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Driving toward a new tomorrow

November 15, 2017 by 1 Comment

Driving toward a new tomorrow
3dprinter

As we approach 2020, 3-D printing will become more prevalent in construction. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Change is inevitable. You can either sit back and let the chips fall where they may, or you can step up, take charge and make change happen. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’ve never been one to sit back.

The construction industry is plagued by a slow rate of change. Productivity in construction has remained flat while other sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing and technology, have seen exponential productivity growth. Dr. Barbara Bryson, author of The Owner’s Dilemma: Driving Success and Innovation in the Construction Industry, drove this point home at a recent gathering when she said, “There’s a freight train of disruption headed our way so designers, builders and owners better change the way they work, and fast.”

At McKinstry, we want to be driving that freight train and are preparing to do so. I’m personally inspired and energized by the innovations we see on the horizon in the next five, 10 and 15 years. These innovations will significantly reframe how we design, build and operate the built environment, and will define the cities of the future. McKinstry is already hard at work defining our pathway to this future.

Let me share with you some of the ground-shaking trends we see roaring down the tracks.

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Filed Under: Big Ideas, Home, Technology Tagged With: Adaptive Reuse, Building Technology, Cross-Laminated Timber, Future, Innovation, Modular, Modularization, Robotics, Smart Buildings, Technology

How to make smart buildings

November 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

At McKinstry, we think about smart buildings all the time.

Whether we’re working in factories, offices, or schools, our core goal is always the same: making the built environment more efficient and less siloed.

A building or space can be “smart” in many different ways, but the smartest buildings are usually extremely efficient. How, then, should building owners and operators strive to make their buildings smarter and attain that efficiency?

Recently, we produced a video that answers that very question:

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Filed Under: Better Buildings, Big Ideas, Home Tagged With: Building Technology, Energy Efficiency, Smart Buildings, Smart Grid, Smart Meters, Technology

Why (and how) the construction industry needs to embrace big data

August 13, 2015 by 1 Comment

Why (and how) the construction industry needs to embrace big data
BigDataPhoto

Photo by Torkild Retvedt, via Flickr.

While building systems and technologies are capitalizing on opportunities to take advantage of the current technological revolution, the construction industry mainly continues to lag behind more advanced, innovative approaches used by other industries to leverage the most out of big data resources.

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Filed Under: Better Buildings, Big Ideas, Home, Technology Tagged With: Analytics, Big Data, Building Technology, Construction, Energy, Facility Services, IT, Self-Service Analytics

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