SPARK

Discoveries, innovations, and insights that illuminate the future of the built environment

The Connected Jobsite: Get Online or Get Left Behind

by Leave a Comment

Brian Antonsen is McKinstry’s vice president of Washington mechanical construction.

To thrive in today’s digital world, the construction industry must think differently and recognize transformative opportunities to create value through emerging technologies. 

The construction industry, like so many others, is contemplating how to best integrate the latest technologies while redefining what it means to be “connected” on the jobsite. To understand this, we must start by looking at what’s driving technology across all personal and professional applications — wider integration of wireless communications (including both Wi-Fi and cellular), the next generation of cellular technology (5G) and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. Futurists and industry visionaries are all saying the same thing, “5G and IoT will radically transform our lives.” 

Using this context, we can now take that same technology landscape and bring it down to the construction level. Recently, there’s been a big push to adopt jobsite technology — particularly drones and machine learning. Most of it requires sensors to communicate with other systems in the network, function properly, deliver accurate data and carry out their operations. 

The opportunities created by this kind of technology will shape where the construction industry is going. Imagine having access to real-time insights tracking project schedules, milestones and budgets. As construction projects become increasingly connected, contractors will be able to harness the data available from sensor-rich construction sites and use it to perform big data analytics and machine learning — allowing them to analyze and optimize a construction jobsite. 

This reality is a lot closer than you might think. Believe it or not, this sort of intel, enabled by connected jobsite technology, will be at our fingertips within the next three to five years.

Read Brian’s full column at PHCP Pros.

FacebookTwitterLinkedInGoogle GmailPocketGoogle+Share

Celebrating Earth Day every day

by 1 Comment

michaelfrank_earthday_2019

For Michael Frank, McKinstry’s VP of Engineering & Design, Earth Day is a reminder of personal and professional passion for sustainability.

Every year, Earth Day mobilizes millions of Americans to serve our planet. I’m fortunate to work for a company that celebrates Earth Day each day through the work we do to make every building we touch more efficient. I joined the company more than 19 years ago because my personal passions aligned so well with the company’s values, and I’ve never looked back. To put that statement into context, when I was interviewing, I was wrapping up a thesis design project for a heat recovery system at the Staten Island Ferry System in Manhattan to use the Hudson River as a heat source/sink. Fast forward to today and I’m still designing alternative solutions for energy use such as an eco-district to serve our first zero-energy building, Catalyst, and others on the South Landing campus in Spokane.

I care deeply about our planet, and I’ve been told that sometimes my passion for the environment may come across as extreme. I’ll take that as compliment! So maybe it’s true that I take an air quality monitor on vacation. And maybe I build bee houses every spring with my daughters for one of our native pollinators, the mason bee. Would you be surprised to know, or should I be embarrassed to say that I make sure misplaced recycling finds its way into the appropriate bins at home?

My “extreme” passion for our environment carries over into my work every day where I have the opportunity to innovate with teams to make better decisions that meet current building needs while advocating for the next generation.

[Read more…]

Building a “happy place”

by Leave a Comment

Take a moment to close your eyes and picture your “happy place.” Perhaps you’re floating in a lake or hiking through the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Let your imagination open your senses and become fully immersed in that setting. Now—open your eyes. Were you imagining yourself indoors or outside?

doyle_andie


Andie Doyle.

At a recent conference I attended, a panelist asked the audience this question. It was during a Smart Home lecture, and—even then—80 percent of the participants said their happy place was outside.

This highlights a major opportunity within the building industry: To make indoor spaces happier and more desirable. It’s vital for construction industry leaders to work alongside technology innovators and service providers to change the optics of how a person interacts with their surroundings.

As of now, there’s no single industry or company with the resources or motivation to create a seamlessly integrated and connected experience for people. Consider, for example, the following hypothetical living and working situation.

[Read more…]

Jobsite Efficiency Starts with Supply Chain Optimization

by Leave a Comment

Brian Antonsen is McKinstry’s vice president of mechanical construction.

Construction superintendents and foremen carry tremendous responsibility in ensuring work quality, project schedules and budgets. That responsibility involves day-to-day workflow as well as looking into the future to stay three steps ahead of work crews.

Evaluating supervisors’ day-to-day work, however, tells a much different story. It quickly becomes clear how much of their workday is spent fighting small emergencies to keep everyone on the jobsite working efficiently. That’s not because skilled tradespeople aren’t working hard, but because of the sheer number of inefficiencies in the traditional supply chain.

Read more at PHCP Pros.

2019 WIC Week: Women building innovation through education

by Leave a Comment

ravenwiley_wic

Raven Wiley, pictured here on the roof of Kilgore College’s B.E. Masters Gymnasium.

For this year’s Women in Construction Week (WIC Week), we’re exploring the many ways in which women build innovation at McKinstry. For Raven Wiley (pictured above), education has been key to developing her career. Raven is currently a commissioning intern in our Dallas office through McKinstry’s B.L.U.E. Internship Program, and she’s studying Instrumentation & Electrical Technology at Kilgore College while also working on McKinstry’s energy efficiency project at the very same college.

