Episode 785 08.23.22 Nick McQuire, director, strategic missions and technologies, Microsoft joins Peggy to talk about the future of the cloud, sharing the four key areas that are collectively shaping the future of cloud. He also shares the three key technology shifts that are core to both today’s innovations and tomorrow’s disruptions, and stresses how co-innovation will play a role in making future cloud technologies available to all. Below is an excerpt from the interview. To listen to the conversation from The Peggy Smedley Show, click here or go to https://peggysmedleyshow.com/ to access the entire show. Peggy Smedley: Nick, I’m excited to have you back to talk about your new role at Microsoft. So, really tell us what’s going on. Nick McQuire: Yeah, lots going on. It’s so exciting to be able to share a little bit with you and your listeners. I work in Microsoft’s Strategic Missions and Technologies division or SMT, as we refer to it, in the acronym sense. This is our business incubation and scale-up arm at Microsoft. SMT was set up, I believe in November of last year, really as the nexus and connection point between our long-term research in Microsoft Research on one hand and our current solution portfolio on the other. Our role really is to bridge that gap between the products in market and our long-term research, but ultimately to help build, accelerate, and scale what we believe are the next generation of $10 billion-plus businesses for Microsoft. So, there’s no pressure, no pressure on us. At the moment, we’re focused on four key areas that are collectively shaping the future of the cloud. The topic that we’re discussing today, which I’m excited about, telecommunications and 5G, space, quantum computing, and solutions for federal government. So, it’s a really exciting place. It’s a really exciting area. Lots going on. Lots to talk about. Smedley: Oh, I love the idea though, $10 billion. I’m glad I’m not you. A little pressure there, but I love that you’re talking about this. How would you describe… I guess when I think about what you’re talking about, the future of the cloud, because we think about that. I think everybody gets overwhelmed. What are these key elements that you’re talking about? McQuire: Yeah, it’s a really good point. I think there is a lot of discussion about the cloud out there. In fact, I think that there’s little discussion about its direction and importantly, what that means for businesses. I think that’s really what we’re trying to do more of—to ground it a little bit for you, Satya Nadella, our CEO, talks a lot about today’s innovations, how they’re enabled by this intelligent cloud and intelligent edge. They really focus on three major technology shifts at the moment, ubiquitous computing and the edge, the advancement of AI, and immersive experiences, through things like mixed reality. So, it’s these three pillars that we see as being core to today’s innovations, but also what we’re going to see in terms of tomorrow’s disruptions, which are going to shape the future of cloud, the evolution of these three shifts significantly. For example, we’re going to see ubiquitous computing be expanded even further than we’ve seen today, by new technologies like 5G, the advancement of space and satellite communications, for example. So, this is going to bring compute increasingly in an expanded capacity to out-of-reach areas, that we have not yet seen before. Ultimately, what we think is, this is going to create a new model for app development and for developers, but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. We also see a second area, where AI is going to be advanced by AI and Quantum at Scale. This is going to help drive much more efficiency and a precision into some of the problem solving that currently, classical computers today, they just can’t match it. I think and underpinned by this, we have this third area, where we’re going to see this new paradigm of co-reasoning develop between humans and machines. That’s going to evolve these kinds of immersive experiences that we see today, through things like mixed reality. So, it’s these three areas, 5G in space, AI and Quantum at scale, human/machine experiences, along with ultimately, our responsible approaches to each area, that we think are really shaping this future of cloud. I think one last thing I’ll say on it before I pause, I think this isn’t just about technology simply for technology’s sake. The reality is, and for us, it’s about humans as well and making this possible. We think this is also about co-innovation, where we partner and help everyone as much as possible, access and benefit from these disruptions that are coming down the line. So, we want to help businesses get ready for them today, which is why we’re talking about it. Smedley: I like that you talk about, it’s not just tech for tech’s sake, because I think it’s enabling so many things to think differently. I think it’s important there. When we talk about the cloud, how it’s different from what it is today? I think everybody has to think about it differently. Are those all the things that you just unpacked, in saying, we have to think about the cloud and the edge and all of these pieces differently, is that what you’re really sharing with us? Because then I think about what the future’s going to be. Is that where we’re heading right now? Are those the points that you’re really addressing? McQuire: Absolutely. I think there’s a couple of key things that stand out for how this kind of future of cloud will be different from what we’re seeing today. Some of these points, I’ve briefly highlighted. On one hand, we’re going to see this cloud increasingly be connected and distributed in new areas, that we haven’t seen. On the other hand, we’re also going to see it built and scaled for huge amounts of speed and precision, that we haven’t been able to see. So, it’s this continuum that’s going to be greatly enhanced when it comes to connectivity and computing. That’s just something we haven’t really yet seen. I think the second thing, that’s perhaps even more significant… and this is what you’re alluding to there, Peggy, is that it’s going to increasingly incorporate the intersection or the integration of some of these advanced technologies that we don’t fully yet associate with the cloud of today. We include things like cellular and 5G, satellite, advanced AI at Scale. These are all, I think, good illustrations of how we’re going to see the cloud evolve that’s a little bit different. I think an example of this coming to life, is some of the work we’re doing currently in 5G. But I’ll stop there, because I think you probably, no doubt, have a few questions around 5G in particular. Smedley: That’s what I was going to get to. When you think about 5G, I think, is 5G going to enable the future of the cloud in a big way? Because we talk about this. Everybody’s been saying 5G is positive, then negative. Everybody gets afraid of it. What’s your view of that? McQuire: Yeah. It’s a really important discussion. I think the frame of bringing 5G as a component of the future of cloud is really a new discussion point. I think that’s largely because 5G, in the past, has been thought of as primarily a network upgrade, but we see it as a lot more than that. It really is a new model for the cloud, especially for developers and in particular, those developers that are looking to run AI applications at the edge, but in previously hard to reach areas. So, think outdoor, wide area environments. Think deep underground. Think rural environments, which don’t have fiber connectivity. There’s more, but I think 5G will give developers a little bit more power to solve problems in these areas. It’s also going to give them a little bit more control over these AI-powered experiences that many are now looking to create because they can really, for the first time, use the software-defined capabilities in 5G technology to communicate and interact with the network through APIs, in order to build these experiences, particularly in a distributed capacity. A good example of this is some of the work we’ve been doing with Ferrovial, the Spanish multinational infrastructure company. We announced this work earlier this year, at BUILD. It fixtured into Satya’s keynote at BUILD. It’s a great example of this future cloud in action here. Ferrovial is building what it calls smart highways of the future, which are based on 5G. They involve a number of these integrated technologies, IoT and sensors, edge computing, AI, digital twin and simulation, just to name a few. They’re using these 5G networks to turn stretches of the highway into an API, in order to improve safety, which is really the prime driver. But also, it better communicates to a mix of what they see as an increasing mix of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, that are going to be populating our roads in the future. So how they’re doing it is, well, they’re building this connected infrastructure. That’s