Smart Chips

Project Managers:
Fran Rabuck, (215) 275-6061 or Francis.Rabuck@Bentley.com
Dan Slade, (281) 263-5630 or Daniel.slade@fluor.com

If you are a FIATECH member and would like to participate in this project, email us!

"KBR has been extremely pleased with the results of our participation in the Smart Chips Project." - Ross Porter, Manager, Emerging Technologies, KBR

Project Participants

Bentley Systems, Fran Rabuck
BP North America, Chatt Smith
California State Univeristy at Long Beach - Mike Gerry
Dow Chemical, Michael O'Neal
Dupont, Ray Walker
Florida International University, Heath Wiley (student member)
Florida State University, Amine Ghanem (student member)
Fluor Corporation, Gary Chanko, Dan Slade, Hubert Ausbie, Arletta Gavin-Jones, John Hendrix, Trung Le, Deepak Mandilwar, Chester Pruett, Dennis Smythe, Scott Hounsell, John Wadephul, Gary Westhoff, George Rollins & Michael King
Georgia Tech, Jochen Teizer
Hanyang University, Kyong-Min Min (student member)
Intel, Pete Rubino, Mike Alianza & Bob Predmore
Jacobs Engineering, Prabhakar Manickam
KBR, Ross Porter, John Goetz, Bob Gutierez, Scott Hersho, Alan Harbert, Larry McMourrough, Kenny Vrana, Rick Wakeland, Robert Erickson, Randy Beehn & Charles Wood
Meridian Systems, Bruno Berti
Penn State University, Vince Allen

student member

Portland State University, Christopher Garlick (student member)
Purdue University, Yu-Tzu Chen (student member)
RWTH Aachen University, Anica Meins-Becker (student member)
San Diego State University, Colin Milberg, Ph.D.
Smithsonian Institution, Stephen DeLoach
Target Corporation, Terry Breen
Texas A&M University, Jorge Vanegas & Julian Kang
University of Washington, Yong-Woo Kim, Ph.D., Carrie Sturts Dossick, Ph.D.
University of Waterloo, Carl Haas, Ph.D.
VTT, Arto Kiviniemi and Esa Nykanen
Zachry Construction, Todd Sutton

Overview

The Smart Chips project investigates commercial-ready and near-ready radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies that can be easily adapted for field construction and operations and maintenance applications.

Project Status

The project is entering its fourth year. See below for a list of deliverables from prior years. The Smart Chips project has conducted over 25 online informational workshops since its inception in the fall of 2003. The Smart Chips project has also planned, resourced, and completed eight in-field pilot tests of commercial-ready technologies in high-interest construction industry applications (see below).

"Working with the FIATECH Smart Chips Project allowed us to get first hand experience with a new technology at a fraction of the cost of doing it ourselves. We were able to move much faster on the learning curve than we would have otherwise." - Dr. Ignatius Chan, Senior Scientist, ChevronTexaco

Business Case

Smart Chip technology permeates modern consumer and industrial life and is providing real ROI in numerous industries. Many people perceive potentially valuable construction applications for the technology, but implementation in construction to date has been limited. The primary reasons for slow construction industry implementation are:

Fragmented Market for Construction Industry Applications - Chip and sensor development (design and production set up) has a relatively high fixed up-front cost. Developers need to perceive a large potential market in order to develop application specific chips. The construction industry is a large enough market to support such development, but individual construction related companies are not. Suppliers are faced with making a million sales of a few products rather than a few sales of millions of products. Also, the construction industry does not have a few very large industry leader companies with sufficient influence to dictate supply chain or industry consensus standards (e.g. Wal-Mart, Boeing, Ford/GM, etc.). As a result, the industry is slow to agree on standards necessary to attract high volume suppliers and drive down costs.

Technical Risks Unique to Construction and Facility Operations - For the reasons above, chip suppliers have not developed and marketed chip and sensor technology for construction specific uses and there are few examples of chip and sensors technology in widespread construction specific applications. While many technologies developed for other industries can be adapted to construction applications, the construction industry presents some unique technical challenges for such adaptation. As a result, both the technical feasibility in a construction/plant environment and the potential economic benefits of new technologies in construction/operating work processes are unproven.

Lack of Clear Industry Consensus as to What Applications Will Be Used - Because of industry fragmentation and the resulting lack of consensus standards development, the construction industry presents a relatively high risk and high fixed cost (development, marketing, etc.) market to suppliers. As a result, major technology suppliers are slow to develop, adapt, and market certain technologies (e.g. construction specific RIFD, sensors, to the construction industry.

