Membership chair's message
 

By George P. Gardner, state partnering coordinator, Virginia Department of Transportation

Inspiration at conferences!

By Matt Horvat, P.E., Industry Liaison

Conferences are to be a place to meet and discuss ideas. Prior to IIE's annual conference in May, I had thought that publishing in the proceedings was a big goal. It was the experience I was promised - a forum to talk over many ideas in the industrial engineering domain. I gained much from being with like minded individuals and presenting my interpretation than I ever would have had I only published.

During the conference I met a concrete contractor in a region not far from another who I know has experience with training within industry and lean construction. I was able to introduce them to each other. There were great discussions during the presentations and a lot to be learned from industrial engineering techniques being used and currently promoted in the construction industry.

Improving construction quality by combining three-dimensional models and visual recognition software

By William Croll, University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering

Announcement of student competition for presentation - 2012 Annual Conference, Orlando, Fla.

Thanks to the CONAM Group of Companies, we are pleased to announce the Student Paper Competition for 2011-12. The CONAM Group of Companies is a builder and developer of residential projects throughout the United States, and is sponsoring a student competition for papers and projects demonstrating or describing the use of industrial engineering tools in a construction environment.

Developing a sense of urgency

By Gary Orr

There are many maxims that warn us to put thought into design before we built.

• Putting the cart before the horse
• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
• A stitch in time saves nine
• Prevention is better than cure

Why then are performance (I.e., quality and productivity), maintenance and safety not considered on par with function in design? My experience has been that the design engineers spend most the budgeted time and money ensuring the design meets the operational criteria. We can all agree that a refinery that cannot produce gasoline or a paper mill that does not make paper the customer can use would be a disaster, but once the design budget is spent, then performance, maintenance or safety enhancements get shifted into the construction and operations budget. The construction manager of a new facility is already stretched to meet labor, overhead, raw material, transportation, start up and other costs.

To read more of this article, click here.

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Wanted: Construction articles for Industrial Engineer magazine 

The Construction Division invites members to submit articles on construction topics through our publications committee for publication in the monthly Industrial Engineer magazine. We would like to see IE-related articles about construction included in the Industrial Engineer magazine on a regular basis, and we are starting by determining which members are interested, and the topics that they would like to write about. At this point, we would just like to see a brief outline of the topic(s) that you wish to write about. Following that we plan to provide you with the detailed publication requirements, such as the format and length to be observed for each article. By working together, we can organize our articles in a sequence that will be most interesting and informative for our readers. Please contact our newsletter editor, Paula Eick.

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Wanted: International correspondents

The Construction Division has a special opportunity for members who wish to serve as international correspondents. Our members reside in several different regions of the world, and it is always refreshing and informative to hear what is going on in those countries with regard to the construction industry. We would appreciate hearing reports about construction in such regions as Canada, Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East, Africa, China, Indonesia, India, Japan, Australia and the Caribbean to name a few.

The Construction Division is committed to sharing knowledge and information among our members to enable us to have a significant positive impact on the Design and Construction industry in all regions of the world. You do not have to be a professional writer! Just give us the basic ideas and we can work with you to make their presentation as easy to read and interesting as possible.