“Originally it started with us doing data/com along with the electrical, and then we took it a step further and kept going,” says President and Owner Kevin Delaney. “From there, we learned how to program the systems, and then we started to sell some of these systems, which led us into the integration world, which [includes] security, cameras, and access control.”

The company’s full-service approach attracts customers within a variety of sectors, from technological, commercial and industrial, to residential, retail, and educational. These customers appreciate DEI System’s easy, one-stop-shop approach. “We can package our whole group into one contract instead of the [general contractor] or the end user having to go off and get eight different subs,” Delaney says. “We provide all that under one contract and under one roof. We’re trying to stay diversified [with] the services we provide.” As a result, the company is “not just pigeon-holed into just the electrical contracting realm. We’ve always tried to do more than that. We still do plenty of power and high-end switch-gear projects, but we try to do it all now.”

DEI Systems’ wide-ranging services have been the key to its success. “That’s what’s helped us grow. That’s what keeps us moving forward—the fact that we can offer so many different things,” he says. DEI Systems has enjoyed strong, steady growth since his family founded it in 2004.

“We started with fifteen in the field, and now we have over a hundred in the field.” The office staff numbers have grown so much that the company recently built a spacious new headquarters to accommodate them all. “We were coming apart at the seams at our old place,” Delaney remembers. The new building also includes a warehouse, which has streamlined operations since the previous headquarters and warehouse were located across town from one another.

The move has been a boon to the company, but it did come with challenges, especially since the build happened to take place during the COVID-19 shutdown. “It wasn’t easy,” he says. “We built this thing right in the middle of the pandemic, so it was pretty touch-and-go in the middle of this thing to keep things moving as a company as well as to keep this build moving forward.”

Fortunately, DEI Systems managed to complete the construction and overcome the difficulties of the pandemic. “Obviously, we had our challenges, with it being a public health crisis, having to keep everybody safe, and having to make some safeguards,” Delaney says. “We were able to band together as a group and get through it.”

Ironically, the company had a bumper year in 2020 despite the shutdown. “Businesswise, we had our largest year. Many of our accounts were considered essential; our projects were considered essential,” and this helped make the company ‘pandemic-proof.’

Throughout DEI Systems’ growth, it has maintained a strong company culture. “We’re a family business,” he says. “We are a close-knit group, no matter how we grow or have grown.” Many employees have deep roots with the company. “I have family members that are electricians out in the field, friends, people that I’ve grown up with my whole life that are a part of the business and a part of the culture.”

While the team is close-knit, it certainly is not uniform. “We have such a diverse group,” Delaney says. “Men, women, people of all different ethnicities.” The company is not just varied in “what we provide but who we are as people. I think that really works well for us because we’re all very different but our core values are very similar, so it makes for a really good product.”

The supportive company culture entices employees to stay long-term. “We pride ourselves, as tough as the job market is right now, with being able to consistently keep a lot of the same faces and watch them grow and work their way up to the top of the ladder,” he says, noting that one of the most rewarding aspects of the business has been “watching people grow with us.”

Employee retention is important in an industry that faces a workforce shortage. In addition to retaining staff, DEI Systems has been proactive in recruiting new employees to keep the company roster filled and particularly active in recruiting people who have not traditionally been associated with the industry.

“We are seeing a lot more women in the trade, which has been amazing,” Delaney says. “A huge thing that I’m a real proponent of is trying to keep the workplace diverse because everybody’s struggling to find better people to be in the trade. And the women in the industry, as a whole, [are] an untapped resource that we’re all starting to see. Younger women are getting into the trade where they wouldn’t do that before. [They are] going to trade school, [and] they want to be electricians. I think that’s pretty cool, and that’s what I want to keep seeing.”

DEI Systems works with local high schools and trade schools to bring new talent into the company. However, COVID-19 created recruitment challenges over the past year. “It’s been a good response [but] it’s really slowed due to the pandemic,” he says. “We couldn’t get into the schools… You couldn’t meet with people. You couldn’t be around people. So it really took a toll on us going after some of the high school kids.”

Overall, the team’s recruitment efforts have been met with enthusiasm. People who want a solid career, but “didn’t find that college was for them,” are often attracted to the on-the-job-learning and intellectual stimulation the industry offers. “There is a huge intellectual side of what we’re all doing,” Delaney says. “We design projects, and it’s all computer-enhanced documents that we’re working with; people onsite have tablets, and it’s all computerized.”

In today’s world of crippling student debt, an increasing number of young people see the benefits of a free education in a field with good job security. “The trade offers a lot of education—and a free education—if you get with the right company,” he says. “We’re going to make sure that we pay for their electrical education.” In return, the team hopes that these young people will become longstanding employees.

DEI Systems will continue to support and emphasize education in the future. Its employees need to “keep learning and staying in the intellectual realm of where this whole trade’s going,” Delaney says. “It’s no longer just twisting a few wire nuts. These guys have to be educated.” The company will also continue to focus on offering a diverse range of services. “I’d like to continue on with our approach of being multifaceted.”

In addition, Delaney plans to expand the company’s sales division and offer a wider range of products, brands, and services. With so much growth already accomplished, the company is well placed for continued success along this path. “Things look good for the future,” he summarizes.

The post A Diverse Approach<p class="company">DEI Systems</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Since it was established twenty-five years ago, the Falcon Group has served over 15,000 multi-family communities. Its offices all along the East Coast employ a professional staff of engineers: civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection, as well as architects, interior designers, and construction managers.

A large portion of the work completed by Falcon includes renovating existing housing stock, rather than new construction. “As homes and buildings get older, they require repairs to their structural systems and infrastructure,” explains Falcon Group Executive Vice President Orlando Ballate. “The average owner-occupied home in New York City is fifty-seven years old, and throughout the U.S., half of the commercial buildings built in the country were constructed prior to 1980, so they are over forty-one years old. These aging homes and buildings require a tremendous amount of upgrades, repairs, and major renovation work.”

As these multi-family residential communities or large condominium high rises in urban areas continue to age, it is important to plan and preserve their structural integrity and common elements with a capital reserve fund, a set amount of money put aside each year to replace or repair major building components in the future. The purpose of this type of funding is to avoid large unplanned payments as a result of special assessments that indicate improvements must be made to the building. Rather than being hit unexpectedly with a $20,000 assessment for a large improvement, a capital reserve is ready with available funds when these common elements need to be repaired or replaced. In certain states through the U.S., capital reserve funding is mandated for all shared buildings and communities.

