in utilizing integrated BIM in Real Estate and Construction industry. He led the global development and deployment of the integrated BIM concept. Kiviniemi was a member of Industry Advisory Board and Technical Advisory Committee of CIFE 1999-2005, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the BuildingEnvelope.org project at Harvard University 2001-2004. In September 2008 Kiviniemi returned to the industry to lead BIM development and implementation in Finland's largest building services engineering company, Olof Granlund.