The CEO Series Continues: Excerpts from an Interview with Esri President Jack Dangermond: The Convergence of AEC and GIS
In November 2019, Informed Infrastructure Editorial Director Todd Danielson interviewed Esri President Jack Dangermond at the Autodesk University (AU) Conference in Las Vegas. The full interview video (above) also can be viewed at bit.ly/2VTPr4q, but we wanted to include some excerpts in this issue. Danielson: Tell me about the partnership between Esri and Autodesk. Dangermond: Several years ago, Autodesk executives and myself got together, and we thought we should re...
Ten Years After the Haiti Earthquake: How Building Disaster-Resilient Structures Can Lift a Nation
Image: Port-au-Prince, Haiti, suffered massive destruction from an earthquake in 2010. By Kit Miyamoto, Ph.D., S.E., and Lucienne Cross In 20 years of responding to earthquakes as a structural engineer, I have never seen destruction such as I witnessed in Haiti a decade ago. Traveling through the wreckage of Port-au-Prince just days after the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, I saw a hellish landscape: people digging through concrete for missing family, twisted metal, cars squashe...
Deliberate Clashing in Urban Infill Projects
A partial 3D axonometric section shows the representation of an existing railyard with a structural platform built around it as well as the potential massing of a building above. All geometry was created within either AutoCAD or Revit and then imported into Navisworks. As urban populations grow and demand for housing increases, vacant or underutilized land is at a premium, leading to a rise in urban infill projects. Whenever the needs of a dense population change drastically in a shor...
It’s the Thought That Counts: Simple Tools (Like Hand Sketches) Can Help Create Better Designs
Publisher’s Note: I met structural engineer Clark Baurer when I served as a juror for the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois’ (SEAOI) Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards Competition—his elegant and innovative structural renovation of Chicago’s Theater on the Lake won the Lavicka Award for Small Firm/Small Project up to $2 million. The project hit a sweet spot for me: repurposing an old structure as well as a complicated structural challenge. Clark’s use of hand drawings was an...
Cracks in the Road: Resolving Unintentional Maintenance Impacts on a Residential Development
All residential development projects encounter problems and complications. Some are expected, but most are not. The Summerlake subdivision in Wintergarden, Fla., required maintenance and mitigation due to unexpected construction delays that allowed cracks to form in the roadways. The following article looks at how these problems were identified, evaluated and mitigated using geotechnical engineering and drainage technologies. In early 2008, the internal roadway within the Summerlake subdivisi...
Reflecting History in the Present and Future: Redeveloping and Preserving the Old Sacramento Waterfront District
Ever since the planting of Sacramento at the confluence of two mighty rivers, she has had to fight for existence with an energy and constancy which have developed her nerve and muscle and proved her vitality beyond that of any city of modern times.” - The Sacramento Bee, Dec. 11, 1861 A painting shows Sutter’s Fort circa 1849. A photo shows the Old Sacramento Waterfront District Embarcadero today. Almost from its inception, the people of Sacramento have...
Subway Station Modernization: Design-Build Team Upgrades Six NYC-Area Transit Stations
In two projects, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and a design-build team of Urbahn Architects, HAKS (now Atane Consulting) and Citnalta-Forte Construction completed renovations to six subway stations as part of MTA’s multiple-station renovation program throughout the city. MTA’s renovation program is the first design-build contract in the subway system’s history. The logistics of the project were creative as well, as MTA was, for the first time, closing one...
Excerpts from an Interview with the CEOs of Bentley Systems and Topcon
In October 2019, Informed Infrastructure Editorial Director Todd Danielson went to Bentley Systems’ Year In Infrastructure conference in Singapore. While there as an award juror for the Buildings and Campuses category, he was able to interview Greg Bentley and Ray O’Connor (above), the CEOs of Bentley Systems and Topcon Positioning Systems, respectively, about their companies and the joint venture they launched at the event: Digital Construction Works Incorporated (DCW). Danielson: How did...
Distributed Water Management Marks A New Way Forward
For more than 100 years, the United States has relied on an ever-growing massive network of centralized water-treatment facilities. This is the standard model for both public and private investment. As a result, more than 85 percent of the U.S. population is served by large number of “mega water systems” with capacities greater than 1 million gallons per day (bit.ly/2yVwovI). Centralized Networks In Trouble But aging water infrastructure is forcing these utilities to spend more each y...
A Cool-Looking Chiller: New Core Infrastructure at UMass Amherst Is Sustainable, Educational and Beautiful
The northwest corner of the chiller plant shows rhythmical façade patterns in channel glass and metal panels above ground level. Oxford’s “dreaming spires” (subject of the famous poem), Harvard’s Widener Library (home to one of the world’s few perfect Gutenberg Bibles), the University of Michigan’s 102-year-old Michigan Union, and Bard College’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (a $62 million, acoustically tuned and geothermally heated Frank Gehry masterpiece); for several centu...
Video: New Roundabout Under Construction at McIver and Old Florence Roads in Darlington County
Promenade at The Point
June Issue 2026
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