A longtime acquaintance recently started an engineering design firm, and he asked me and my staff at Engineered Efficiency to help him get their AEC technology up and running. Right now, his company is small and has a clean slate: they don’t have any bad…
Washington State Department of Transportation Uses 3D Immersive Visualization
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) Visual Engineering Resource Group (VERG) uses Bentley’s 3D immersive visualization software,…
Reality Modeling for Everyone
Highly Accurate Context from Simple Photography Before beginning any infrastructure project, a project team needs to survey existing conditions in order…
Augmenting Drone Videos could Facilitate Construction Monitoring
Augmented reality is a fascinating technology that could change the way we live and interact with the world that surrounds us. Unfortunately, we don’t see many good applications of AR in engineering yet, partly because achieving good visual integration of…
HDR Delivers Texas’ First Modern Streetcar System
The Union Station to Oak Cliff Dallas Streetcar TIGER Project is Texas’ first modern streetcar system. The project is a collaborative endeavor between the City of Dallas, North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG), Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART)…
Creating Real-time Navigable 3D Infrastructure Models
Designing successful infrastructure projects is one thing. Communicating and demonstrating those designs to clients and other stakeholders before construction is another. Bringing a design to life for people without a civil engineering background is always…
Rethinking Rail Signal Design
Global consulting engineering firm Hatch Mott MacDonald had used a conventional CAD-based system to design rail signal systems when serving its public and private clients around the world. However, this approach had serious limitations in an industry where…
Wetlands Worth their Weight
Monitoring, Managing and Protecting Ecological Powerhouses “Wetland” is a generic term covering a wide variety of habitats that are wet for at least some period of time each year, have vegetation, and have soils that are saturated long enough during the…
Infrastructure Showcase: ACI’s Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards
The American Concrete Institute (ACI) recognized 11 winners at its 2015 Excellence in Concrete Construction Awards Gala during the ACI Concrete Convention and Exposition held Nov. 9, 2015, in Denver. The awards honor the most-creative projects in the concrete…
Structural Solutions: Engineering without a Net
I was flipping around the cable channels a while back and happened across a show about “The Flying Wallendas.” I had heard of the Wallendas as a kid, but I didn’t realize they had been performing since the late 1700s, a remarkable seven generations.…