going to enable highways to automatically adjust in realtime, to changing situations on the roads, thanks to these IoT-based cameras and sensors that they’ve got placed along the highway. These sensors are going to ultimately enable them to create a digital twin, which will help them to train some advanced AI models to do really clever things, like object detection for debris or broken-down vehicles on the roads, which will allow for the digital signage to be updated and inform drivers in realtime of these safety hazards that are ahead. I’m just scratching the surface on what their plans are for this technology, but the work they’re doing, in our view, is such a good example of this future cloud in action. It’s expanding, enabling these intersecting technologies to solve problems that historically, they’ve just not been able to do. Literally, this is putting intelligence at the roadside to solve safety problems, which is a brand-new thing for them and a great example of how 5G is playing a role in this cloud of the future. Smedley: Nick, I just heard you say some really key points that I want to repeat again for anybody who’s listening. You talked about infrastructure, safety, sensors. These are all things that I think businesses and enterprise companies can say, this is what they have to think about, especially when we talk about our country and what we have to do when we think about a global approach to this. I think, when we talk about ubiquitous connectivity ultimately impacting things, we’re thinking bigger. We’re thinking beyond what we can do today, but what we need to do. You just said, look, this is what one company’s doing. Many companies can do the same. So, we’re taking this whole idea of leveraging digital twin, to this approach that I think is really cool. Are you seeing this? That more businesses are going to be able to do this and go beyond just what one company did, many companies can do? And we’re improving our lives by doing it. McQuire: Absolutely. I think the challenge has been just trying to educate and inform businesses across many industries as to what’s possible. I think, as I’ve said earlier, we’re only scratching the surface because not only is it going to help create these new scenarios, for example, what Ferrovial is tackling, but many we haven’t yet seen. These scenarios can be growth and new business model related. They can be optimization related, to improve bottom line and productivity. I think, ultimately what we’re talking about is this ubiquitous connectivity over time, really helping more and more business become agile and resilient, which I think is going to be really, really important as we look ahead. Ferrovial just didn’t have the capacity previously to put compute at the roadside, to help them solve safety problems. They’re also looking at, actually incidentally, finding new ways to monetize this data, in terms of new business models for them. They just couldn’t do this previously. They just didn’t have that capacity. Then, when you look at some of these other industries and there’s many, many industries and different companies exploring what’s possible here—oil and gas, mining and energy, for example, the ability to connect devices hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth to improve their monitoring and operations. That just hasn’t been there before. Of course, agriculture, to remotely monitor crop yields, to improve their environmental impact of new solutions coming into agriculture. All this is really starting to happen now. These are the new doors of opportunity around ubiquitous connectivity. But as I said earlier, we’re just beginning here. This is why we’re working hard at Microsoft to build more of the tooling in these areas for developers, to really expand what’s possible with this technology. So, we’re just getting started. Smedley: It’s exciting to hear you talk about, Nick, is you’re saying these developers can come up with AI apps. They can think of the future about tech, not just for tech’s sake, but to develop new ways of developing or creating greater ROI. Looking to the future saying, we’ve got to think bigger about how to improve the bottomline. I think when you advance all of this, you’re saying, look, there’s so much more companies need to think about. Is that the bigger picture of this? Not just for today, but two years now, five years now, the bigger picture is what you’re saying, you’re just starting to see all that. McQuire: Absolutely. We’ll possibly touch on this in a minute, but I think there’s a perception that these advanced technologies can be difficult. And particularly the integration of a number of these technologies, which is really what we’re saying is a hallmark of this future of cloud. I think Ferrovial is bringing that to life really well. But there are possibilities to get moving with this technology today and there are opportunities. I think it’s some of these advanced scenarios that I think are showing the direction, that I think more and more companies, once they become informed and they become more aware, can really start to explore with us in a co-innovation capacity, how some of these advanced technologies can be applied to their business. That’s really why we’re talking about it. Smedley: We’ve talked about 5G. We’ve talked about the cloud. One of the things you also mentioned was AI, Quantum at Scale. So how will artificial intelligence advance AI and Quantum at Scale? I’m kind of curious. You can go into that. How will this help organizations then solve problems? Because that seems really exciting, to hear you talk about that. McQuire: Yeah. We’ve talked about ubiquitous computing and edge connectivity. The second major area around how we see the evolution of cloud, is really around the disruption we’re going to see around AI. Now, I remember very well, the fantastic time I had on this program last time with you, Peggy, where we talked earlier this year, about this increasing degree of maturity that we’re seeing around AI now. We think over the next three to five years, we’re going to see this evolution of AI, from largely being this kind of task-driven tool of today, that’s gaining more and more ground with businesses, to one that is evolved into becoming much more multitask and multi-domain oriented. But more importantly, we’re going to see it much more scalable as well. This is particularly in the sense of the arrival of these large-scale AI models and super computing resources that we’re seeing today at more and more in depth. They’re being made much more available for businesses, as a platform, to access and to build on for their own unique needs within industries and within their organization. That is a big change we’re going to see. We’re going to see it much more generalized, but also available as a platform for businesses. I think a good way to look at how those changes will translate to solving problems for customers is really through our Horizon approach to our AI at Scale family. For those of you that are less familiar with what we refer to as AI at Scale, AI at Scale is our family of large-scale transformer, natural language AI models, as well as super computing resources that are available in Microsoft Research, at this current moment in time. These include our Turing models, GPT-3, which we’ve announced in partnership with OpenAI, as well as earlier this year, our recently announced Megatron, a 530 billion parameter model that is announced in partnership with Nvidia. What we do is we apply the Horizon approach or the Horizon framework to how we see these capabilities manifest for our customers. Breaking down the Horizon approach to you, for those of you that are familiar, we see Horizon 1 is very much about near term improvements to our existing portfolio. I think year two out, type of thing, Horizon 2 tends to be about a two-to-three-year evolutionary period, but ultimately an evolutionary change to our existing business, such as a new business model attached to one of our technology areas. Then third, we have a third Horizon, Horizon 3, which tends to be about moonshots. Longer term, possibly year five plus, game-changing areas that have the potential to open up entirely new categories and markets for our customers. So, we see the way in which these models and this advanced AI will solve problems, will really reflect off this Horizon approach. So, in a Horizon 1 sense, we’re making these models increasingly accessible in our existing products as new features, from Bing to Office, Power Platform, GitHub. They’re already solving problems for customers in areas like information search or even code generation for app development, for example. So that’s very near term. That’s very here and now, in terms of our existing business. When we move a little bit further out, we’re also starting to see this new AI capability set becoming available as platforms, in their own right, as a Horizon 2 model. A good example here is Novartis. Novartis is using our AI