We recently spoke to Raven about her internship, what drew her to McKinstry, what it’s like to be a woman in construction, and much more. Here are excerpts from that interview:

[Read more…]

2019 WIC Week: Women building innovation through apprenticeship

by Leave a Comment

wic_apprenticescollage

From L to R: Michelle, Emily, Mariss, Keyla and Ashley.

For this year’s Women in Construction Week (WIC Week), we spoke with five women—Michelle Wilson, Emily Orona, Mariss Stevens, Keyla Santiago and Ashley Fortune—who work as apprentices in the construction trades for McKinstry.

For those who are unfamiliar, apprenticeship is a system in which workers train on-the-job—earning wages and doing productive work—while also taking courses and mastering their craft. At McKinstry, apprentices on jobsites perform vital work and apprenticeship programs are a valuable source of jobsite innovation.

Below are excerpts from interviews with these five apprentices:

[Read more…]

Celebrating women building innovation

by Leave a Comment

Mobile

This week marks two important events: Women in Construction Week, which works to raise awareness for the equal role women play in our industry; and International Women’s Day, which celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

cherylwebsitephotoAt McKinstry, we aspire to a world where there is gender equity in all aspects of the construction industry. This means plumbers and pipefitters, sheet metal workers and site superintendents, project engineers and designers. We know that women and men can work together and thrive in all parts of the industry – helping us to build a more innovative, inclusive, creative, and robust future of construction.

As a leader in the built environment, McKinstry strives each day to innovate, engineer and deliver the best solutions that drive waste from the construction industry, improve buildings and decrease energy consumption. We steadfastly believe that one of the most important enablers of innovation is diversity and inclusion. Diverse ideas, backgrounds, experiences, identities and more help us to think differently and push boundaries. Research has found this to be true – companies with more diverse teams are more profitable, more successful and more innovative.  However, the key to unlocking these perspectives is creating an environment where each person feels they belong and has a voice.  

[Read more…]

Condition data can fix capital plans

by Leave a Comment

Every facility management organization has horror stories of late-night repairs or equipment failures on the worst day of the year. Teams scramble to fix the problem and work overtime to get the building back up and running.

Nobody enjoys working reactively. But small teams, tight budgets, big workloads, daily issues and a growing backlog of deferred maintenance force most facility operations teams to prioritize emergencies over prevention. This resource-constrained world is the constant reality for facility management, and it’s unlikely anyone will start being asked to do less with more any time soon.

Organizations that efficiently use what they already have, value the time and expertise of their facility teams, and look around the corner can thrive in this world of scarcity. One common factor in their success? These best-in-class organizations rely on thoughtful capital plans to help them reduce the likelihood of unexpected failures – and they use facility condition assessment information to get them there.

[Read more…]

Building a thriving planet in 2019…and beyond

by 1 Comment

dean2019kickoff_sparkimage

February is already upon us and McKinstry’s work on projects across the country is in full swing. I’m proud to say that our platform provides unique opportunities for us to explore, invent and create an ever more efficient built environment.

That efficiency takes many forms if you’re building a 40-story skyscraper, retrofitting an elementary school or servicing a boiler. But, the underlying need is always the same: Today’s built environment costs more than it should to build, operate and maintain.

There’s no shortage of strategies for making the built environment more efficient, and—when you consider that construction is one of the least productive sectors of the U.S. economy—there’s also no shortage of opportunity. So, what will this new paradigm of efficiency look like for McKinstry in 2019 and beyond?

[Read more…]

Steve Leonard grows McKinstry’s fire protection capabilities across the Pacific Northwest

by Leave a Comment

steveleonardpic

Back in the late 1980s, Steve Leonard was living in Southern California and thought he wanted to work for a fire department, maybe as a firefighter. When a friend asked if he would consider working in fire protection design, it changed Steve’s direction and sent him off on a 30-year journey into the world of fire protection.

“No one is born with a passion for sprinklers or alarms, it’s usually a series of twists and turns that bring people into the fire protection industry,” Steve explained. “I didn’t think about fire protection when I was a kid, but I’m glad that my career path led me into this field.”

At McKinstry, we’ve offered fire protection services for decades because identifying and installing the right protection system to prevent or reduce fire damage is fundamental to every project we undertake. McKinstry has built a national reputation for designing and installing fire protection systems for a wide variety of venues—from office, retail, and hotel buildings to stadiums, laboratories, and museums. Owners and designers come to McKinstry for our expertise on systems, costs, and knowledge of all current fire codes and compliance standards for the National Fire Protection Association.

Steve’s fire protection path has been extremely unique at McKinstry. Since joining the company in 2010, he’s lived and worked in three of McKinstry’s major Pacific Northwest offices—Portland, Spokane and Seattle.

“I sometimes joke that I’ve completed the trifecta,” Steve said. “Working in three of our Pacific Northwest offices has been a pleasure, and they all have a different atmosphere that’s still connected by the common McKinstry culture.”

[Read more…]

Archives

Follow McKinstry