The types of common elements covered under capital reserves include roadways, underground infrastructure, water lines, the building’s roof, windows, exterior cladding, and side amenities such as clubhouses, swimming pools, walkways, courts, and playgrounds. “You want to set aside and establish a capital reserve fund when you live in these communities, and as a general rule, the annual capital reserve funding should be two percent of the value of your home, starting when the home was built,” says Ballate.

For existing communities that do not currently have any capital reserve, a detailed study should be conducted to determine the capital reserve funding and to avoid any huge special assessments. The Falcon Group frequently works with communities that have not funded their capital reserve, and the process often requires millions of investment dollars to repair and replace the common elements that have been neglected. Without delay, the firm is attempting to raise awareness about capital reserve funding because the current interest rates for loans to fund capital reserves are at an all-time low, and it is a great time to plan to preserve the value of your home and community.

One project underway at the Falcon Group is for a community of over 1,200 homes distributed over six buildings. Since capital reserve funding was overlooked in this sixty-year-old community, the price amounts to more than $80 million to bring the infrastructure and common elements up to date. Significant repairs are required for the heating and cooling system, roadways and parking garages, building facades, windows, and the project includes renovation of the lobbies, hallways, and roofs. A loan has been taken out to fund the capital project, and it will be distributed over ten years.

Unfortunately, due to the shortage of skilled labor, proper supervision, and the growing complexity of building systems, new construction today is fraught with construction defects. Many of these defects can result in damage like flooding, water leakage and mold conditions, fire safety hazards, and disruption to occupancy. According to Ballate, the answer to this potential problem is a transition engineering study.

“For peace of mind of the association, community, or building owner, a transition engineering study should be performed right after construction in order to identify any major construction defects by the builder. The period of time in which construction defects litigation can be brought against a builder varies from six to ten years depending on state laws or as what’s referred to as the statute of repose.”

A statute of repose is a fixed period after which a lawsuit cannot be pursued. Once the statutory period ends, it provides a clear defense of liability, and this is to protect the builder from long-term liability claims. Transition engineering studies should be completed as soon as possible when transferring ownership from the developer or builder to protect the investment.

The cost of solar photovoltaic technology has come down quite a bit and this has led to an increase in solar panel installations on building roofs across the country. “These [photovoltaic] projects have a payback, or return on investment, in about three to four years. Solar panels cost anywhere from eight to ten cents per kilowatt-hour. The cost of a solar panel installation of 6 to 12 kW is in the range of $11,000 to $26,000, and the payback on these solar installations, which can last twenty to thirty years, is only four to five years. This is because the cost of electricity is going up, and the free solar energy can not only power your home but, depending on where you’re located and the size of your solar array, you can also sell the power back to the utility company,” explains Ballate.

Photovoltaic shingles, also known as building-integrated photovoltaics, are a particularly popular choice these days. The solar panels appear and function similarly to conventional shingles while generating electricity. The cost is roughly 15,000 dollars for a house. It weighs thirteen pounds per square foot and should last three decades. When the time comes to replace shingles, this is a valuable investment that owners can choose.

For most residents, their home is their greatest asset. The best way to increase the value of this asset is by investing in the home and community through renovation projects. In a shared building, one important area is the lobby because it gives the building’s first impression. In recent years, the lobby has also become more essential in terms of storage due to the high number of deliveries from Amazon and other online suppliers.

“We renovate the lobby, and we increase the storage space that’s available to the residents in the building to make it more manageable. Hallway and lighting renovations are also important, using energy-efficient LED lighting and the modernization of elevators.” Ballate explains that running elevators takes up roughly twenty-five percent of the building’s energy usage. An elevator upgrade is a valuable renovation because of its faster speed; it improves safety and [has a] significant impact on energy efficiency. New modern elevators are also safer and faster than their forerunners.

Another type of improvement that can be done to a high-rise building is rooftop terraces and gardens. These rooftop gardens can be found throughout New York City due to limited space, and the Falcon Group has found that these substantially improve the value of the individual homes within a building. This can be a beautiful space where the building’s residents can spend time with friends and enjoy the weather outdoors.

Community spaces in a building should be upgraded to include better remote workstations for the large number of people choosing to continue working from home after the pandemic. Bringing the building’s technology up to date and enabling WiFi in all common areas is also a nice feature to upgrade an existing building. Other valuable additions could include movie rooms, meeting rooms, game rooms, golf simulators, and any other features interesting to today’s residents.

Coping with a pandemic the last year and a half has elevated people’s concern about proper ventilation systems within a shared building’s common areas. According to the CDC, indoor spaces are riskier than outdoor spaces, and a building’s mechanical ventilation system can minimize potential viral spread. Increasing ventilation from outdoor air lowers the concentration of air-borne contaminants.

“What we find in these older buildings that we work with is that they have little or no air exchange, or ventilation where outdoor air is coming in and air movement is very important,” says Ballate. “So we’ve made a tremendous amount of improvements in many buildings through increasing the ventilation systems in the building, increasing the air movement and air exchange to improve, and reduce the possibility of viral spread.”

With the aging housing stock and commercial buildings in the U.S., the need to plan for capital improvement projects is only growing. Proper capital reserve funding is required to maintain the value and safety of homes and communities. Once a project is identified, the professional team at Falcon can expertly assess, design, and solicit the best price for the project, before managing the construction to completion.

The Falcon Group’s growing firm of 150 architects, engineers, and construction managers is passionate about improving the aging infrastructure throughout the country at the lowest possible cost to communities in need. “There’s a tremendous need for what we do, and we just want to help communities and individuals manage their real estate assets properly,” concludes Ballate.

The post Improving America’s Housing Stock<p class="company">Falcon Group</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

As a pioneer in the tension fabric building space, GNB is not only revolutionizing the construction of these structures, but it is also innovating the materials used in their construction. In doing so, the company has taken these materials’ performance to new heights, proving that the sky’s the limit.

GNB enjoys success in oil and gas, mining, warehouse, energy production, sports and recreation, entertainment, agriculture, and construction projects, and the team is always looking for new ways to add value, creating tension fabric solutions to protect customers’ interests, assets and materials.