at Scale family, ultimately as a business platform, to speed up R&D in their drug discovery division. This is ultimately aimed at improving document search and summarization. Thanks really, to the information explosion that they’ve seen in medical knowledge over the past five years, they just physically can’t keep up, so they’re using AI for that. So that’s how we see it manifesting, in terms of solving problems in a Horizon 2 sense. When we look further out, in a Horizon 3 model, maybe several years from now, I think we’re going to start to see AI at Scale facilitate a new paradigm of computing in this Horizon 3 sense, particularly as we look to combine AI super computing resources with scalable quantum computing, in the future. This is what we refer to as AI and Quantum at Scale. As part of our path to building a scalable quantum computing system for businesses, we think this combination is going to generate efficiency and precision gains, really that we’ve just not been able to achieve with classical computers. This will be positioned, largely in some really tough areas and solving for some tough problems. Think computational chemistry, materials discovery, molecular dynamics, for example. In that scientific domain is really where we’ll see this new paradigm of Horizon 3 computing, where we’ll see the combination of AI and quantum come together. So, it’s this transition from AI to Quantum at Scale, from AI as we see it today, it’s going to take a number of years, but this is going to be what we see as a critical aspect of the future of cloud. It’s really through that Horizon approach, is how we’re going to see it realized and how it’ll address both near-term and longer-term problems for our customers. Smedley: I love hearing you talk about this, Nick, because I think anybody who’s thinking about where they take their business, Horizon 1, 2 or 3 and they think about where they can go… Computational chemistry? Not me, I’m a journalist. Not going there, but I get the idea of what you’re doing. I think it’s really exciting to think about where our businesses can go. I think that leads me to want to ask you this next question. I was listening to you talk, and I was thinking about Horizon 2 and thinking about, how do we solve new problems? I was thinking about immersive experiences. I was thinking in my mind, how you could take and teach the next generation, where humans and machines interact. I was thinking all about that, about how now, the co-reasoning paradigm, this whole idea of where we will go, it led me to think about that. I don’t know if that’s what you’re thinking, but that’s what I would love for you to talk a little bit about because this led me think, we’re kind of getting there now and where all of these could go, because I could see there’s so much that can be done there. I don’t know if that’s what you’re thinking, but talk to me a little bit about that, because that’s where I could think, there’s just so much that could be done and so much that Microsoft is doing now. McQuire: Yeah. I’m so pleased you asked about this. This third area, I think is perhaps the most fascinating development of how the cloud’s going to evolve in the future, because it involves much more the human aspects to computing, in terms of what we’re talking about here. Many of the technologies that we’ve been talking about, ubiquitous edge computing, connectivity, advanced AI, we’re going to see these combined in the future to help create, as you rightly point out, this new paradigm for human and machine interaction, which will increasingly involve the co-reasoning between humans and machines. I think an example that brings this to life for you… and I can break it down a little bit for you, is we are currently working with a major agricultural organization in a research capacity, to build augmented intelligence systems for firefighters. Now, sadly, I can’t name the company at the moment, the organization at the moment, but we’ll be able to do so soon. As we know, wildfires are escalating all over the world. This organization wants to equip its firefighters at the front line, with realtime data intelligence and over time, autonomous systems to improve the safety and responses that they have, to the proliferation of wildfires that they’re seeing at this current moment in time. The solution for this outcome for the customer, involves a number of different things. It involves edge communications and computing. It involves fusing both geospatial data with on-the-ground insights, to train large-scale AI models that can predict outbreaks and importantly, be able to co-reason with the firefighters on the spot, to improve their decision making. That decision making can involve everything from how you plan for logistics to resource allocation, et cetera. So, it’s really important stuff. Now, what’s really interesting as well, is in the future, they will look to provide over private 5G networks, which are going to be backed up through a resilient satellite communications network, firefighters, with the ability to coordinate and deploy multiple fleets of firefighting robots, such as diggers and water spewers, to help keep the humans on the front line a little bit out of harm’s way and use some of these autonomous systems for some of the effort. Now, this scenario is so important on many levels, because of the challenges we currently face, obviously with wildfires all over the world. Here in the U.K., they’ve been significant. We know full well, how significant they are on the west coast and all over the U.S. But it’s also, in our view, a great illustration of the elements of this future cloud human/machine paradigm, operating in action. It involves ubiquitous computing, advanced simulation, these large-scale models put to reason and put to action with domain experts, co-reasoning with the AI and ultimately into this world of autonomous systems, all working together to solve some really difficult problems, that we haven’t been able to achieve yet. I think as we look to the future, I think this type of scenario doesn’t involve machines reasoning on top of data. It involves the future, which is increasingly going to be about humans co-reasoning with machines. This is ultimately what we call augmented intelligence and intelligence working itself, which is I think another key aspect of the future of cloud. It’s a big change from, largely this information working model or information worker that we see today. I think that’s part of how we see this new paradigm evolving between humans and machines. It’s a fascinating area. It’s early, but we think this is going to be the direction of travel. Smedley: I think what’s exciting, every time I hear you talk about this, is that the cloud enables us to do so many things faster, quicker, easier, that we just have to open up our imaginations. We have to let developers work with us. Let us work with those machines, interact, like you just described. It enables businesses to prepare for the future in so many ways. Do you see that? Is that what Microsoft wants, to enable businesses to work and understand what the future is all about? McQuire: Absolutely. Part of how we’re helping businesses get prepared for these disruptions ahead is the reason we created the Strategic Missions and Technologies division last year, as part of this, which I mentioned previously. This is our incubation and scale-up arm. We’re actively incubating these technologies in SMT today. As we said earlier, I think as important as these technologies are, it’s humans that will make them happen. We recognize that gaining a foothold, where to start, can be hard for many customers. So, we’re also doing a number of key things as part of our mission within SMT. We’re obviously focused on bringing strategically, these technologies to customers as platforms, at the platform level. Whether that’s in 5G development, whether that’s in AI at Scale, which I talked about, whether it’s Quantum as a service, to help customers spend less time on researching and building the foundations in the areas and much more time around how to apply the technology, co-innovating with us, in terms of how they apply them to their business problems. We also share a lot of learnings. I’ve spoken previously about our AI Business School, one channel where we share these learnings. We also do a number of dedicated workshops with our customers throughout the year, where we run a number of sessions on these topics, which can help them get going. Then lastly, I mention this point. We really want to focus on a culture of co-innovation in partnership with our customers. We don’t have all the answers. We’re absolutely truthful about that and honest about that. So, partnering and co-innovation with enterprises on these future cloud disruptions, is absolutely critical to how we want to see this become enabled in the next number of years. Smedley: As I hear you talk, you talk about wanting to apply these, wanting to do the research. You want