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2024 Issues
September - October - Featuring
Editor's Comment: 'We conclude that the fire at Grenfell Tower was the culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry to look carefully into the danger of incorporating combustible...
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Streamlined water quality schemes
Bentley Systems' Paul Rotter explains how Mott MacDonald standardises phosphorous removal schemes, using ProjectWise Component Centre...
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July - August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Labour hasn't wasted any time since winning the election, and in her first speech the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed their manifesto commitments to build more houses - aiming at 1.5 million over the next five years...
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Joined-up data
Sasha Crotty, leader of Autodesk's AEC Design Data team, explains how the acquisition of Datum360 democratises data access for its AECO customers
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May - June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Round about the time Georg Nemetschek was thinking about using computers to advance his architectural dreams, I was writing my first software program in 2k of memory using machine code
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The Change
grabowski.spork architektur have developed an efficient BIM process with Vectorworks Architect to build a sustainable high-rise office in Eschborn, Germany and deliver The Change in personal lifestyles
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March - April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: You may have missed the report that 350,000 (sic) houses have been canned in the State of Voctoria, Australia, because of the discovery of several 'earless dragons' - previously thought to be extinct
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Making Designs Constructable
Andrew Bellerby explains how DBM Vircon develops constructable manufacturing models from engineer's designs
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January - February - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I can remember working for a Japanese printer manufacturer who wanted to expand into the small ‘floppy’ disk market – when 3 inch disks were vieing with 3.5 inch disks for supremacy
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Data visualisation tool collaboration
Anew data visualisation tool designed to support civil infrastructure teams expediate access to data during the planning phase - enabling more informed decision making...
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2023 Issues
November - December - Featuring
Editor's Comment: A great occasion to meet up with old friends, make new contacts and, of course, be in with a chance to win one of the Construction Computing awards. Entertainment was provided by a baffling close-range magician, Nick Eindhoven.
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Upping your game
Claire Rutkowski, Bentley's Senior Vice President and CIO Champion, considers the human aspects of accelerating change management in the construction industry - particularly important in the drive towards increasing involvement with AI
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September - October - Featuring
Editor's Comment: China is teaching its children about the pitfalls of democracy and its role in scuppering the development of large infrastructure projects, and it is using HS2 as a prime example. An easy target perhaps, but there are others.
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Water management
Sandra DiMatteo, marketing director for water infrastructure at Bentley Systems, outlines five ways that water utilities can mitigate the consequences...
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July - August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: With Bentley's Industrial Metaverse in the last newsletter, and Vectorworks' Life, the Omniverse and Everything in this one, the construction industry appears to be finally shaking off its image as a 'slow adopter of technology'
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A bridge between virtual and physical inspections
Dam and Bridge Monitoring from Bentley Systems increases safety for inspectors and gives them the ability to minimise field trips, speed up processes, and share data...
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May - June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I'm amazed, whenever I travel on the tube in London, to see so many adults engaged in mobile games. As someone whose only flirtation with computer games was Space Invaders on an Apple II...
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The industrial metaverse
Bentley's Innovation Lab (iLab) takes digital twins into the metaverse using 3D and 4D immersive technology developed for the gaming industry...
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March - April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: The ultra low emission zone (ULEZ) is a disruptive process that is changing people's lives - hence the opposition throughout Europe...
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From 2D photos to 3D models
David Chadwick looks at the new features in Vectorworks Cloud Services and the Nomad mobile app...
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January - February - Featuring
Editor's Comment: This issue has more than the typical number of case studies - not all of them UK based, but all of them relevant and interesting. January is a quiet month...
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Back to the future
Sustainability and digital transformation will be key focuses in 2023, according to Håvard Haukeland
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2022 Issues
November - December - Featuring
Editor's Comment: There is a vicious vortex of wind that swirls around the area between the two Hammersmith stations in London. The day can seem quite pleasant until you...
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Fusion powered collaboration
Fusion and Esri's ArcGIS connect people and processes on the multidisciplinary HS2 project
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September - October - Featuring
Editor's Comment: If you think our recent weather was hot then consider the ITER project that has been running in France for the last five years, and which still has some time to run...
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Archicad 26
Graphisoft releases the latest version of its architectural design application, Archicad 26, which focuses on giving architects and designers more...