“Of course, now the challenge for GNB is how to duplicate that success [in one application] and bring it to other industries, whether it’s high-rise buildings, mid-rise buildings, or any long-term project,” says Trevor Pond, Vice President, Sales and Business Development.

GNB has undertaken mission critical projects like emergency response centers, as well as projects at the other end of the spectrum in hobby spaces. Regardless of specifications or needs, GNB’s movable, prefabricated structures are built to order and built to last. Every job and every client shares the same quality and is given the same attention to detail every step of the way.

Lasting solutions
Be it a large structure or small, temporary or permanent, complex or straightforward, GNB can work with its clients to devise customized tension fabric solutions that address their needs and also offer the peace of mind that comes when you know that the structure will outlast the project.

“What sets us apart is that we’re a true one-stop shop in the way that we’re going to handle everything from inbound inquiry to warranty, installation, engineering, logistics: one hundred percent. If you’re going through GNB, you’re dealing with us every step of the way,” says Vice President Brad Shambel.

As a one-stop shop, GNB supports its clients through the entire process: from consultation, where it identifies their pain points; through research and development, where pain points are addressed; and during installation and service – remembering that need for maintenance is usually minimal given the longevity and performance of these structures.

“We just make it easy for customers to deal with us. We remove a lot of the liability, the risk, the uncertainty in dealing with a vendor and I truly believe that’s been the reason for our success and our growth. Once someone gets a taste of dealing with us, we make it very hard for them to go, or want to go, anywhere else,” Shambel says.

Just as the structures are built to last, so too are the relationships that GNB builds with customers, which is why it has secured so many plum projects. The only way to attract industry leaders is to be an industry leader yourself, which GNB has demonstrated time and again by finding new ways to satisfy customer needs.

“Now we’re bringing multiple offerings to the same client,” notes Pond, who describes a data center project for a client. “We deployed both our buildings there that they use for temporary structures, as well as our RWES for the weather enclosures, and we’ve got multiple users now on data-center builds that are using both products.

“We’re here to help solve problems,” he adds, “and if it’s a tension fabric solution, we’ll work on it. Some of our greatest innovations, RWES for example, have come from people sharing their experiences and their challenges.”

RWES and Mother Nature
What Pond refers to is GNB’s patented reusable weather enclosure system (RWES), a proprietary solution that has taken tension buildings to the next level in terms of performance and longevity. Referred to as “Mother Nature’s worst enemy,” RWES is weather enclosures done right for a number of industries and applications, in particular construction sites.

RWES is a long-term solution that provides thousands of square feet of column-free, unobstructed space. The material used is designed to reflect light at night, necessitating less lighting to achieve better interior visibility. Structures can be customized based on size, color, layout, access points, and can be branded for a professional look and marketing edge.

RWES is patented in North America and Europe and there is additional growth on the horizon. GNB has immense belief in this product and demonstrates it with a 16-year warranty, indicative of the value it brings to its clients’ projects.

“Although GNB created this and patented it, it was through collaboration with our customers, understanding what their pain points were, that got us to this point. The benefits of the RWES system are that it’s reusable, it sets up and deploys in about half the time [of competing systems], and once it is set up, you never have to rework it – it’s literally just set it and forget it,” explains Pond.

As a matter of fact, RWES installs 40 to 60 percent faster, at 40 to 60 percent of the cost of traditionally constructed structures, which is especially important as the cost of construction materials continues to climb. Additional value is derived from these structures being portable, reusable, and storable for up to seven years, which means less material to find its way to the landfill.

Weathering the storm
When choosing a GNB built structure, customers know that they are being protected from the elements and inclement weather thanks to its promised 99 percent weathertight seal. RWES offers protection against UV, rain, moisture, dust and wind.

RWES structures have withstood winds in excess of 150 kilometers an hour thanks to engineered building profiles that promote even distribution of wind and snow loads. The material is also flame and mold resistant.

An indication of GNB’s commitment to completely satisfying the needs of its customers with fully customized tension-fabric solutions, was its recent investment in a new fabric facility. In the face of rapidly increasing demand, this facility will enable it to better control supply.

“The genesis of that fabric plant was to separate RWES from our building side just to make sure that we don’t change our service level to our existing customers,” says Shambel. Only months after production began, there are already signs that additional shifts will be necessary to deal with demand. With foresight, the company has invested in the capacity to really turn up production, and so maintain the care for customers that has made its name.

GNB is a no-frills company that prioritizes relationships with its customers, safety, and a job well done. This approach has been a recipe for success, one that has earned the trust of many customers. One of its largest clients equates working with GNB to pressing a Staple’s Easy Button – well, that was easy!

From Pond’s perspective, that sort of growth in its reputation is due to the company culture, “We don’t just take what’s coming to us and make it easy, we care about our customers’ success and how we can serve them. I know we look a lot at how we’re spending our customers’ money, and if we don’t spend it wisely, it’s not going to be great for our longevity. GNB is a very resilient company, but it stems from wanting to do right by our customers.”

The people at GNB have clients’ best interests covered every which way, and they do that by keeping in mind just three letters, “DPR” – standing for dependability, predictability, and reliability – the guiding principles upon which its success was built and the reason the company’s celebrating its milestone twenty-fifth year.

“We won’t sacrifice that in order to grow in other geographic markets, so we’ll know when the time is right to do so,” said Pond, “But we’re not going to do that at the expense of lowering our service standards for our existing clientele.”

The goal is for the names GNB and RWES to be synonymous with outstanding protective structures. In a dusty, windy, demanding world, the team is setting the standard for tension fabric solutions and intends to keep it that way, so that when someone asks for tension fabric, RWES and GNB are the immediate and best solutions.

The post They’ve Got You Covered<p class="company">GNB Global Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

He further extols the work ethic in the company from both a top-down and bottom-up perspective, citing it as second-to-none in the sector. This attitude toward work is essential, as GSWC’s clients rely on it to find solutions to problems that arise during electrical projects and this hard work has become an important part of the GSWC identity.

People are the biggest factor that leads to the company’s success, Martinez says, so the company invests heavily in training and livelihoods, providing for employees’ families and having the workers provide an excellent resource in turn. Training is a key part of this people-first focus, whether it be for the craft and labor the company has in its workforce or the mastering of new technologies affecting the broader industry.