to share learning, co-innovation. Those are some big points, some big takeaways we just have here. Any final recommendations or takeaways you want to give listeners? Because I think it’s important, they hear these amazing things we’ve talked about today. I think it opens up, the sky is the limit for what customers can do or what potential customers can do with you. McQuire: Yeah. We are continuing to build out the learnings and the materials to help customers around a number of these topics and themes that we’ve covered today. I think, backing up from a recommendation’s perspective, I would doubly make the point that every organization can and should be able to access these future cloud technologies. So, this innovation isn’t just confined to the tech firms. We want this for everyone. Part of our approach is taking that platform approach to enable that. I think, secondly, we’re in a tough climate, without question, but we shouldn’t let that difficult economic climate slow you down in terms of innovating. I think the technology trends of the future, I think future technology, disruptive technology, I think takes on a heightened importance for businesses in this climate, as keys to resiliency, agility, and growth down the road. I think lastly, linked to that is, I think it’s important to really start to think and plan around these today. We have many learnings we can share, as I mentioned earlier, including our approach to innovation within Microsoft as well. I think that’s another very, very popular topic. We can obviously work with you, to share a number of those insights as part of it. So, feel free to get in touch with us, on any of these fronts. Smedley: Nick, I love that you said there’s a heightened importance to resiliency, growth, and innovation. It just seems like, if customers and listeners take that away, their potential for growth and getting new employees to see that, I think is really great. Thank you, Nick McQuire, director of product management, Strategic Missions and Technology unit at Microsoft. Thank you for all your time today. Where can our listeners go to get more information about what we talked about, maybe working with you guys, having this great opportunity today? McQuire: Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Peggy, as well. I always love the conversation. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m also available on Twitter. More importantly, we’ve got a number of content areas and blogs on these topics, available to you in the speaker notes. So, feel free to check those out. If you need anything further, do reach out. We’d be happy to hear from you. Links for Further Learning:
The post The Cloud of Tomorrow appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/the-cloud-of-tomorrow/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-cloud-of-tomorrow.html
0 Comments
At this year’s Inland Transport Committee roundtable hosted by the UNECE (UN Economic Commission for Europe), the panel identified three critical challenges facing global supply chains: labor shortages, equipment availability, and the ripple effect of global bottlenecks. Though the panel convened earlier this year, the challenges facing international supply chains across industries remain the same in the second half of the year. Can the newly passed CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 deliver on its promise to strengthen supply chains? Will it help alleviate the ongoing chip shortage? In January, Gartner predicted things like inflation, increased borrowing rates, and geopolitical stressors (particularly those involving China) would impact supply chains and the broader economic picture in 2022. The research firm was right. Because of the stressors of the past few years, global supply chains seem to be under more scrutiny than ever before. Disruptions that began as part of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic have certainly thrust supply chains into the limelight. The semiconductor shortage has also forced reflection in the industry, wreaking havoc on several sectors, and forcing more attention on supply chain issues—both old and new. The U.S. government has taken steps to address both the semiconductor shortage and breakdowns in the supply chain. With the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which the President signed into law earlier this month, the White House says it will bolster U.S. leadership in semiconductors by providing $52.7 billion for American semiconductor research, development, manufacturing, and workforce development. Within this $52.7 billion is $39 billion in manufacturing incentives. The White House says these incentives include $2 billion for the legacy chips used in automobiles and defense systems, $13.2 billion in R&D (research and development) and workforce development, and $500 million to provide for international information communications technology security and semiconductor supply-chain activities. The new legislation also provides an investment tax credit of 25% for capital expenses for manufacturing of semiconductors and related equipment. The goals behind these incentives include securing domestic supply and creating new jobs in construction and manufacturing. The CHIPS and Science Act has already encouraged additional private investments in American semiconductor manufacturing, including $40 billion in memory chip manufacturing from Micron. Micron president and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said the legislation will allow Micron to grow domestic production of memory “from less than 2% to up to 10% of the global market in the next decade, making the U.S. home to the most advanced memory manufacturing and R&D in the world.” Another critical component of the new act is its restrictions on overseas manufacturing for recipients of funding for 10 years from the date of funding. PWC points out that CHIPS Act prohibits funding recipients from expanding semiconductor manufacturing in countries the U.S. considers to be threats to national security, like China. The act will also promote U.S. innovation in wireless supply chains via its provision for $1.5 billion for promoting and deploying wireless technologies that use open and interoperable radio access networks. The White House says this investment will boost U.S. leadership in wireless technologies and their supply chains. While the industry is used to talking about negative ripple effects from things like COVID, political unrest, and economic uncertainty, this kind of investment will have the sort of positive ripple effect the space needs to help it move into a new era. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #IoT #sustainability #AI #5G #cloud #edge#digitaltransformation #machinelearning #semiconductors #chips #CHIPSAct2022 #economy #China #COVID19 #supplychain #manufacturing #Micron The post Will the New CHIPS Act Strengthen Supply Chains? appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/will-the-new-chips-act-strengthen-supply-chains/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/will-new-chips-act-strengthen-supply.html Artificial Intelligence or AI Hal in 2001. Google in 2022? The future or the past technology? AI has many supporters, extoling the benefits and many critics call out cautions. It also still has gaps keeping it from a practical present according to some developers. Deep learning-powered advancements in AI have led to innovations that have the potential to revolutionize services, products, and consumer applications across industries such as medicine, manufacturing, transportation, communication, and retail. However, the AI efficiency gap — a situation in which hardware is unable to meet the increasing computing demands of models that are growing in size and complexity – has proven to be an obstacle to more widespread AI commercialization. This efficiency gap means that inference is still generally bound to the cloud, where computer hardware is abundant, but costs are high and concerns around data privacy and safety are prevalent. A company in Israel, Deci has been working on a solution and getting some traction in the market. Deci’s deep learning platform helps data scientists eliminate the AI efficiency gap by adopting a more productive development paradigm. With the platform, AI developers can leverage hardware-aware NAS (Neural Architecture Search) to quickly build highly optimized deep learning models that are designed to meet specific production goals. Deci claims the growing AI efficiency gap only highlights the importance of accounting for production considerations early in the development lifecycle, which can then significantly reduce the time and cost spent on fixing potential obstacles when deploying models in production. Deci’s deep learning development platform has a proven record of enabling companies of all sizes to do just that by providing them with the tools they need to successfully develop and deploy world-changing AI solutions. The platform