Acquisitions and new products continue to be strong in the construction technology sector, including news from Oracle, Ground Penetrating Radar Systems (GPRS) and BuiltWorlds.
Maumee, Ohio-based GPRS announced July 30 that it has acquired Existing Conditions, a Boston-based provider of reality capture, 3D laser scanning and drone imaging services for architects, engineers and contractors. The acquisition is the tenth for GPRS. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
“We’ve taken this journey of intelligent visualization of the built world.” said Jason Schaff, Chief Strategy Officer, GPRS, and Product Executive, Site Map. “What we traditionally do is visualize things underground, but we really want to double our ability to visualize above ground. Instead of thinking we can do it better, we wanted to find someone who does it better and help them scale.”
Existing Conditions is a 3D laser scanning, drone surveying and data management company focused primarily on the Northeast region, although its customer base extends across the country.
“What I really liked about GPRS … is that they are an operator,” said Existing Conditions founder and CEO Kurt Yeghian, who joins GPRS as an executive on the deal. “They recognize that when it comes to getting started, we built a platinum brand with the best architects and building owner institutions in the country using us. It was really an exciting synergy.”
Oracle’s Primavera Unifier Accelerator, now configured for owners
Oracle released Primavera Unifier Accelerator on August 6, with 65 preconfigured business processes. Primavera Unifier is designed to help building owners reduce their configuration processes within Primavera, with Unifier Accelerator ready for custom reporting. The Unifier Accelerator setup includes 250 reports and dashboards to manage cash flow, forecasts, contracts, scope changes, and project administration, including daily reports and RFIs.
“In the last six to eight months we’ve had a difficult task of trying to bring together all of this intellectual property that we’ve developed and package it into a set of preconfigured business processes with a bunch of standard reports and dashboards that are relevant throughout the project lifecycle,” says Mark Webster, senior vice president and general manager of construction and engineering at Oracle. “We think [this release] continues to provide the market with a unique platform that can be scaled across numerous business challenges, but certainly with the accelerator package, we will be able to dramatically improve speed and time to value.”
Oracle has also partnered with the Project Management Institute and is launching a PMI-Digital Construction Practitioner course through PMI’s e-learning platform.
BuiltWorlds talks about the future of construction technology
BuiltWorlds, a network and organization of AEC professionals who share knowledge about construction technology, held its Building Technology Conference July 23-25 at Convene in Chicago’s Willis Tower.
Jason Blumberg, CEO and CEO of Energy Foundry, an energy and cleantech impact venture capital fund, outlined some of the issues an investor sees in a discussion of emerging energy storage technologies on the first day of the conference’s Midwest Forum.
“For grid-scale lithium-ion storage, half of the lithium-ion battery container may be empty due to expected battery depletion,” he said. “Operations and maintenance costs are too high in gravity storage right now. With Iron-Air storage, which is now being tested in Boston, battery oxidation is 13 cycles and then it can be pointless. There are many new generation innovations in testing. The chemical and mechanical issues just take time to work out.”
Energy storage technologies have gained attention in recent years as off-peak energy needs grow to complement clean energy generation. Architecture and engineering firm SOM recently signed a partnership with technology developer Energy Vault on the company’s gravity-based energy storage technologies.