To this end, leadership training is highlighted and all levels of the company have engaged in the same training. This has had a profound impact on the company as a result. Clients frequently comment positively on the work of everyone from field and support staff to project management.

Since we previously spoke to GSWC in 2020, the company has established a new regional headquarters in Alvarado, Texas, southwest of Dallas. Martinez affirms that Texas is a high-growth area for the business as the market is “leaps and bounds ahead of the country in terms of population and business growth.” The new site includes a facility and yard to train new apprentices as well as a substantial fleet facility to service equipment; in short, according to Martinez, the new regional headquarters is a one-stop shop.

The company has also been branching off geographically with new projects in states like Florida, in which GSWC has been winning work for the past year and a half. It also has been expanding its Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) group since last year with new additions to the team. These new hires have backgrounds in disciplines from material management and logistics to project management) and have been involved with grid impact projects like Fast AC Transmission Solutions (FACTS).

Martinez stresses that GSWC strives to be deliberate about its growth to make sure the proper resources are being allocated to meet client demand. Research is constantly done in markets around the country to see if they fit both the GSWC business model and are suitable for its people to work within. For example, before expanding into the growing Florida market, company officials researched larger clients in the area and determined long-term drivers for success there, such as needs for renewable energy integration, the amount of leading infrastructure in the area in need of replacement, and the demand for outsourced labor. “We won’t just go to an area to say we’re there,” Martinez explains. “There will be a reason behind it.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, GSWC was thankfully able to adapt and overcome issues with which it was presented. An unforeseen positive impact of the pandemic, Martinez explains, was that it allowed the company to increase its pace of communications. For instance, it implemented business-wide weekly calls over Microsoft Teams that initially were to address COVID-related issues but eventually expanded to include over 150 employees and covered matters of importance like safety and productivity. Martinez gives credit to those who worked out in the field during this time, an act which he feels speaks volumes about the culture of GSWC.

GSWC also firmly stands behind the EPC approach that has become central to its brand over the years. In fact, Martinez feels that the EPC model is even more viable in the construction industry than ever before because many clients who use that model do so because they need to fast-track projects and outsource more services in designing and building infrastructure projects.

With a big wave of retirement hitting the construction industries at all parts, a large amount of institutional knowledge is in danger of being lost, which will lead to industries being reliant on the turnkey, design-build EPC model because, as Martinez sees it, these industries do not have the bandwidth to manage the current level of workload. GSWC made a point to invest heavily in EPC, as well as project management and material procurement management.

“As a contractor, we feel we can offer an alternative to the engineer-led model,” Martinez says of why the company went in this direction. “We are driving the construction side of things and teaming with qualified engineers to offer up a nice solution to clients under the competing model.”

Martinez observes a sizeable shift to infrastructure in the construction industry at present, especially after a June 2021 announcement by both the Republican and Democratic parties in Washington, DC of a bipartisan infrastructure framework to address how to pay for growing infrastructure needs in the country. He views this as a positive for the company as well as its affiliates, as the emphasis on infrastructure has only become more profound over the past several years. This was highlighted earlier this year when power-related issues occurred in Texas during its inclement winter weather, showing how these types of issues can impact society.

“People are realizing that the grid is vital to day-to-day operations and to health and safety,” Martinez explains. He believes that customers and businesses within the industry will start seeing more of the types of services offered by GSWC countrywide. Although he cannot accurately determine if the industry is in a boom period, he feels that it is certainly on its way there, so the company needs to make sure it can have enough people on hand to meet incoming demand.

For the rest of 2021, GSWC will be concentrating on making sure growth continues strategically and soundly, while investing heavily in training, offering opportunities for growth to employees, and making sure to stay on top of industry trends so that clients are offered a solution to all potential. Martinez details that the company will be building from the growth of previous years and from the momentum achieved in 2020, which will drive overall growth into the next few years.

GSWC is currently involved in dialogue within the infrastructure space and examining how it can deliver power to its clients safely. The grid and grid security will also be studied in the future as the company wants to ensure that people across the country have reliable sources of power.

The events of the past twelve months have shown the want and need for Americans to have access to reliable and safe power, a market desire that Great Southwestern Construction will continue to supply to all those who need it.

The post Riding a Wave of Momentum, from 2020 Successes into a Bright Future<p class="company">Great Southwestern Construction </p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc’s (CEC) Subsurface Utility Service minimizes risk on construction projects and does much more. The company’s diverse service portfolio is exactly why construction specialists do not need any other geospatial or survey contractors. The employee-owned civil and environmental engineering consultant’s team of more than one thousand serves clients from twenty-eight facilities stretching across the United States.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based firm was founded in 1989 by a group of four engineers and scientists. And, because its multi-disciplinary teams specialize in solving complex challenges, the company is especially popular among construction firms for its skill sets, expertise, and advanced technological capabilities.

The company describes itself as a project lifecycle firm. “We have people working for us who are experts with years of experience in all phases of most [types of] project,” says Brian Souva, a vice president in the company’s Survey/Geospatial practice. As a result, the CEC team of geospatial professionals, engineers, scientists, environmental due diligence professionals, site assessment professionals, and individuals in countless other disciplines saves project owners and project managers the hassle of coordinating with a multitude of separate service providers.

CEC handles all tasks that are involved in ensuring that a site has been sufficiently studied in terms of surface, subsurface, infrastructure and environmental assessments. “It can be cumbersome for clients to manage many outsourced relationships, and then they don’t have continuity throughout the project [with regard to] the history of what happened from the beginning to the end. We pride ourselves on having knowledgeable people in-house at every phase of a project’s lifecycle,” says Emily Chiodo, Senior Marketing Communications and Public Relations Manager.

This is why the company’s services also include preliminary tasks like permitting and design. “Whether it is a mining project or a real estate project, there’s always a lifecycle. We work with our clients from the beginning to delivery and even beyond to assist with operations, monitoring and compliance, and even closure or retirement of their assets,” she adds.

Building on a site without knowing what the situation is beneath it is never ideal. Therefore, according to Souva, who is a professional land surveyor, the company’s work is mainly focused on managing risk. At the start of projects, after confirming ownership, CEC locates and maps underground utilities, voids, concrete substructures, pipelines, underground storage tanks, and even the boundaries of gravesites. As most utilities are typically located beneath roadway tarmac, multi-colored paints are used to mark each utility pipeline like water, gas, and others. Once this is done, the outlines are surveyed and mapped.