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July - August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: We attach the term AI to just about everything that involves a bit of high-powered computing these days, which probably...
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The integration imperative
Graphisoft's vision according to Huw Roberts is "A world of buildings that make people's lives better, created together by digitalised multidisciplinary teams"...
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May - June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: We attach the term AI to just about everything that involves a bit of high-powered computing these days, which probably...
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H2PORTO
Oporto Water Utility develops a technology platform for integrated management of its urban water cycle
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March - April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: In a few short weeks the whole world has been tipped on its axis. Forget COVID and the environmental summit in Glasgow...
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The Omniverse and after
Graphisoft CEO Huw Roberts explains how visualisations helps create great architecture
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January - February - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I 'm afraid I have to apologise for pandering to stereotypes by giving a friend a birthday card recently which featured a Private Eye cartoon...
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A woven façade
David Chadwick looks at how Vectorworks Architect enabled GDP Architects to add another iconic building to the Kuala Lumpur skyline
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2021 Issues
November - December - Featuring
Editor's Comment: The UK Government's decision to cancel half of HS2 North of Birmingham has underscored the theme of two articles in this issue which deal with the importance of spending a bit of time negotiating contracts...
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British Antarctic survey selects new CDE
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has selected gliderbim® as its new Common Data Environment (CDE) to support the delivery of phase 2 of the Antarctic...
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September - October - Featuring
Editor's Comment: What an absolute Pleasure it has been to write up the Graphisoft case study on the duke ellington school of the Arts Project in Washington DC...
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Who owns the data?
Michael Barber, Director of Amodal, investigates the problems of data ownership in our digital world
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July - August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I went on a mini-cruise a couple of weeks ago, taking in a steam train trip from Paignton to Kingswear on the River Dart and then a jaunt on a 100 year-old steam driven paddle boat...
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Silver service
Graphisoft introduces the 25th version of Archicad, setting new levels of growth despite the ravages of the pandemic
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May - June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Here in the UK we are slowly emerging from the ravages of a global pandemic which has dramatically altered the way we live and work....
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CFD for urban design
Naghman Khan PhD, Product Marketing Engineer at SimScale GmbH explains how CFD is used to simulate the effects of volatile wind conditions in the proliferating canyons of urban cities
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March - April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Here in the UK we are slowly emerging from the ravages of a global pandemic which has dramatically altered the way we live and work....
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PARAM-O
Archicad 24 users lacking software or coding skills can now download a free-form modelling tool, PARAM-O, that enables them to create custom parametric 3D objects and components
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January - February - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Whilst we remain in the grip of the Coronavirus Pandemic, the new year is already witnessing a remarkable effort from scientists within the Pharmaceutical...
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A BIM inspired eco home
JRA's Earth Sheltered Eco Home was the runner up in the Construction Computing Awards BIM Project Of The Year category, proving BIM is not just a resource for large-scale public projects
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2020 Issues
November - December - Featuring
Editor's Comment: The Ultimate aim of many software Developments over the last decade or so has been to shave off a couple of percentage points from the bottom line.
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Digitally Twinned design
Graphisoft's Archicad enabled brp architects to create a virtual building to refine their forward-thinking design for a contemporary home in the middle of Market Harborough
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September - October - Featuring
Editor's Comment: It looks like relaxing the social distancing rules in the UK is having the outcome we all feared.
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Getting more from geotechnical data
OpenGround Cloud is a new cloud service that enables geotechnical professionals to access reliable geotechnical data for better engineering decision...
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July - August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: A few days ago I came across an interesting animated graph on the Internet, which demonstrated the relationship between the adoption of Covid-19 measures in America against the spread of the virus...
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Building Together
Graphisoft's online user conference, Building Together, delivered a powerful package of software upgrades and then trumped them all with a new paradigm...
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May - June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: It's a relief that we don't have to (t)witter on about Brexit anymore...
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Issues and risks
Version 4.6 of 3D Repo introduces a new measurement tool, a Revit plug-in for handling design and construction issues, and an integrated version of SafetiBase
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March - April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: It's a relief that we don't have to (t)witter on about Brexit anymore...
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Quiet, please!
Noise pollution is second only to air pollution as a threat to public health according to the World Health Organisation. Quiet Mark has set up the Acoustics Academy to help us understand why...