empowers data scientists to deliver superior performance at a much lower operational cost (up to an 80% reduction), reduce time to market from months to weeks, and easily enables new applications on resource-constrained hardware such as mobile phones, laptops, and other edge devices. Deci’s deep learning development platform is powered by Deci’s proprietary AutoNAC (Automated Neural Architecture Construction) technology, an algorithmic optimization engine that empowers data scientists to build best-in-class deep learning models that are tailored for any task, data set, and target inference hardware. Deci’s AutoNAC engine democratizes NAS technology, something that until very recently was confined to academia or industry giants like Google due to its high cost. Having a more efficient infrastructure for AI systems can make AI products qualitatively different and better, not just less expensive and faster to run. With Deci’s AutoNAC, you input your AI models, data, and target hardware — whether that hardware is on the edge or in the cloud — and it guides you in finding alternative models that will generate similar predictive accuracy with massively improved efficiency. For the Technologists: As input, the AutoNAC process receives the customer baseline model, the data used to train this model, and access to the target inference hardware device. AutoNAC then revises the baseline backbone layers that carry out most of the computation and redesign to be an optimal sub-network. This optimization is carried out by performing a very efficient predictive search in a large set of candidate architectures. During this process, AutoNAC probes the target hardware and directly optimizes the runtime, as measured on this specific device. The final fast architecture is then fine-tuned on the data provided, to achieve the same accuracy performance as the baseline. It is then ready for deployment. Deci recently launched version 2.0 of its platform, which helps enterprises build, optimize, and deploy state-of-the-art computer vision models on any hardware and environment, including cloud, edge and mobile, with accuracy and runtime performance. Deci also announced the results of its AutoNAC-generated DeciBERT models. For natural language processing (NLP), Deci’s models accelerated question-answering tasks’ throughput performance on various Intel CPUs by 5x (depending on the hardware type and quantization level) while also improving the accuracy by +1.03%. Deci collaborates with various hardware manufacturers, Computer OEMs (computer-equipment manufacturers) and other ML (machine learning) ecosystem leaders, and is an official partner of Intel, AWS (Amazon Web Services), HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), and NVIDIA among others. The value of their development work has attracted interest from a variety of investors. It has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Square Peg, Emerge, Jibe Ventures, and Fort Ross Ventures, as well as new investor ICON-Israel Collaboration Network. The investment comes just seven months after Deci secured $21 million in Series A funding, also led by Insight Partners, bringing Deci’s total funding to $55.1 million. The funds will be used to expand Deci’s go-to-market activities, as well as further accelerate the company’s R&D efforts. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #construction #sustainability #infrastructure #IoT #AI #5G #cloud #edge #futureofwork The post AI Digs Deeper appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/ai-digs-deeper/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/ai-digs-deeper.html Gartner survey finds 83% of B2B buyers prefer ordering or paying through digital commerce. The post Fact of the Day – 8/30/2022 appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-8-30-2022/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/fact-of-day-8302022.html For the second half of our blog series on hot construction technology, we are looking at how technology can enable process, procedures, and business practices. Things like collaboration, project management, scheduling, accounting, estimating, and more. All of these have existed in construction before the dawn of technology but are now being enabled by technology in new and interesting ways. Last week we dove into the topic of project management and discovered AI (artificial intelligence) is playing a bigger role than ever before, as technology providers are also aiming to created integrated project management platforms for construction. Today, let’s look at an offshoot of project management: scheduling. Gantt charts have been trendy long before the advent of the internet, with Henry Gantt popularizing the bar chart that illustrates a project schedule back in the late 1800s. CPM (critical path method) has been used since the mid-1900s—which is a method for managers to see where potential breakdowns might occur and what resources are available to deal with them if that happens. Both were later spurred by the use of technology. Today, technology can help with scheduling in myriad ways. By leveraging software, construction professionals can prevent delays, minimize budget overruns, and improve project quality. A schedule starts at the very onset of a project and continues through project turnover, meaning the data needs to flow through the entire project as well. The market is projected to grow too. As the demand for the IoT (Internet of Things) and AI continues to grow, so too will the technology for construction. The growth of machine learning and deep neural network technologies will spur adoption of new innovations. For example, the development of AI-powered IVAs (intelligent virtual assistants) for professional conversation are highly effective in providing services and performing business functions such as appointment scheduling and consulting across various industries. Companies are launching products that enable an app or device to act as an AI agent. Grand View Research suggests virtual assistants can help with managing company emails, managing business correspondence, scheduling, and more. While construction scheduling is a bit more nuisance than other vertical markets, the advent of such technology means projects manager can get back to the task at hand of construction. The analyst firm suggests the global intelligent virtual assistant market size was valued at $5.82 billion in 2020 and it is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 28.5% from 2021 to 2028. The bottomline is the right technology can improve communication across a construction project, while enabling project managers to assign the right tasks at the right time. In the end, it will help with the ultimate success of future projects. If you have a scheduling solution for construction companies, tell us about it for the Constructech Top Products award! We want to know all about the latest innovations in construction technology. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #construction #IoT #sustainability #AI #5G #cloud #edge #futureofwork #infrastructure The post Hot Construction Technology: Scheduling appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/hot-construction-technology-scheduling/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/hot-construction-technology-scheduling.html Collaboration has many synonyms—association, combination, teamwork, alliance, joint effort, among others—but strangely, communications isn’t one of them. Strange because the main element of collaboration is indeed communication among individuals both near and far. Especially far, even in these dwindling days of COVID-19’s remote work and distancing, as remote work is giving way to hybrid work relationships. Hybrid work is collaborating as a community, connecting not only colleagues but also those outside the organization. Collaboration tools must have the adaptability to bring productive, secure, and equitable experiences to a blended team or audience. The ratio of types of events (in-person to virtual to hybrid) have become nearly evenly distributed as hosts offer more attendance options to meet the needs of a greater audience. As the return to in-person and hybrid collaboration events become more popular, event platforms not only support remote attendees, but can be used to enhance in-person participation with closed captioning and realtime translation, social tools, live Q&A, polling, and more. Consider each collaborative activity as a conversation that brings context and builds community. Distributed teams need to use and enable an array of engagement features and leverage them to increase participation. The pandemic exposed many weaknesses in the way companies are structured and how employees do their work. Lockdowns and remote work caught most firms without a policy to fall back on when it came to workers offsite. In construction, hammers don’t hit nails when the carpenter is remote from the worksite, but office workers could tap into the company