“What you end up with is an accurate picture of what the underground utilities for that project site look like. Utility records are usually very old or [passed down by] word of mouth. [Often] such records aren’t very accurate,” says Andy DeGroat, a senior principal and the geospatial practice leader for CEC’s operations in the Carolinas. Once the geospatial data is collected, designers then employ this to develop plans that inform the construction contractor of the surrounding underground and other structures.

To achieve all its great feats, CEC invests in quality technology. It uses uniform software platforms for easy collaboration between its regional operations and keeps its equipment the same across the business, saving time and assuring ease of use. For its subsurface utility engineering, CEC uses technologies that include several types of electromagnetic locating equipment, various frequencies of ground penetrating radar to help it find structures like underground storage tanks, and different pipe cameras.

The company performs ground-penetrating radar scans on roadways, bridge decks, and even walls. “We’re nimble in terms of where our people can go, and we have the manpower to send enough people out to complete even tall orders on short deadlines,” says Chiodo. Whatever its clients need, CEC can offer a one-stop-shop experience.

The company’s in-house depth of bench “better positions us to see that everything goes smoothly because we have collaboration taking place. When [a company] doesn’t have this level of collaboration, they may not identify potential hurdles early or arrive at better solutions derived from multiple points of view. This is why we bring our disciplines together to talk about how they all can serve a particular industry’s needs,” says Chiodo.

CEC’s comprehensive services even include a fully equipped archaeological team with historical preservation professionals and scientists in its cultural resources department. This group ensures that the firm’s work remains in line with the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and more.

The company has found many interesting artifacts over the years while scanning areas for utilities. One such find turned out to be antique trolley rails used to haul goods from one side of town to the other in Charlotte, North Carolina’s gold mining days. The track went straight past the Federal Reserve offices.

CEC’s service is known throughout the industry, landing the team several accolades over the years. Some more recent acknowledgments include reaching #88 on Engineering News-Record’s ‘Top 200 Environmental Firms’ list and #96 on Engineering News-Record’s ‘Top 500 Design Firms’ list for 2021 and, in recognition of what a great place it is to work, CEC was recently listed among the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s top workplaces.

But the company serves more than the construction industry. Clients include respected firms in the manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, power, real estate, and solid waste industries as well as entities in the public sector. Other services include air quality, civil engineering, ecological sciences, environmental engineering and sciences, manufacturing infrastructure services, survey/geospatial, waste management, and water resources. Each of these categories comprises a host of sub-services led by carefully chosen professionals with a range of academic backgrounds.

The company’s strength is in its diversity and in the fact that its teams come up with solutions specifically tailored to each industry and even each client it serves. Collaboration between disciplines teaches “our folks to think from the clients’ perspective. We are tailoring what we do and our discussions around how each industry functions and what their latest trends are so that we can be adaptive,” Chiodo adds.

Considering the quality, scope, and reach of CEC’s services, it stands to reason that many of its clients, even national ones, have been with the company for several decades. Relationships matter and Souva is a great believer in speaking with customers in person. “It’s about the [sincere, personal] relationship. It’s not always about the project. I see this as being part of my lateral management approach. Working with us is like working with a friend,” says Souva.

Despite the impression one might get from its size, the company works as one big family. For this reason, personal accountability is a big deal, and so is safety. In a bid to fortify and communicate its extensive safety protocols, employees receive thorough training and refresher courses, and clear procedures are set out for tasks. On the odd occasion that accidents do happen, the sequence of events is carefully studied and protocols further developed. It is always looking to develop its skills and capabilities further.

Around sixty percent of its people hold stock in the company, and it is always hiring thanks to continued stable growth throughout its history. “We provide a top-notch opportunity for folks who are looking for a place to build a long-term career,” says Chiodo. For Souva, the company’s different locations’ ability to pull together and cultivate shared solutions from across the country is both unique and inspiring.

DeGroat joined the firm not long ago. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked at a site and found a person who [specializes in a service] that I could sell on to another client somewhere else in the country,” he says. “At the same time, it’s all very personal. I know people by name. I call them, and we get together. We sit down and talk about what we’re doing. It’s very refreshing to be here.” Considering how interesting its projects are, the work naturally gets pretty cool, too, like performing LiDAR scans inside bat caves and other unusual projects.

CEC was recently called out to take care of a project in Boone, North Carolina. The facility had been a holiday resort for years and now wanted to expand and improve the existing facilities. But there were no records of its underground utilities. The CEC team rushed to their aid and located the underground infrastructure during a painstaking process that took around three months.

The company invites its adventurous thinkers to invent. There are even annual awards for the best innovators in order to inspire people to come up with brilliant solutions to clients’ big challenges, fostering creativity and perpetuating its competitive edge in the market.

Taking care of people beyond its own offices is also important for the company. Its “CEC Community” initiative reaches across the United States and allows the company to lend a helping hand and better local communities. Its activities range from improving neighborhoods to charity donations, and even volunteering skills and sharing knowledge in areas that need it.

Staying abreast of market trends means keeping up with technological developments like investing in aerial LiDAR drones that can scan hundreds of acres in a single day, improving 3D technology, and more. This commitment to growth and development is led by the company’s desire to meet the needs of its clients.

Another growth strategy the firm employs is finding great people in locations where it does not yet have a footprint but a need for its services exists. This is how it recently handled its expansion into California. It will continue to perform steady, small acquisitions to expand its capabilities strategically. And CEC is always ready to help. “If readers have any questions, they should please feel free to reach out to [us] so we can help them out. If we can’t, we’ll find somebody who can,” says Souva. “Our goal is to help people find solutions to their challenges so they can achieve their business objectives.”

The post Owning Accountability – Subsurface Investigation With a Difference<p class="company">Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc.</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

One of the country’s five innovation Superclusters in this field is Protein Industries Canada (PIC), an industry-led, not-for-profit organization determined to position Canada as a global source of high-quality plant protein and plant-based co-products.

So if you think the alternative meat market is a flash in the pan, think again.

“We did some work recently with Ernst & Young, and we asked them a broad question about what the size of the global plant-based food market is going to be out to 2035,” says Bill Greuel, CEO of Protein Industries Canada. “What they calculated is based on a number of factors; the global alternative meat market will be about $180 billion Canadian by 2035.”

