Opening Keynote Panel
The fall show is the poor cousin to AEC Systems. Directed at contractors, the fall event is many times smaller than the June event. Fewer people attend just because it's in Anaheim; east coast shows have higher attendance figures. I had been given the honor to host the show's opening keynote panel, titled "e-Transformation of the Construction Industry." Joining me on the stage were:
Each had five minutes to talk about their company's software
offering, followed by the opportunity to answer my question, "What
has your firm done to prepare in the event that the client's data,
stored on your server, becomes unavailable due to: (1) Internet
congestion; (2) disaster; or (3) bankruptcy?" Briefly,
the answers were:
Q1: Internet congestion is an offshoot of technology, no
different than an ATM cash machines going down and electrical
brownouts or blackouts. It is something you have to plan around.
Often, the congestion is at the client end (slow Internet connection),
or somewhere along the path that the data takes. At the server
end, vendors have to ensure that they have sufficient capacity;
one vendor boasted at their servers are running at just 10% -
35% capacity.
Q2: Vendors guard against disaster (earthquake, flooding,
etc) through data redundancy, storing mirror copies of data in
multiple locations.
Q3: Since most vendors are privately owned, we can't get
a true picture of their financial status. Some vendors boasted
of their longivity, such as Bentley's 13 years All warned against
using free services -- how can a company survive without a cash
flow?
Two
Additional Panels
Just 24 hours before leaving for Anaheim, AEC Systems asked me to take over two additional panel sessions. The original moderator, Joe Stoddard, had suffered a death in his family, but fortunately had prepared excellent notes for me. Joining me for the "Asset Tracking" vendor panel were:
"Assets" include both personnel and equipment. Panelists
generally agreed that mission critical applications should use
mobile scanning (bar codes), biometrics (handprints), and teletracking
(use a phone to enter data and caller ID). GPS has its drawbacks,
such not working as inside of buildings, where wireless Internet
works better, using triangulation by cell towers to get the accuracy
of GPS. In the future, wireless Internet access will be the norm;
on-board computers keep track of systems, such as oil levels.
The "Estimating and Bidding for Highway/Site Contractors" panel consisted of:
Panelists agreed that the Internet is here to stay, but is not the grandest solution for bidding. Biding and pricing is the most secret part of a contractor's business, but the Internet puts it out for the whole world to see -- therefore, contractors are reluctant to use it for estimating. A common sense approach uses the Internet for email, researching equip and material, procurement where delivery is not important, finding dot jobs, electronically delivery invitation to bid to subcontractors. The Internet is useful for remote access, bid solicitation, and invitation to bid. GPS is useful to heavy earthwork to help improve accuracy of earthwork estimates. The audience stayed well after 1-1/2-hour session officially ended, continuing to ask questions of the panelists.
On
the Show Floor
Due to my busy speaking schedule, I had only an hour to spend on the show floor. Here are some of my notes:
@Last: A number of CAD programmers got together in Boulder CO to create (yet another) easier-to-use 3D CAD sketching program. Calling themselves @Last Software, they created SketchUp and unveiled the software at the show. President Brad Schell gave me the demo, which reminded me a lot of John Lynch's 3D drawing software. This software, however, is purely meant for easily creating 3D architectural concept drawings. It even includes a real-time "jiggle" mode (similar to the popular Squiggle software) that changes CAD's perfect lines into something resembling multiple pencil lines. Download a demo from http://www.sketch3d.com
Hard Dollar Corporation: Senior vp Dave Canham sat down with me to describe his company's new Web site, HardDollar.Com -- no surprise at that name! They appear to be in the lead for providing online services for the heavy highway construction market: bids, market info, education, quote solicitation, etc.
PocketCAD: This semi-AutoCAD-compatible CAD system runs on handheld computers with Microsoft's Pocket PC (nee Windows CE) operating system. I asked at the Arc Second booth if there would be a version for the Palm OS, which has a potential market eight times larger. "No," came the answer. Reasons? The Palm is limited to 8MB RAM (PocketCAD needs more than that); and it is easier to port software from Windows to Pocket PC OS. Nevertheless, I picked a copy of their cool-looking business card-size CD-ROM containing the demo software.
LiveTrac: I saw a demo of their remotely controlled video camera for construction sites. The simple user interface allows you to zoom, pan, and rotate the camera, while you watch the image in your Web browser. The company claims multiple users can view the same image, and that it works well over a 56k modem.
TenLinks: The CAD portal made its presence known by having its pens at the registration area. Xerox Engineering Systems had the best cloth bag. One booth -- sorry, I didn't catch the name -- gave away two-foot-tall inflatable alien dolls in translucent green and pink; my kids were upset I didn't get a set for them!
Next year, AEC Systems Fall "Computers for Construction 2001" is being held Nov 13-15 in Philadelphia PA USA.
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