The following construction technology companies have issued these updates for the third quarter of 2022.
Revvo Technologies Provides Integration to Fleetio
Revvo Technologies, a Silicon Valley based advanced smart tire technology and predictive data analytics company, has completed the integration of its advanced real-time alerts and predictive analytics platform with Fleetio, a fleet management software. This allows thousands of fleets around the world to connect their vehicles and drivers with Revvo's safety and performance insights.
Revvo combines real-time monitoring of tire health and performance with predictive analytics, powered by TireIQ, an advanced machine learning process, to help fleets avoid breakdowns and improve driver safety. The integration with Fleetio is designed to make it even easier for fleets to take advantage of Revvo's technology and insights, by providing them with a single platform to manage all their vehicles and drivers. The integration enables a fleet’s tires to automatically create issues and work orders whenever an issue or predicted service event is detected.
Revvo Technologies is focused solely on tire performance and behavior. Creating a way to automate tire inspection and data collection, giving clients 24/7 remote visibility into the condition of every tire in their fleet. Revvo delivers real-time alerts, reports, and predictive analytics to maximize operational efficiency, improve the safety of your fleet and team and ultimately, reduce tire and tire-related expenses.
Verizon Connect Introduces EV Features for Reveal
Mobile workforce managers looking to make more informed investment and planning decisions as they consider moving to electric vehicles (EVs) from their gasoline-powered ones could benefit from new enhancements, developed exclusively for EVs, in the Verizon Connect Reveal fleet management platform. For those customers who have already made the leap to EVs, the new updates to Reveal enable customers to manage their EVs and gas-powered vehicles, increase uptime by seeing their EVs’ charging and battery status information all from one platform, and more.
Verizon Connect Reveal customers in the U.S. and Canada will be able to more effectively support various vehicle types – both gasoline-powered and EVs – in one pane of glass. These enhancements will support all Reveal customers including government, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprise customers who have any combination of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles with OBD-II Standard Protocol.
Planning for the implementation of EVs can be evaluated from data and analytics from the Verizon Connect Reveal fleet management software platform. The data the team is able to extract, regarding miles driven, vehicle wear and tear, vehicle tracking and location, utilization and other points, can inform a fleet’s EV planning decisions, including the number of EVs included in the first phase of the rollout and future investments, infrastructure plans for charging, EV maintenance, EV storage and yards, and much more.
“EV adoption rates are continuing to grow and by analyzing data for just one month, business owners can be better informed about the introduction of EVs to their fleets,” said Peter Mitchell, senior vice president and general manager, Verizon Connect. “Once they make the decision, the new enhancements for EV in Reveal will support their evolving mixed-fleet management needs.
Trimble Ventures Invests in Civ Robotics
Trimble Ventures, Trimble’s corporate venture capital fund, announced its investment in Civ Robotics, a San Francisco-based construction tech startup focusing on transforming surveying layout for civil engineering and infrastructure projects. This investment supports Trimble Ventures’ mission to invest in early and growth-stage companies that are accelerating innovation, digital transformation and sustainability in the industries Trimble serves—such as agriculture, construction, geospatial and transportation. The investment terms were not disclosed.
The construction industry faces a variety of challenges including shortage of skilled workers, safety and productivity. Civ Robotics addresses these challenges with CivDot, a new autonomous surveying solution that empowers efficiency, productivity and safety on the job. CivDot is an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) designed for civil engineering and infrastructure projects such as solar farms, roadways, data centers, power plants and more. Augmenting the surveyors work, CivDot marks thousands of coordinates per day precisely and efficiently, while delivering layouts faster than traditional methods.
“We are focused on investing in companies that are seeking to address important challenges in markets that align with Trimble’s mission of transforming the way the world works. Civ Robotics technology supports surveyors and field workers and helps remove the burden of repetitive and risky work,” said Aviad Almagor, vice president, technology innovation at Trimble and technology advisor for Trimble Ventures. “Civ Robotics uses Trimble’s high-precision GNSS positioning technology and surveying software to improve productivity and increase safety. This is an exciting opportunity to help accelerate innovation in autonomy, surveying and construction.”