While alternative meat includes ground meat applications and innovation around whole cuts of meat, such as chicken breast, there’s also the alternative dairy market of plant-based cheeses, plant-based milks, protein-enriched beverages, and a burgeoning market around alternative seafood.

Then there’s the fortification sector – adding protein to the flours of various kinds of baked goods and using plant-based products in substitutes for wheat flours and pasta. It’s pretty clear that the conservative estimate of global plant-based food market will surpass $250 billion CDN by 2035, says Greuel.

“In Canada, we’re striving for 10 percent market share of the global plant-based food sector,” he adds. “Just for context, Canada today is about 3.3 percent of the global agri-food market across all product categories globally. We really believe we can punch well above our weight in terms of our contribution to the global plant-based food sector.”

What’s driving the plant-based food market to such heights? Greuel believes there are a couple of underlying trends concerning consumer habits and diet decision-making: One is certainly a better understanding of the impact of meat production on greenhouse gas emissions.

“That’s a huge factor in terms of people’s decisions. In addition to that, there’s animal welfare concern. I think there’s also a health and nutrition component to this. Plant-based foods generally have lower saturated fat and so there are health-conscious decisions.”

The other is based around convenience, Greuel says. People are eating differently than they did 20 years ago – and even eighteen months ago – because of COVID.

“We’re eating more food on the go, and plant-based foods and snack foods are just lending themselves to a different way of eating. It’s a combination of those four factors that are really leading to the growth of plant-based foods, and what’s really interesting is that those aren’t fads; those are structural changes in people’s approach to diet.”

The growth trajectory of plant-based foods – a 10 to 15 percent compound annual growth rate – that’s showing the way to a $250 billion market is not a bubble that’s going to burst, he says.

“These are underlying fundamental changes in how people are consuming food that are not going to go away.”

Younger generations are thinking more broadly about their food choices, including animal welfare, Greuel notes. For some, the idea of raising animals for human consumption is losing appeal in favour of plant-based alternatives.

PIC works with companies to create pathways to customers, markets and partnerships that they could not access on their own, providing them with the opportunity to leverage their expertise and innovations with that of large and multinational enterprises, public sector organizations and academia.

And Canada has an advantage in that it produces unique, high-protein crops – specifically canola and pulses – and it could quickly adapt and scale new high-protein crops. Canada’s sustained advantage comes in continued access to the global market with products that come from these crops.

“When Protein Industries Canada makes investments in large-scale science and technology projects, we require at least two for-profit private-sector companies to collaborate, and one of those must be a small-and-medium-sized enterprise,” says Greuel.

“The whole concept behind this is that the issues, the challenges and opportunities that we’re facing in the growth of the plant-based food sector require an approach to innovation that’s very difficult for any one company to solve on their own.”

That does a couple of things, he says. When you involve an SME, it helps the large “anchor” firm, some of them multinationals, from an innovation perspective. As companies grow in scale and become large organizations, they don’t innovate as quickly as they used to.

The tech sector in particular is a good model for this, where big companies are always acquiring smaller companies because they innovate at a fast cycle. There’s a benefit for the large anchor firm to have these highly innovative SMEs involved in research, and from the SME perspective it gives them access to business mentorship, global supply chains, and global customers.

“There’s this real synergistic outcome of collaborative R&D and the SME and the larger anchor firm and it’s helping these small and medium-sized companies grow in scale at a rate and a pace that they never could do on their own.”

The other dimension to collaboration is putting research projects together that work across different verticals of the value chain.

For PIC, the value chain extends from plant breeding to production at the farm level, to the grain handler, to the ingredient processor, to the food manufacturer and then onto to food distribution and retail. Most of the company’s projects are putting together people who are working in different verticals of that value chain.

There’s a real benefit of putting a company that’s working in plant breeding together with an ingredient manufacturer, and putting both together with somebody who’s developing consumer packaged goods and food products, says Greuel, because changes made from a plant breeding perspective – to drive up protein content – has downstream impacts on the efficiency of processing.

“We create immediate feedback from the consumer packaged goods company to the ingredient manufacturer who can then change the process or the formulation of the ingredients,” says Greuel. “We can push that back to the plant breeder and say the protein content could be higher or the amino acid balance needs to change from a nutritional perspective.”

Plant-based diets have long been criticized for the frequent absence of complete protein: this is where Greuel believes Canada has a real competitive advantage globally with its vast array of crops produced in the western part of the country.

“We produce cereals, canola, pulses like peas and fava beans as well as a myriad of other crops like hemp. We’ve got an ability to create different blends of protein that have the right amino acid balance. We can create complete proteins so vegetarians and vegans can actually get the full nutritional requirements.”

Are people concerned about nutritional value? Yes, says Greuel, and it’s one of the reasons why PIC works with companies like Lovingly Made Ingredients, which is creating plant-based proteins from Canadian crops with an eye on sustainable processing, Griffith Foods, Persall Fine Foods, k2Milling, Sightline, DLSeeds and Seednet. The organization has also worked with Avena Foods, Big Mountain Foods, Daiya Foods, Bakenology and the Village Bakery, who are all working to better understand and take advantage of the functional whole plant-based ingredients.

Big Mountain Foods and Daiya Foods, both based in Vancouver, BC, utilize flours in the development of new products for the growing vegan and flexitarian markets here and abroad, while Bakenology and The Village Bakery, from the United Kingdom, utilize Canadian plant-protein ingredients in food products shipped across Europe.

Avena Foods’ tempered pulse products undergo a process that improves flavour and functionality, a system that will be used in the development of a pulse-based egg replacement, and could be applied in bakery products, extruded snacks, confectionery products, noodles and pasta, plant-based meat analogues, soups, sauces and dressings, and even baby food. Big Mountain Foods is focused on innovating clean label and allergen-free products to provide consumers with a healthy plant-based lifestyle.

Investments like these help create strong supply chains and innovation. “We have a whole other side of the business that works on the creation of a highly competitive business environment in Canada. We know it’s one thing to invest in companies and to create new knowledge in technology, new products and services, and it’s another to make those Investments and ensure that we’re creating a highly competitive business environment in which to launch those products,” says Greuel.