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January - February - Featuring
Editor's Comment: It's a relief that we don't have to (t)witter on about Brexit anymore...
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It's all coming together
It's a relief that we don't have to (t)witter on about Brexit anymore...
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2019 Issues
November - December- Featuring
Editor's Comment: What's the key ingredient in making a smart city? Getting the public involved in the process, of course...
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Lighting up the stage
New York based Gray Matter Visual used Vectorworks Vision 2019 for the spectacular light show at Telemundo 2019, the annual celebratory...
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September -October- Featuring
Editor's Comment: Having recently completed my bit of judging for the Vectorworks Student Design competition, which showcases the architectural talents of young people studying to become fully qualified architects...
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2020 vision
Vectorworks 2020 leads with enhancements to its data management capabilities and model visualisation, writes David Chadwick...
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July -August- Featuring
Editor's Comment: Designing buildings or running projects can be a bit of an insular activity when your entire focus is on the job in hand...
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The Wall of Answered Prayer
Designed by Snug Architects and described as 'A national landmark of hope', The Wall of Answered Prayer aims to inspire the nation and rival the Angel of the North...
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May-June- Featuring
Editor's Comment: The correlation of concepts in IT is a fascinating subject in its own right, and the very latest, exemplified by the two key players in the industry...
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A National Digital Twin
A dynamic digital twin was created at Cambridge University's Institute for Manufacturing to test the challenges and issues associated with developing a digital model of infrastructure assets...
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Mar-Apr- Featuring
Editor's Comment: It wasn't so long ago that the construction industry was being portrayed as being some way behind the times when it came to using technology'...
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AI in Infrastructure
Artificial Intelligence, integrated with Bentley's Reality Modelling, is set to revolutionise the solving of design and process issues within the infrastructure industry...
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Jan-Feb- Featuring
Editor's Comment: With all of the excitement about Brexit and whether we will be in, or out, or doomed if we end up with a 'No Deal'...
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A Small BIM Project
The small scale project at Swithland Lane, Rothley, designed by Jonathan Reeves of jrarchitects using Vectorworks was one of the runners-up...
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2018 Issues
November-December- Featuring
Editor's Comment: I have always been fascinated by the semantics of change, a striking example of which has been our pre-occupation with BIM over the last dozen years...
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Allplan Engineering 2019
The latest version of Allplan for architects and engineers provides improved working processes for all sectors of the engineering design community...
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September-October- Featuring
Editor's Comment: The Internet of Things, Smart Cities, the Information Age, The Fourth Industrial Revolution - call it what you will - but as Kenny Ingram of IFS points out in this issue...
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Digital twins
Bentley and Siemens combine data information models in the 'digital twinning' of two technologies - manufacturing and construction...
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July-August- Featuring
Editor's Comment: Also Known as industry 4.0, The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a major milestone in the evolution of civilisation from an agrarian past to a fully mechanised present...
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Bridging the gap
Designing complex bridges is substantially simplified using the parametric capabilities of Allplan Bridge...
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May-June- Featuring
Editor's Comment: I think it would be interesting to conduct a study to find out why men of the cloth seem to have a such a fascination with trains - from the Rev Wilbert Awdry who wrote Thomas the Tank Engine...
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OpenRail
Bentley's Rail and Transit Infrastructure Lifecycle Solution provides a comprehensive, concept to completion and operation solution for the rail industry...
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Mar-Apr- Featuring
Editor's Comment: With so much to write about concerning the management of information within the construction industry...
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What's the Diff?
3D Repo is helping to transform the way we handle information with its web based, real-time change detection solution, 3D Diff...
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Jan-Feb- Featuring
Editor's Comment: There will hardly be a company in the construction industry left untouched by the demise of Carillion...
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Allplan Bimplus
ALLPLAN's data focused BIM collaboration tool, Allplan Bimplus is the key to successful project delivery...
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2017 Issues
Nov-Dec - Featuring
Editor's Comment: The last decade in the construction industry has been dominated by BIM. Halfway through its implementation and careering towards the milestones...
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LEGO meets BIM
Bond Bryan Architects, early adopters of the principles of BIM and its application...