“Trimble and our vision are in lockstep toward construction automation with a sharp focus on the highest standards of safety and quality,” said Tom Yeshurun, co-founder and CEO, Civ Robotics, which announced its $5 million seed funding round this morning. “Through Trimble’s latest GNSS technology in our autonomous surveying products, our customers can benefit from an end-to-end workflow.”
Civ Robotics is an autonomous surveying solution for civil engineering and infrastructure projects. The company’s flagship product, CivDot, is an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) which marks thousands of coordinates per day precisely and efficiently for large construction projects, while empowering workforces faced with labor shortages and subsequent delays.
Launched in 2021, Trimble Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund focused on investing in early and growth-stage companies that align with Trimble’s mission of transforming work in the agriculture, construction, geospatial and transportation industries. The fund deploys strategic capital to accelerate the growth of innovative companies and partners that complement Trimble’s products, technology platforms and support its customer’s work.
Shimizu Partners with ALICE Technologies
ALICE Technologies announced that Shimizu Corporation has selected ALICE for use on their overseas projects. ALICE Technologies’ construction simulation and optimization platform helps general contractors worldwide to leverage artificial intelligence to plan, bid and build their large-scale infrastructure and commercial projects more efficiently and with reduced risk.
Founded in 1804, Shimizu has grown over the past two centuries to become one of the world’s largest construction companies. As it looks to the future, Shimizu aspires to become what it calls a Smart Innovation Company and sees leading-edge construction technologies as essential to its ability to execute on this vision.
The large-scale projects Shimizu builds are extremely complicated and could potentially be built in a variety of ways. Through its use of the ALICE platform, Shimizu is using the power of artificial intelligence to create thousands of potential construction schedule options for these projects – a task that is impossible using old-school scheduling solutions. Managers can then evaluate these choices and select the construction path that best matches their business goals for a project. In addition, when Shimizu begins construction, it will use ALICE Manage to help it keep projects on time and on budget – and to revise schedules quickly if circumstances change. The ability to easily update schedules to keep projects on track will enable Shimizu to reduce the risks associated with missing delivery deadlines and avoid liquidated damages that can decrease project profitability.
“With ALICE, we can simulate thousands of ways in which we could build a complex project,” said Shuntaro Kano, representative of Shimizu Silicon Valley Innovation Center, Shimizu. “The platform gives us the ability to experiment with different choices and run what-if analyses to find the optimal way to build,” he continued. “And once we move from planning to execution, ALICE will enable us to keep projects on track, and to easily update our schedules if necessary. This is the power of applied AI.”
“Shimizu is building some of the most sophisticated projects in the world,” said ALICE Founder and CEO René Morkos. “Airports, subways, bridges, skyscrapers – these are perfect use cases for ALICE. We thrive on complexity, and we’re excited to have the opportunity to help Shimizu to increase profitability and decrease risk by applying AI to the planning and management of its toughest construction projects.”
4M Analytics Secures $30 Million in Series A Extension
4M Analytics, the subsurface infrastructure mapping company, announced it has raised an additional $30 million in funding bringing the total raised for its Series A round to $45 million for the Tel Aviv-based analytics company. The funding round was led by global software investor Insight Partners and ITI Venture Capital Partners, with participation from current investors, Viola Ventures and F2 Venture Capital. Also participating in this round were Noam Bardin, former CEO of Waze (acquired by Google), and Nir Erez, the CEO and founder of Moovit (acquired by Mobileye-Intel). The funding will be used to create a map of the United States' subsurface infrastructure and grow their team.
Over the years the subsurface has turned into an enormous maze of utilities, one that was never recorded nor mapped. Every day more and more utilities go into the ground, and without a map, the risk of a utility strike increases creating delayed projects and additional costs. In 2020, there were more than 385,000 unique utility strikes that caused damage to underground utilities.