PIC is also working on areas like regulatory modernization and how to ensure there’s a system in Canada that balances food, feed and environmental safety with creating an environment where companies can innovate. How does PIC ensure a regulatory system is keeping up with the pace of innovation, when innovation is moving at lightning speed in the plant-based food sector?

“We’re working with Health Canada on labelling, protein content, measuring and fortification,” he says. “We’re establishing a regulatory Centre of Excellence where we’re conducting research work related to providing the science that Health Canada needs to make regulatory change.”

With the plant-based foods sector projected to have a 15 percent compound annual growth rate for the next 15 years, PIC is also developing a capital growth strategy.

“We really need to help our companies develop the business acumen so they are ready to accept capital, and we need to educate the capital community about the opportunity that plant-based foods represent,” says Greuel. “We’re exploring the establishment of a specific venture capital fund aimed at work for ingredient manufacturing, and then working with the debt finance community about providing debt financing to be used to these organizations.”

While the pandemic has negatively affected many areas of business, food processing, ingredient processing, and commodity manufacturing remained strong, which translates to a growth opportunity for Canada during an economic recovery post-COVID.

“In Canada we really need to think about doubling down in investments in food processing, because one might argue that it’s a recession proof industry and more countries are thinking about food security and strategic alliances around the production of food,” says Greuel.

“Canada is one of five jurisdictions that’s a global net exporter of food. We have an economic opportunity to add value to what we’re producing and provide high-value ingredients and food products to the world. We can’t let this opportunity pass us by.”

The post The Meat Market Makes Way for Plant-Based Proteins<p class="company">Protein Industries Canada</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

When we think of farming, images of sunny skies, rolling fields, and heavy machinery come to mind. While these massive pieces of equipment are vital for operations, they are fast being joined by compact and efficient high-tech devices like drones and robots as farming moves into the future.

Successful farming has always been about more than simply planting crops and keeping one’s fingers crossed for the right combination of rain, sun and a successful harvest. Years of experience farming the land helps – combined with a breadth of knowledge that includes science, mathematics, biology, soil health, time management, chemistry, and water usage.

And another of the many factors contributing to high yields is an intimate understanding not only of what type of crops to plant, but the best time of day to do it, necessary soil conditions, the effect of temperatures, and the right amount of rainfall and sunlight.

Today’s farmers rely on a combination of instinct, observation, technology and tradition to forecast the weather. And, in continuous publication now for over 200 years, the venerable Farmer’s Almanac remains the Bible for farmers and home gardeners alike. Containing 16 months’ worth of weather information, the distinctive yellow-jacketed book includes stories on the latest trends, astrology, astronomy, pets, romance, and of course, weather information.

Offering much more than ‘expect high temperatures’ or ‘rainy conditions’ predictions, the Almanac breaks-down maps and forecasts of 18 regions, from the Atlantic Corridor to the Lower Lakes, and Alaska to Hawaii. From temperature and snowy periods to warmth, rain, dry spells and more, weather information is predicted on a month-by-month basis.

One of the greatest drivers toward more efficient and high-yield farming is our growing global population. The number of humans on earth is predicted to increase by two billion persons to 9.7 billion by 2050, and 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. And with more people and longer life expectancies comes the necessity for more food.

To keep up with the increase, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reports farmers must drastically step up food production to 70 percent higher than 2007 levels. With developing countries such as China requiring more protein, production of meat, including beef, chicken, and pork, will also need to increase, along with more grains and legumes.

To help meet global demand, technology is needed. Many dairy farmers, for example, already use a robotic milking system (RMS). Although an RMS is costly – averaging $150,000 to $200,000 per robot, which will milk 50 to 70 cows – the payoff over time is in the reduced need for human labour.

From construction to roof inspection and mining to the military, one of the greatest technological innovations in decades is unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones.

Capable of flying for significant periods of time at different elevations, drones are revolutionizing farming. Able to do everything from monitoring livestock to mapping thousands of acres for crop health, drones are efficient time-savers making farming less labour-intensive, cheaper, and more profitable.

Instead of driving out to fields miles away, fixed-wing or multi-rotor agricultural drones are sent to perform inspections in real time. Costs for ready-to-fly drones vary from about $1,500 to over $25,000, and for farmers unwilling or unable to purchase them or secure a remote pilot certificate, third-party companies are available to perform the work.

Depending on the drone, devices can be outfitted with cameras, thermal / infrared, LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and even technology to measure multispectral and hyperspectral data.

Serving as everything from electronic watchdog to crop inspector, drones offer farmers one of the greatest advantages of all – the ability to see a bird’s-eye view of their fields in real time, and the ability to spot issues like drought before they cause devastation.

Known as precision agriculture and precision farming, drones enable farmers to spray crops with pinpoint accuracy. The result is better management of water to prevent crop-destroying flooding and disease, enhanced pest control, and maximizing fertilizer usage to increase yields and profits.

Drones specifically designed and manufactured for agriculture have advantages over general-purpose machines. Although they represent a significant investment, agricultural drones are purpose-made, meaning some are for spraying pesticides and herbicides, like the futuristic-looking AGRAS MG-1S octocopter, while others such as the Delair UX11 Ag are sleek and sophisticated mapping drones.

At just 3.52 pounds (1.6 kg), the Delair has an impressive flying range of 29.2 miles (47 km), a cruise speed of 33.5 miles per hour (54 km/h), and the ability to operate in temperatures of -4 F to 110 F (-20 C to 45 C).

Described by the company as “The smartest plant mapping drone ever,” the Delair’s integrated multispectral camera, fully integrated Micasense RedEdge MX sensor, and sophisticated software make it easy to map and analyze plants and plant height, check fields, rows, sampling points and more.

A forecast from Global Market Insights predicts the agricultural drones market will exceed $1 billion by 2024, offering breakthrough technology, less dependence on skilled farmhands, and the draw of government incentives.

Developing over the past 30 years, precision farming techniques are helping farmers to produce food that is more sustainable than before.

In her 2019 book Precision Agriculture: The Future of Farming, Annie Bobby Zachariah writes: “This new paradigm of farming is known as precision agriculture or site-specific farming. The challenge of how we will feed the exploding world population in the future in a sustainable, cost-effective and environmentally amicable way is seeding an agricultural revolution. The future of farming should be smart to address these issues and increase the quality and quantity of agricultural production also by using sensing technology to make farms more ‘intelligent’ and more connected.”