network from anywhere and neither the computer nor the clients would know where they were operating. As the requirements imposed by the pandemic for remote work decreased, not everyone saw returning to the office as a positive. Where companies found the work quality and productivity was as acceptable—or even better—remote as in the office, the workers were often given the choice of remote, in office, or a combination (hybrid). In some cases, the company opted for continued remote, such as those in the tech fields and industries that are highly focused on customer care. In spring 2022, MIT researchers created the Workplace Collaboration Survey to better understand collaborative relationships in the modern workplace. The 1,100 people who participated in the survey were employed full-time in the United States and, to qualify for inclusion, they had to work with others at least some of the time. Respondents were asked what proportion of their job entails collaborating with others to advance shared goals. Nearly three-quarters (71%) of the sample reported collaborating at least 41% of their work time. This means in a 40-hour, five-day workweek, people spend an average of 3.2 hours per workday collaborating with others. Given how much time people spend working and being with others at work, it’s no surprise that challenges to relationships are generated in the workplace. In fact, 72% of respondents said they have been involved in at least one workplace collaboration that was “absolutely horrendous.” Such collaborations create operational drag, bust timelines and budgets, trigger managerial headaches, and occupy already overloaded HR staffs. Before COVID-19, the largest disruptions to work involved new technologies and growing trade links. Consultancy McKinsey and Co., found COVID-19 has, for the first time, elevated the importance of the physical dimension of work. It develops a way to quantify the proximity required in more than 800 occupations by grouping them into ten work arenas, according to its proximity to coworkers and customers, the number of interpersonal interactions involved, and their on-site and indoor nature. It found jobs in work areas with higher levels of physical proximity are likely to see greater transformation after the pandemic, triggering knock-on effects in other work arenas as business models shift in response. In the longer term, work areas with higher physical proximity scores are also likely to be more unsettled, although proximity is not the only explanation. The computer-based office work area includes offices of all sizes. Work in this area requires only moderate physical proximity to others and a moderate number of human interactions. This is the largest area in advanced economies, accounting for roughly one-third of employment. Nearly all potential remote work is within this arena. The outdoor production and maintenance area includes construction sites, residential and commercial grounds, and other outdoor spaces. COVID-19 had little impact here, as work in this area requires low proximity and few interactions with others and takes place fully outdoors. Considering only remote work that can be done without a loss of productivity, McKinsey found about 20-25% of the workforces in advanced economies could work from home between three and five days a week. This represents four to five times more remote work than before the pandemic and could prompt a large change in the geography of work, as individuals and companies shift out of large cities into suburbs and small cities. There has developed an additional issue: shortages of skilled workers. The pipeline of new construction workers, for example, is not flowing as freely as it once did. Training programs have been slow to restart operations after pandemic-driven safety concerns led to their suspension the spring of 2020. The lack of training, or training interrupted, leads to fewer skilled and certified workers in many construction trades. The industry is also finding it more difficult to attract the international workforce—i.e., immigrants—that has been an important source of talent for engineering, design, contracting, and labor activities. Net migration has been falling since 2016, a trend accelerated by COVID-19 travel restrictions. Between 2016 and 2021, net migration declined steadily from 1.06 million to 244,000. The labor challenge extends well beyond corporate boundaries. Since the successful delivery of a project could be jeopardized by labor shortages in a single value-chain participant, project owners and contractors may want to adapt the structure of project relationships and contracts. Moving away from traditional contracting methods to collaborative contracts allows participants to share market risks and opportunities as a project evolves, rather than baking in worst-case estimates at the outset of negotiations. A recent report analyzed data across more than one billion contracts within Ironclad. The analysis comprises a unique proprietary mix of process data around the contracting process, and metadata inside contracts to gain insight into trends across a wide range of areas in business. The analysis found that across Ironclad’s diverse customer base, spanning industries, locations, and sizes, companies are embracing new, digital ways to collaborate internally and externally. Teams are increasingly embracing browser-based collaboration for their contracts, demonstrated by a 262% increase year-over-year in usage of Ironclad’s browser-based contracts editor, and a 150% quarter-over-quarter increase in browser-based negotiation. Indeed, two technologies growing in importance in construction—BIM (building information modeling) and cloud computing—are enabling greater collaboration internally and with outside contractors and suppliers. BIM is an intelligent 3D modeling software that architects, engineers, contractors, and suppliers use to collaborate on a construction project. Since collaboration on construction projects often makes the difference between project failure and success, involving every stakeholder in the project from beginning to end ensures transparency, clarity on individual obligations, and streamlined workflows. More importantly, frequent communication and feedback are necessary to clear any issues and drive the project forwards. While BIM has become common for large projects, the cloud has become common everywhere. One of the advantages of cloud-based collaboration software is that it can integrate with several services that are provided by third parties. Cloud-based collaboration software allows the users to connect effectively, which will help to eliminate application slowness associated while using numerous communication application. According to Research Nester, due to the increase in the adoption rate of cloud-based solutions among small to medium enterprises, cloud-based collaboration software market is expected to grow during the years up to 2027. Companies are adopting cloud-based collaboration software and other cloud services since they can offer great storage capacity, increase productivity, and provide easy access. With the help of cloud servers, several networks can be interconnected to deliver data storage services across the globe. Key attraction of cloud-based collaboration software is automation, as it helps to release essential internal resources for other high-priority work. Increase in usage of smartphones and tablets also trigger the growth of cloud-based collaboration. Security is the major concern, as the data can be easily accessible from anywhere and anytime, therefore many companies do not want to take the risk of using cloud-based collaboration. High speed internet is often required to access large amounts of data from the cloud, which acts as one of the restraints for the collaboration software market. Major industry players, such as Autodesk, have been busy connecting BIM data to the cloud and then sharing it with all the necessary partners, making a collaboration tool even more beneficial. Autodesk has recently released a connector product, Bridge, that empowers construction teams to share only relevant data with project stakeholders, regardless of whether they are on the same team or building project within Autodesk Construction Cloud. The operative term in this instance is “relevant.” Sharing entire projects with team members can compromise privacy and requires tedious permission setting. Autodesk Construction Cloud’s Bridge provides the flexibility to automatically share relevant information with stakeholders, while still maintaining control over project data. General contractorshave a simple solution to coordinate work between their trades and provide visibility to owners, while ensuring owned project information is documented and saved in a centralized location. Whether they are working on a large project and want to split each component into its own sub-project or want to break out projects for trades to meet privacy mandates set by