The United States was facing a $2.6 trillion infrastructure investment debt before the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law. The gap in investment meant the country dealt with poorly maintained infrastructure, costing individuals and businesses billions of dollars in lost time. Even though the construction industry will now receive additional funding to support the maintenance of the country's infrastructure, it still faces a lack of innovation that will impact the industry's ability to keep pace with the number of infrastructure projects.
4M Analytics' mission is to create the map product for underground infrastructure. The company has developed a digital repository of comprehensive utility data that is reliable, ready to use, and constantly updated. This will help engineers identify and pinpoint underground utilities early in the project lifecycle, accelerating and optimizing their projects. They will plan, bid, design, and build with greater confidence and higher ROI based on 4M's map.
"Until now, the construction industry has been forced to plan in the dark, based on incomplete, unreliable, out-of-date utility information, spending months looking through paper records, chasing contacts over the phone, and looking onsite for utilities, one-by-one and inch-by-inch. When a project is completed the utility data is often forgotten, requiring that the next project starts from scratch to get the same data," said Itzik Malka, CEO and co-founder of 4M Analytics. "To give professional engineers a baseline of utility data that the different project stakeholders can actually agree on, we collect raw data from hundreds of thousands of sources – from remote sensing and satellite imagery to public records, conflate it together using a variety of self-developed AI capabilities, and verify it using both state of the art computer vision and proprietary mapping techniques."
By deploying data at scale, the 4M Analytics product, 4Map, compiles all utility data into one dashboard. With this data, customers can view utility data for countless infrastructure projects simultaneously through an intuitive interface. The mapping resources will decrease the amount of time it takes to locate underground utilities for civil engineering firms, engineering procurement construction firms, contractors, and subsurface utility engineering firms in the transportation, oil and gas, water and electricity, renewable energy, and telecommunications industries.
The funding will be directed towards the company's expansion into the United States, growing their team and scaling the platform. Now, 4M is breaking into the United States' construction industry to help professionals more efficiently update existing infrastructure and support further economic development.
"The opportunity to support a company that brings about valuable and much needed innovation to the construction industry was a huge draw for our investment team. 4M's bold vision, strong leadership, and disruptive potential are a perfect match with Insight's scale-up capabilities," said Nikitas Koutoupes, managing director of Insight Partners. "The team at 4M has proven their subsurface infrastructure remote mapping capabilities across the world, and now, through their soon-to-be-launched platform, they will become the single source of truth for horizontal infrastructure construction."
"I understand what it means to build a map solution that impacts the lives of millions, and I fully-believe in the product and vision the founders have for 4M Analytics," said Noam Bardin, former CEO and founder of Waze. "Their use of future-forward technologies and identification of a market in dire need of a digital overhaul has positioned them to be the first mover in this emerging market."
Asite and SmartViz Announce New Partnership
Asite, a data platform for the built environment, announced a new partnership with SmartViz, an intuitive digital twin platform that boosts the performance of assets. This new partnership will expand operational capabilities available to asset owners. It will also enable outcome-driven digital twins through real-time data and occupancy analytics, simulations, and visualizations for asset performance optimization.
Building on a combined experience of over 40 years, the new Asite and SmartViz partnership will unlock a range of benefits for the AECO industry and open a new world of digital possibilities for the future of work.
Through this partnership, real-life, real-time digital twins will be created and will be used to make more effective decisions by turning data into insights and outcomes.
Asset information—CO2, light, humidity, and occupancy levels—can be aggregated from a myriad of IoT sensors and smart building systems, and visualized on an asset model in real-time to determine where energy is being lost within the asset and if space is being used efficiently.
The partnership provides the tools necessary to build more productive and energy-efficient assets, improving building performance and sustainability while helping reduce costs.
WaveLogix Receives Grant to Develop IoT Sensors for Concrete Strength
WaveLogix, a startup technology company that is commercializing an Internet of Things (IoT) sensing system for infrastructure monitoring, has received a six-month SBIR Phase I grant worth $255,996 from the National Science Foundation to develop its technology.