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Sept-Oct - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Hurricane Irma devastated whole countries in the Caribbean before finally expending its force on Florida
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Building confidence in cybersecurity
Steve Cooper at Aconex outlines the case for greater awareness of cybersecurity in construction
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July-August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Information management looms large in this edition of the magazine and with good reason, as information is the most critical ingredient in BIM
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Shaping the future
Instead of leveraging the tools of the past, information modelling should be planning for the future and taking advantage of the latest trends in 3D, virtual reality modelling and the cloud
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May-June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: The CAD User seminar on COBie, held in May at the London Transport Museum in association with Vectorworks...
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Shaping the future
Instead of leveraging the tools of the past, information modelling should be planning for the future and taking advantage of the latest trends in 3D, virtual reality modelling and the cloud
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March-April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Whilst we continue to question the role that COBie will play in the construction industry as our lives continue to be dominated by an intensive, information rich environment...
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Tekla 2017
Trimble has released the latest version of Tekla's structural engineering design and analysis suite of tools
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Jan-Feb- Featuring
Editor's Comment: As fascinating as it may seem to have the Americans complaining about the Russians interfering in the US presidential elections...
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COBie on trial
Are we delivering the right sort of COBie for the users of the data - the client?
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2016 Issues
Nov-Dec - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Virtual Reality features in several articles this issue, reflecting the maturing of the industry...
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Innovating in the Cloud
Bentley Systems and Topcon join forces to advance cloud services for 'constructioneering'...
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Sept-Oct - Featuring
Editor's Comment: Pandering to my basic 'nerdy' instincts, I couldn't resist including a case study in this issue on Bentley's AssetWise maintenance prioritisation...
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Opting into Building Ops
With Building Ops, Autodesk leverages the widespread use of smartphones to provide a total facilities maintenance management experience for owners...
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July-August/August - Featuring
Editor's Comment:The uncertainty over Brexit is already having predictable effects. The sharp fall in the value of Sterling increases the cost of imported items, but makes UK manufactured items more attractive....
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Beating the Brexit blues
The uncertainty over Brexit is already having predictable effects...
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May-June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: After all of the discussions about the demise of Excel as companies leverage the graphical and information rich tools we currently have available...
PDF Version
Exit Excel?
Bentley's ProjectWise EADOC delivers construction management in the cloud and improves collaboration with real-time visibility into your capital...
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March-April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I was going to do something entirely predictable and boring for this month's Comment, as it will be landing on your doorsteps right upon the BIM deadline...
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A Signal Improvement
Hatch Mott MacDonald Enhances Collaboration and Reduces Risk during Rail Signal Design using Bentley Promise's 3D Modelling Capabilities...
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Jan-Feb- Featuring
Editor's Comment: There is an emphasis in this issue on improving project efficiency, which is covered in a number of different ways across several articles...
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ConstructSim
Bentley's Advanced Work Packaging, a feature of ConstructSim, is the key to successful execution on complex projects...
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2015 Issues
Nov-Dec - Featuring
Editor's Comment: There was a time when the construction industry, and architects in particular, where castigated as not adopting new technology...
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The BIM factor
BIM was used extensively during the design of the new Waste Water Treatment Plant in Liverpool by Galliford Try Costain and Atkins...
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Sept-Oct - Featuring
Editor's Comment: I hereby lay claim to having been the first person to use the term Information Overload!...
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Scan to Go!
Colortrac's new portable scanner, the SmartLF Scan!, is being hailed as a revolutionary step in large format scanning...
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July-August - Featuring
Editor's Comment: We're a bit top heavy on structural engineering in this issue, but each of our four articles on the subject...
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Arcon Evo
Next-gen architectural visualisation software from Elecosoft...
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May-June - Featuring
Editor's Comment: We're a bit top heavy on structural engineering in this issue, but each of our four articles on the subject...
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Fail to plan, plan to fail
Ben Wallbank, BIM Strategy Manager at 4Projects by Viewpoint, highlights the importance of adequate planning for April 2016...
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March-April - Featuring
Editor's Comment: What a great time to be an architect...
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Optimum 3D Printing
You can make a rational choice and get up to £1,000 off a new Stratasys 3D desktop printer with ArtSystems’ new trade-in programme...
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Jan-Feb- Featuring
Editor's Comment: If you are a frequent traveller on the Underground and have to go through Bond Street you will have noted...
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The benefits of building twice
For a project as complex as HS2, with its political, environmental and public issues being of paramount importance, there is no alternative...
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