A round-up of BIM and digital construction stories you might have missed in the past fortnight, including the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act moving closer to implementation.
EU AI Act moves one step closer
The EU Artificial Intelligence Act has moved a step closer to implementation with the Parliament approving the legislation on 7 march. The Act is subject to a final lawyer-linguist check before final adoption in the summer.
Construction businesses operating, developing and deploying AI in Europe will need to comply with the Act.
Fines for abuse of the Act range from €35m (or 7% of global turnover) to €7.5m (or 1.5% of turnover), depending on the infringement and size of the company.
Glider secures next stage of investment
Glider has selected Cow Corner, a Brighton-based private equity firm, as its new investment partner. Nick Hutchinson and Steve Rukuts founded Glider in April 2016, and it is now well-established as an asset information management consultancy and software provider.
Rukuts, Glider’s IT director, said: “The investment and support from Cow Corner is going to be a gamechanger for Glider. We’ve built a solid platform of software solutions we believe in, matched with a strong, diverse and expert team of technically-minded digital specialists. I’m looking forward to seeing how we can further develop our software platform to make it even better for our clients.”
RFID-tagged pallets
Pallet reuse scheme Pallet Loop is applying radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to each reusable green pallet it produces and puts into the construction supply chain. As well as benefits for Pallet Loop, the data provided by the tags will help users – revealing insights about the financial and carbon savings they are achieving.
The tags (supplied by MiTEQ) are robust, waterproof and abrasion-resistant. Once fitted to the pallets, they can be read either by a hand-held or a static scanner employed at Pallet Loop’s manufacturing and repatriation sites.
RSK adopts Esri GIS
Environmental and sustainability specialist RSK Group has awarded a new enterprise GIS contract to Esri UK, to increase the use of geospatial technology across the business and support its ambitious growth plans. The three-year agreement, spanning 14 countries, will improve RSK’s access to online GIS for employees, accelerate the development of geospatial business tools, and allow teams to collaborate more easily using a central hub.
Additional benefits include access to new types of Esri software, providing workflows between drone data capture and GIS, advanced image analysis using machine learning, and 3D visualisation of spatial data.
RSK wants to increase the use of GIS to support its 2030 global growth strategy, which will quadruple revenue from this year’s £1.2bn to more than £5bn in 2030 and double its number of environmental and engineering businesses to 400. Last year the company acquired 34 businesses.
Dates for your diary
Digital Construction Awards entry deadline: 22 March
CIOB Awards: 9 April
nima virtual spring conference: 18 April
Digital Construction Week: 5-6 June
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