The company’s Rebel brand of concrete strength sensors improves upon the industry standard to measure concrete strength: breaking multiple field-cured concrete samples. Destructive concrete strength testing has several drawbacks including inaccuracy, quality control issues, interuser variability, material waste and expense.
The Rebel sensor system directly measures real-time, in-place concrete strength without requiring destructive concrete testing or the development of a maturity curve. The sensors also are not impacted by concrete mix design, meaning the mix can be changed during a project.
Luna Lu is the founder and chief science officer at WaveLogix. She said the NSF grant will help accelerate WaveLogix’s timeline to market.
“The funding will help the company accelerate the product development phase, particularly the IoT platform for data processing and sharing,” Lu said.
WaveLogix plans to conduct beta testing of the Rebel sensor system in 2023.
“After the beta testing, we start the manufacturing of sensors, with the focused initial market on roads, bridges and other major infrastructure projects,” Lu said.
Lu also is the ACPA Professor at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering with a courtesy appointment in materials engineering. She is the founding director of the Center for Intelligent Infrastructure at Purdue University. Lu invented the technology that WaveLogix is commercializing, having disclosed it to the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization.
The Rebel brand of concrete strength sensors was named a 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers GameChanger. The scientific paper also received the 2022 Alfred Noble Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Vodafone Developing Satellite Technology
Vodafone and Topcon Positioning Group are developing a new mass-market precise positioning system that will locate Internet of Things (IoT) devices, machinery and vehicles with a greater degree of accuracy than using only individual global navigation satellites systems (GNSS).
Vehicles, scooters, and even robot lawn mowers can be securely monitored in real-time to within a few centimetres when connected to Vodafone’s global IoT network and using technology from Topcon which corrects inaccuracies from navigation satellite signals. Location accuracy is improved from a few metres to just centimetres using Topcon’s dense European network of thousands of GNSS reference stations, especially when vehicles and devices are fitted with suitable antennas and receiver equipment.
Vodafone and Topcon have agreed to advance customer trials and Vodafone is now inviting select customers to join pilot activities in Germany, Spain, and the UK, starting this month. The companies aim to test the service, called Vodafone GNSS Corrections, using a wide variety of devices connected to Vodafone’s global IoT network – one of the largest with more than 150 million connections – and its pan-European network which covers 12 countries.
Pinpoint accuracy is critical to the mass adoption of Vehicle to Anything (V2X) technology – the ability for vehicles to speak with other vehicles, road users, and infrastructure – driverless vehicles, as well as for autonomous machinery and robots. For example, e-bike riders could use Vodafone GNSS Corrections to provide details of their exact location and then alert other road users of their presence.
Justin Shields, director of Vodafone Business Platforms and Solutions, said: “As new technologies like autonomous cars and connected machinery continue to evolve, Vodafone is providing the critical connections to support these new services with greater precision, more safety and at scale. Our customers want to be able to better locate their devices, and the collaboration with Topcon complements our existing asset tracking and fleet telematics solutions.”
Vodafone GNSS Corrections also supports Vodafone’s efforts to improve V2X location accuracy, especially when sharing trusted data to help prevent unnecessary accidents and fatalities on Europe’s roads. As such Vodafone is offering precise positioning as a complement to Vodafone’s new Safer Transport for Europe Platform (STEP) which allows entities to communicate with each other where no line of sight exists. Unveiled in March 2022, STEP has been successfully tested in Germany and the UK and will be made available via Vodafone Automotive and third-party apps later this year.
OpenSpace Receives Additional $9M in Funding
OpenSpace, a 360° jobsite capture and AI-powered analytics company, announced $9 million in additional strategic capital for its Series D round, bringing the total raised to $111 million. The investment comes from funds managed by existing investors Taronga Ventures and GreenPoint Partners, spotlighting OpenSpace’s opportunities to expand into new markets and use cases. The investment will be used to continue scaling the business and developing additional AI-powered technologies.