owners, general contractors can now use Bridge to share data with different teams and projects from one main, easy-to-manage instance. Specialty tradescan share necessary information such as project install progress with general contractors while maintaining their respective data within their own project instances. If they have multiple ongoing projects, trade teams can also aggregate their data into one main, easy-to-manage internal location for an aggregate view that strengthens analytics and future decision making. Cloud collaboration solutions offer high agility to companies while enabling easy data sharing among remote and virtual users. Companies are now looking for services that offer easy access and increased productivity with the changing business requirements, thereby supporting the growing need for agile support. Autodesk is obviously not the only player in the cloud collaboration marketplace. That market was valued at $31.78 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $66.92 billion in 2026, according to Research and Markets. ![]() Unified communication solutions have been making it easier for workers to stay connected to other employees and for customers and clients to reach them no matter where they are. With the need to make the enterprises more efficient and collaborative, the last few years have seen collaboration solutions rise steadily. These tools have increased the productivity and unlocked innovation by enabling virtual teams to work together across geographies. Another trend driving the demand for cloud-based solutions is the enterprises’ desire to incorporate collaboration and communication tools into their business applications and workflow integration. Unified communication solutions, since their launch, have emerged as a cost-effective solution for multiple organizations across various industries. Moreover, the cloud-based delivery of these unified communications shapes the way organizations are managing their communication networks. Companies like Microsoft offer various team collaboration tools and software, such as Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft SharePoint. Microsoft Teams had more than 44 million active users in March 2020. Then came COVID. Today, more than 270 million people rely on Teams for hybrid work. More than 50% of organizations have standardized on Teams, according to a recent Morgan Stanley CIO survey. As the effects of the pandemic lessen, there has been a shift from remote to hybrid work. Active Teams Rooms more than doubled year over year, and Teams Phone now has nearly 80 million active users. To bridge the gap between digital and physical workspaces, Microsoft introduced a new meeting layout for Teams Rooms, called front row, designed specifically for hybrid meetings. It brings the video gallery to eye level at the bottom of the screen so people in the meeting room can see remote colleagues in a more natural face-to-face interaction, as if they were in the same physical space. Content is centered on the screen and surrounded by additional meeting information and attendee sentiment, including chat, raised hands, and live reactions. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #construction #sustainability #infrastructure #IoT #AI #cloud #futureofwork The post Collaboration: Near, Far, and Future, Part I appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/collaboration-near-far-and-future-part-i/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/collaboration-near-far-and-future-part-i.html I have spent several decades writing about women breaking through the glass ceiling in male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing. The stories are always beautiful triumphs of women doing incredible things with business, process, and technology in an industry that isn’t traditionally built for them. But has it been enough? Are we still stalled in many areas? A new survey piqued my interest when it crossed my desk earlier this month because it focuses on the biggest barrier preventing more women from entering the project profession in industries like construction, transport and logistics, and more. The survey by the APM (Assn. of Project Management) of 1,000 project professionals (from junior to director level), shows of the 308 female respondents, a third (33.4%) say unequal pay is the main barrier, followed by gender stereotyping (32.5%), and not enough women having taken STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects while studying at school, college, or university (29%). However, among the male respondents to the survey, the most common reason as to why more women aren’t joining the project profession is that it’s still being perceived as male dominated (cited by 31.5% of male respondents). Yikes. So, men think women aren’t joining because the profession is still perceived as male dominated and women believe unequal pay followed closely by gender stereotyping are genuinely the top reasons they are staying away. To be very frank here, is this elephant in the room something the industry is trying to avoid simply by not talking about it? Does addressing the issue of pay raise too many eyebrows? Or do men really not see that unequal pay is still a problem? I am genuinely interested. Because here is the reality: APM’s most recent Salary and Market Trends Survey highlights the salary figures for men and women working in the project profession, and it reveals a gender pay gap of 24%. That is not a small percentage. There is still much work to be done. Although I should note there was some positive change outlined in the report, with women making up a growing proportion of those earning between £50,000 and £69,999—up from 20% from the previous year to 24%. Still, as I always report, the survey found women are still over-represented in roles where lower salaries are the norm: they account for four out of five project administrators (79%), while representing 57% of parttime workers. By contrast only 22% of consultants, who enjoy higher average salaries, are women. Breaking this down a bit further by sector, APM’s survey also highlights the different opinions of project professionals. For example, in engineering, 43%, and in telecoms, 40%, said gender stereotyping is the biggest hurdle for women entering their profession. Unequal levels of pay are considered as the greatest challenge to women entering project management as a career within the financial services sector (38%) and in technology (40%). For those in construction and transport and logistics, far too few women take STEM subjects at school, college, or university, which is often a big barrier for entering these sectors. APM’s new survey also asked the profession what they considered to be main barrier for both men and women being recruited into the profession, with lack of awareness of project management as a career choice (30%) coming out on top, followed by a lack of skilled individuals (28%), and budget restrictions (28%). Let’s do the hard work here. Let’s find ways to make pay more equal and address stereotyping in the workplace. Let’s find more ways to encourage women to consider project management as a career. I do believe some progress is being made recently, with many organizations focusing more on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), but I am not sure it is enough—and I am not sure it is being done fast enough. I have been writing about women in construction for more years than I can count, and the numbers aren’t changing fast enough. What do you believe needs to be done to address this? Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #construction #IoT #sustainability #AI #5G #cloud #edge #futureofwork #infrastructure The post Is a Shattered Ceiling Enough? appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/is-a-shattered-ceiling-enough/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/is-shattered-ceiling-enough.html Nearly all consumers believe climate change will lead to rising energy bills—and as such expect homes and apartments to be equipped with smart-home devices. Still, experts suggest mindset is still the biggest barrier to change when it comes to our household energy diets. All of this is according to a new survey from Schneider Electric, which has revealed nearly nine out of 10 consumers believe climate change will lead to rising energy bills and individuals should play a larger role with climate change. The driving factors for consumers to act and invest in sustainability are the rising cost of living and the desire to manage energy consumption. Beyond what the research suggests we need to really examine consumers perception of climate change before we can affect change. Roughly 72% suggest considering reducing carbon footprints is a personal priority. More than half place importance on their homes becoming net zero, yet less than a third believe this is likely to happen. The study also reveals that today’s consumers want to lead sustainable lifestyles, putting