As a result, much technology that is common in other industries is underutilized in construction applications and many potential benefits are not realized by individual companies or by construction industry as a whole.

As a collective effort of major US construction contractors and owners, the Smart Chips project participants present an attractive potential market for construction technologies and ideas. The project attracts top quality technologists, academics and technology users to support and inform all project activities. As a result, Smart Chips participants are able to learn about, test, and implement emerging RFID technologies much faster and at a lower cost than going it alone. Smart Chips participants can expect that the technologies they test and implement are more likely to be adopted by the larger industry, encouraging long-term product support and development and lower technology costs in the future.

"As a member of FIATECH and a sponsor of the Smart Chips / VET Project, ZCC has been kept informed of the latest technologies. The company has received the research, pilot programs results and has had the opportunity to collaborate on the implementation of these technologies with the other member organizations." - Todd Sutton, Business Unit Manager - Commercial Building Division, Zachry Construction Corporation

Project Participant Activities

This project conducts two principal activities annually:

Bi-monthly (six) informational webinars that inform and educate project participants on new construction technology RFID developments.
Realistic field pilot studies of commercial-ready RFID technologies - The pilot studies use commercial-ready technology adapted to construction and O&M applications and implemented in realistic field conditions. The project engages qualified academic observers to report pilot study results, and project participants are kept informed of study progress in online webinars, including in-depth Q&A with study hosts and technologists.

As a collective effort of major US construction contractors and owners, the Smart Chips project participants present an attractive potential market for construction technologies and ideas. Both the pilot studies and the workshops attract top quality technologists and academics to support and inform project activities in a non-marketing context.

During the FIATECH 2007 Member Meeting, the scope for the RFID Guidebook was agreed upon.

The RFID Guidebook will focus on “Gen 2” systems only for supply chain applications and will include the following details:

ROI, Cost Estimates and implementation models
Internationalization, regulatory issues and worldwide standards organizations
Related infrastructure and setup (wireless and wired)
Tags- measuring effectiveness and placement optimization. Tag vendors with a focus on tagging pipes and metal.
Printers – RFID (& BarCode) printing, vendors, tools and best practices
RFID Readers – Top readers reviewed, along with setup options and antenna configurations
Handheld Readers – testing & positioning
Software - All-in-one kits (slap-n-ship)
Interfaces to other systems
Infrastructure management (Network, Reader/Printer Administration, Security, QoS, Event Management)
Vendor list and RFID focus
Suggestions for start-up/pilots
Additional “smarts” - sensing

Our work at the Helsinki Summit with VTT and others will hopefully develop some future projects related to joint testing and funding for many projects, but specifically work on sensor technology.

An encouraging development in the wireless sensor space is the ratification of the Wireless HART standard. We had live demonstrations from Emerson in Minneapolis of this industrial-grade technology, and look forward to working on an interoperability challenge for Emerson and other interested Wireless Hart vendors.

Project Deliverables

>> Reports

Resources

Presentations

" A Strategic View of RFID in Construction," Tony Ardagh of RFID Centre Ltd, October 2007

"Profitably Applying 21st Century Technologies to Your Project," Engineering Contractors in Construction Conference - September 2006

"Technology Advances in Concrete Maturity," Smart Chips / VET Webinar - May 2006

"Smart Chips Project Overview," daraTECH, January 2005

"Delivery of Engineering Information to and from Operations and Maintenance: A FIATECH Industry Survey," daratech2003

"The Association for Automatic Identification and Data Capture Technologies," RFID and the Intelligent Jobsite Virtual Workshop

"RFID - 101," RFID and the Intelligent Jobsite Virtual Workshop

"Intermec," RFID and the Intelligent Jobsite Virtual Workshop

"Construction Technology Automation," Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site Workshop

"Virtual Construction," Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site Workshop

"Geometry-Based Modeling and Simulation of Construction Processes," Intelligent & Automated Construction Job Site Workshop

Articles

"RFID in Construction," CONSTRUCTECH, February 2008
"RFID in Construction ,"(Published by ERABUILD )
"Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look (with Video)", (Published by Popular Mechanics)
"An Introduction to RFID," (Published by COMIT)
"Rapid Site Set-Up," (Published by IT Construction Forum)
Xirrus Wi-Fi Reference Posters
RFID Case Studies (Published by RFID Centre, Ltd)

Related Organizations

International Business Association