OpenSpace helps builders, owners, and other stakeholders in the construction and real estate industries save time and money by providing a trusted record of site status over the course of a project. As builders look to optimize their businesses to protect against potential economic headwinds, a recent survey from OpenSpace found that 54% said they’d look to technology as a solution, illustrating the strong growth path ahead. Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) and Ivanhoé Cambridge co-invested in OpenSpace through GreenPoint Partners' Technology Fund I.
OpenSpace integrates into the standard construction workflow, allowing builders to simply snap an off-the-shelf, consumer 360° camera to their hardhat and walk the site as they normally would. Once the video from the walk is uploaded to the cloud, OpenSpace's computer vision technology stitches images together and pins all the images to the floor plan, creating a digital twin of the jobsite. OpenSpace makes the jobsite capture available in 15 minutes on average, allowing project stakeholders to easily coordinate from any location without having to be onsite, thereby reducing miscommunications, saving travel time and costs, and providing a historical document of the building. OpenSpace’s technology has expanded rapidly in the last year: the company has added more capture capabilities beyond 360° images, including 3D scans from LiDAR-powered iPhones and iPads.
In addition, OpenSpace introduced ClearSight Progress Tracking: AI-powered trackers that can understand, classify and quantify what is in the image data, converting and mapping 360° images into quantities of materials, percent complete.
DHS S&T Awards Funds to Kansas City Startup Developing Wearable Tech, Mitigating Heat-Related Injuries
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced a Phase 1 Other Transaction award of $161,600 to Kenzen, a Kansas City-based company to develop wearable technology that helps prevent heat-related injuries for DHS personnel who work in extreme weather conditions.
Under its Human Performance and Resiliency solicitation, S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP) sought groundbreaking solutions to identify and resolve issues before reaching crisis levels, and to promote resilience and wellness tools that could serve the mission needs of DHS components and programs, including the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“Heat illness remains a real problem for DHS employees who routinely work in extreme environments, including along the southern border,” said Melissa Oh, managing director of SVIP. “Technologies that will help our agents know when they are approaching critical conditions by accurately monitoring important physiological metrics like core body temperature levels will have a huge impact in reducing the number of heat-related injuries and keeping our staff safe, even in extreme conditions.”
As part of the first applicants to receive an award under this topic call, Kenzen, a women-founded and led company, developed a heat illness prevention solution that uses a combination of a wearable sensor and advanced analytics to identify and alert users to changes in core body temperature and other specific factors. This information identifies heat stress so wearers can take preventative measures sooner, reducing the risk of serious illness.
“Kenzen’s technology will safeguard the wellness of our agents who often find themselves in unpredictable environments throughout their workdays,” said Jeremy Ocheltree, deputy director of the Customs and Border Protection Innovation Team. “This type of innovative tech could protect our employees and save lives.”
This solicitation complements current DHS employee wellness programs by including innovative technologies with a high degree of usability to support real-time wellness monitoring. Kenzen’s heat-stress mitigation solution could deliver important information to DHS users working in extreme heat environments, addressing a critical health challenge that impacts the DHS mission.
Six Winners Announced for $2M Mass Timber Competition
Six winners of the Softwood Lumber Board (SLB) and USDA Forest Service (USDA) $2,000,000 2022 Mass Timber Competition: Building to Net-Zero Carbon were announced. The winning projects demonstrate mass timber's innovative applications in architectural design, and highlight its significant role in reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment.
"One aspect of managing healthy, resilient forests is sustainable harvesting. Our overstocked forests are vulnerable to a number of issues, namely wildfires. As wildfires become more prevalent across the United States, mass timber supports not just forest health but low carbon buildings - both vital tools in mitigating the impacts of climate change," said John Crockett, USDA Forest Service Associate Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry.
"The SLB is gratified to see the breadth of concepts and building typologies entered in the competition. With nearly 60 submissions, we saw excellent examples of the innovative designs mass timber makes possible," said SLB Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Flom. "These six winning designs will serve to advance not just our body of knowledge for mass timber construction, they will inform the growing shift towards building for occupancy well-being, resilience and a minimal carbon footprint."