energy efficiency at home as their major priority. Here’s how they are going to do it. Roughly 40% believe smart-home technology will help make their home more sustainable. More than half expect their new home or apartments to be equipped with smart-home devices, a 13% increase from previous research in 2020. Smart lighting and smart thermostats are among the top three most purchased smart devices. Of course, Schneider Electric offers such innovative solutions and materials to reduce carbon footprint, helping make homes smarter and more efficient. Jaap Ham, associate professor in the Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology, consulted on the report findings. He suggests the biggest barrier to change right now is our mindset. He says, “We have created psychological roadblocks that result in us shirking the responsibility to take action. These findings show that as we adopt smart digital solutions to fight the invisible foe (energy management and consumption), replace fossil fuels with smart, clean electricity in our homes’ energy diets, we can see how we’re making a meaningful contribution to our global fight for the healthier planet.” I agree with Professor Ham’s assessment. There is still a disconnect that seems to exist where consumers want more sustainable homes but aren’t quite sure how to attain it. Perhaps even more important government officials still do not know how to tell a consistent story on how homebuyers and assessors can get there as well. While a lot more work needs to be done, I do believe cost and customer support are two big barriers to entry. We need to make this affordable and easy to use if we are going to see any real progress in our homes. The good news in all of this is that there is interest and that is truly half the battle. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #IoT #sustainability #AI #5G #cloud #edge #futureofwork #digitaltransformation #green #ecosystem #environmental #circularworld The post Climate Change and Your Energy Bills appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/climate-change-and-your-energy-bills/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/climate-change-and-your-energy-bills.html ABI Research says increasing demand for human-drone collaboration will spur market to reach 3 million shipments by 2025. The post Fact of the Day – 8/29/2022 appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-8-29-2022/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/fact-of-day-8292022.html Wooden buildings are hardly a new idea. One aspect of the wooden building that has started to take off, generated by the quest for lower carbon footprint in new construction, is the mass timber structure. Mass timber construction is a carbon removal technique that involves using specialized wood products to construct buildings, including high-rise buildings. Manufacturers use products such as CLT (cross-laminated timber), LVT (laminated veneer lumber), and glulam (glue laminated timber) to produce wood panels and beams that can replace concrete, steel, and masonry as building materials. Because it displaces emissions-intensive steel and concrete, mass timber can significantly reduce the “embodied carbon” in buildings. Because the wood stores CO2 (carbon dioxide) that was captured from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, mass timber construction can function as a form of carbon removal when combined with sustainable timber production and building demolition practices. Timber rich areas, such as much of Canada, are interested in moving more construction to mass timber. The Mass Timber Demonstration Program, established in the Spring of 2021 by the Province of British Columbia through its Forestry Innovation Investment, has invested $5.4 million to accelerate the use of mass timber in B.C. It provides funding for incremental costs in the design and construction of buildings that demonstrate emerging or new mass timber or mass timber hybrid building systems and construction processes. The province is also launching the Mass Timber Action Plan and announcing funding for four new mass-timber housing and infrastructure projects as a key step in the Stronger BC Economic Plan. As part of the program, successful developers will share lessons learned and results to help support future mass timber projects in the province. The Mass Timber Advisory Council is a group of experts from urban planning and development, First Nations, forest products industry, environmental non-profits, academia, and local governments. The council provides advice and guidance toward establishing B.C. as a leader in the production and use of mass timber, as well as the creation of a B.C. mass timber action plan. A practical result of the focus on mass timber construction is the expansion and upgrade of the terminal at YLW (Kelowna Intl. Airport), which will use mass timber through the Province’s Mass Timber Demonstration Program. The airport will receive $500,000 from the Province to help with costs associated with the use of mass timber, as well as the creation of a digital construction twin, advanced fire modelling, and lifecycle assessment of building materials. The use of prefabricated mass-timber panels will reduce construction time and will result in less construction traffic to the site. Canada’s 10th largest airport will remain open and fully operational throughout the nearly 8,000-sq.-meter expansion. One company that benefited from investments by B.C. is Intelligent City, a mass timber manufacturer that uses robotics and automation to create its panels and beams. Focusing on a deep vertical integration of building systems, software, manufacturing automation, and supply chain contracts, the company can help developers achieve nearly 100% cost certainty, deliver 1.5 times the number of residential units on the same site compared to traditional methods, and realize savings of up to 50% on lifecycle costs per home. ![]() Intelligent City uses proprietary parametric software for design, construction cost estimation, carbon footprint confirmation, material quantifications, and precision manufacturing. At the same time, the company’s manufacturing technology brings automation to the prefabrication of building components. As a result, the company provides data on the lifecycle and performance of the building before construction even begins. In combination with mass timber construction, Intelligent City utilizes the energy-efficiency standards of Passive House design to achieve a 90% carbon emissions reduction in its buildings. This concept uses building science principles to attain specific energy efficiency and comfort levels. It includes continuous insulation and air-tight seals, high-performing windows and doors, balanced heat-recovery and moisture-recovery ventilation, and minimal space conditioning throughout the entire building. One project that Intelligent City is doing with the Mass Timber Demonstration Program is the Monad Granville Building, a rental, mixed-use nine-story development in an infill lot in Vancouver’s downtown. It is set to be the first prefabricated Passive House mass timber residential midrise in the city. ![]() Floor cassette panels and facade panels will be made using cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber while columns will be constructed with glue-laminated timber. The project serves as a model for prefabricated mass timber construction and Passive House design standards that could be replicated in future urban housing. The building will be designed to achieve net-zero energy readiness with a path towards carbon neutrality. With a pipeline of more than 2,300 homes, Intelligent City is supported by leading developers in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and the United States, including two high-rise projects in Downtown Vancouver, one of which is supported by the BC Mass Timber Demonstration Program. Besides assistance from the Province of British Columbia, Intelligent City has recently scored $17 million (CAD 22 million) from more than 30 investors, bringing its total to $23 million (CAD 30 million). By making effective use of Canada’s forest resources through low-carbon building systems, Canada is becoming a world leader in sustainable wood construction practices, increasing energy efficiency, and climate resilience while simultaneously enhancing the global competitiveness of its forestry, wood manufacturing, and construction sectors. Want to tweet about this article? Use hashtags #construction #sustainability #infrastructure The post Mass Timber Buildings appeared first on Connected World. from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/mass-timber-buildings/ via IFTTT Via https://theartofallen.blogspot.com/2022/08/mass-timber-buildings.html |
Other Blogs:
The Art of Allen's Blog Tumblr Weebly WordPress Other Profiles: Gravatar Diigo Evernote GetPocket OneNote IFTTT About.me Instapaper Disqus Nimbusweb.me Archives
April 2023
Categories |