The Building to Net-Zero Carbon winning proposals include:
- Project: Vancouver Ambulatory Care Center. Building Type: Medical Center. Project Team: ZGF Architects, Timberlab, Swinerton, and PCS Structural Solutions.
- Project: Return to Form. Building Type: High Rise Multifamily w/ Affordable Housing Units. Project Team: Katz Development, Timberlab, KL&A Engineers and Builders, and Tres Birds Workshop.
- Project: Evergreen Charter School. Building Type: School. Project Team: Martin Hopp Architect, Consigli, and Odeh Engineers.
- Project: Alaskan Copper & Brass. Building Type: Warehouse. Project Team: Atelier Jones, Foushee, Timberlab, and DCI Engineers.
- Project: INTRO Cleveland Phase 2. Building Type: High Rise Multifamily. Project Team: Harbor Bay Real Estate Advisors, Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture, and Forefront Structural Engineers.
- Project: Killingsworth. Building Type: Community-centric Office Space. Project Team: Adre, LEVER Architecture, and Holmes Structural Engineers.
WoodWorks, a non-profit staffed with structural engineers, architects, and construction experts, managed all aspects of the competition, including project evaluation by an independent judging committee. Expert judges representing architecture, engineering, construction, real estate development, forestry, and sustainability selected the winners.
Winning proposals exemplified capabilities to design and construct mass timber buildings in the U.S. that are repeatable and scalable. Lessons learned from the competition projects will be shared with the broader design and construction community to help support future projects, including cost analyses, life cycle assessments, and other research results. The timber sourced for each project demonstrated sustainable forest management that contributes to forest and watershed health. Preference was provided for projects that committed to using domestically harvested and manufactured mass timber.
Newforma Achieves SOC 2 Certification
Newforma, provider of Project Information Management (PIM) software for architects, engineers, contractors, and owners (AECO) worldwide, announced that it has achieved SOC 2 certification.
System and Organizational Controls (SOC) was developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and SOC 2 is a U.S. security certification that defines criteria for managing customer data. The certification of Newforma’s policies, procedures, and infrastructure controls went through a rigorous review process over a three-month time period by an independent, third-party certified auditor, A-LIGN.
The SOC 2 certification audit covers five specific service trust principles including security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Security and privacy are a main concern for the construction industry as threats have significantly increased. In addition, SOC 2 compliance supports federal government and classified projects.
“Newforma customers can be assured that their data, passwords, and access are secure and protected,” states Johnathon Kinville, Newforma’s director of security. “Newforma continues to lead the AECO software market for security best practices.”
Green Badger Receives Seed Funding of $1.125 Million
Green Badger, the leading SaaS developer for managing sustainable construction, announced that it has received seed funding of $1.125 million in a financing round led by venture capital firm Shadow Ventures with participation from GroundBreak Ventures, Hamilton Ventures, and additional private investment partners. The capital will be used to continue to augment Green Badger’s functionality to automate green construction compliance and enhance the sustainability of the built environment.
Green Badger provides the most comprehensive LEED certification, ESG, and green-building automation software, making it the predominant choice for the construction industry.
The global green construction market is predicted to reach more than $774 billion U.S. dollars by 2030, increasing at a CAGR of more than 11.8 percent over the next eight years.
“Everyone in the built environment is facing increasingly complex requirements for achieving LEED and ESG compliance. Green Badger simplifies and streamlines these processes—including reducing the time spent managing LEED and ESG reporting by 65 percent to save builders hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Green Badger CEO Tommy Linstroth. “We’re excited by this infusion of capital as well as the significant experience our investors bring to the table in terms of helping to advise and grow successful businesses.”
“Green Badger can be likened to the TurboTax of LEED and ESG for the construction industry, since it eliminates manual spreadsheets, instantly verifies thousands of green construction products, enables real-time collaboration, and easily exports review-ready forms required for external validation,” said KP Reddy, General Partner at Shadow Ventures. “We’re pleased to lead this funding round for Green Badger and look forward to partnering with Tommy and his team to further penetrate the market for environmentally friendly building solutions.”