In the coming years, farming will move from an agrarian pursuit requiring human and animal muscle to a high-tech industry with drones and robots doing much of the work.

Less than a century ago, many farmers in North America were still using horses, mules, and bullocks to pull plows, which gave way to combustion engines and giant machines; if those old farmers had even a glimpse of the innovations of today, they would be stopped dead in their furrows.

Even heavy-duty farm equipment is vastly different from what it was just a few years ago. With stereo systems, GPS and air conditioning, the cabs of today’s tractors boast the luxury of a high-end sedan.

For humanity, the benefits of new technology in farming are endless. Through precision agriculture, drones carrying fertilizer or pesticides spray far more accurately than a tractor, and workers are no longer exposed to dangerous chemicals.

While contactless farming seems like a contradiction, it is already in the works.

Beginning with just a single hectare, the ‘HandsFree Hectare’ project has expanded to a 35-hectare farm. Located in Shropshire, England, this initiative of Harper Adams University started growing spring barley through an autonomous tractor outfitted with GPS, a precision drill, sprayer, and laser scanners – without humans actually entering the field.

HandsFree Hectare describes it as, “Automated machines growing the first arable crop remotely, without operators in the driving seats or agronomists on the ground.”

In Denmark, too, where farmland is scarce, crop yields have increased about one-third through precision farming and driverless robotic weed control, which benefits the environment and saves resources. Going beyond the field, temperature and humidity-controlled silos are being used to protect stored grain, keeping it safe from insects.

Other technology benefiting farmers is in the works, including high-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP). A type of precision farming using multiple sensors and robotics to measure plant height, the number of leaves, shape, colour, and more, HTPP helps determine phenotypic traits and improve plant genetics and pest control.

As our global population grows and available land shrinks, farming will keep shifting toward high-tech tools to optimize crop yields, reduce weeds and plant-killing insects, reduce wasteful water use, and ensure nutrients are returned to the soil, where they belong.

The post The Farm of Tomorrow<p class="company">How Tech is Changing the Way We Grow</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Named after founder August Claas in 1913, the company has expanded its reach globally to more than 160 countries across five continents. But while the group’s harvesters first reached North America in the 1950s, the CLAAS of America sales unit was formally organized in 1979. Today, there are two operational units in the U.S.; CLAAS Of America Inc. handles sales, while CLAAS Omaha Inc. manages the production of combines for the North American market.

We spoke with CLAAS of America President and General Manager, Eric Raby, in March 2018. More than three years later, it is a very different world but still one that requires agribusiness. Raby and CLAAS Omaha’s new President, Matthias Ristow, laid out the company’s groundwork moving forward. Ristow, who has more than seven years of experience with CLAAS, has recently taken over responsibility at CLAAS Omaha and is supervising the company’s production of new cutting-edge line of combine harvesters.

Now in their second year of production, the company’s LEXION 8000-7000 Series harvesters boast the highest capacity in their class combined with unprecedented fuel efficiency. The machines harvest an average of 20.3 acres per hour, which the company calculates to as much as 31 percent higher than other harvesters. This is largely due to its patented APS SYNFLOW HYBRID threshing and separation system. Pre-separating up to thirty percent of the grain before it even reaches the threshing units and twin separation rotors, the unique system provides higher output using less fuel while not damaging the crop itself. “This is a completely new range of combines, from top to bottom,” Raby remarks. “You never think that combines can any get more capacity or more efficient, but we find ways to do it.”

In addition to its harvesting efficiency, the LEXION DYNAMIC POWER system helps farmers reduce fuel costs by being up to thirty percent more fuel-efficient than competitors. This helps the machine harvest up to 7,240 bu/hr and unload more than five bushels per second. Finally, a DYNAMIC COOLING system and central lubrication system help keep the engine and all moving parts running smoothly, reducing maintenance and downtime.

The new LEXION is merely the newest addition to CLAAS’s extensive product line, which extends from combine harvesters, forage harvesters and tractors to mowers, tedders, rakes, and square and round balers. The new harvesters also sport the company’s seed-green color. Raby hopes this will reinforce the company brand beyond traditional marketing.

As Raby described, the company is in the midst of a transition that began before the pandemic. For the past five years, he estimates, CLAAS has been increasing its distribution network. The result, he says, is more cohesive; far from increasing complexity by adding more vendors and products, the practice actually helps simplify the distribution network—in defiance of traditional logic. “It’s really easy to make things complex,” he says. “It’s more difficult to make things simple.”

By diversifying the distributor network, the company offers a closer relationship with its dealers and end-users, superior to a simple transactional relationship. Raby says the results have been positive, with no signs of abating. “We’ve seen good growth in the past few years, and it looks like the current trajectory, especially with current trends in the market, will continue to propel us forward.”

This growth may well help CLAAS continue to diversify its product line. Raby points out that, while CLAAS of America’s product line is extensive, it does not yet supply equipment for planting, tillage or spraying—all vital components of the farming process. Yet he and the leadership team hope that, by expanding its distribution network, the company’s suppliers may be more amenable to this development.

“Over time, not only do they become more dependent on us, but we become dependent on them,” he says, developing a relationship that is more than a mere convenience of transaction. “We partner with dealers on the basis of promoting that business together,” he continues. “When we’re dependent on each other, it becomes a relationship that seems to be much more synergistic.”

This reflects CLAAS’s desire to develop close relationships not merely with suppliers but with end-user farmers as well. The company has a history of staying in touch with vendors and customers long after agricultural shows. On a smaller scale, the company goes directly to the source. In ‘customer clinics,’ company sales representatives and product specialists meet with dealers and customers to discuss harvesting practices and harvesting issues, and to collect performance feedback from customers.

As an essential business related to food production, CLAAS of America was largely unaffected by COVID shutdown measures; indeed, Raby relates that, though many employees worked remotely, the company more than rose to the challenge. “Despite the adversity that the pandemic brought, we were still able to deliver our best fiscal year ever.”

Yet, so much of CLAAS’s business model remains face-to-face. It is difficult to demonstrate a combine harvester virtually, after all, and the company is looking forward to resuming in-person farm shows throughout the country.

Thanks to successful pre-pandemic planning and CLAAS’s role in an essential industry, its goals remain steady and ambitious. “Our goal, over the next five years, was to double the size of our business in North America,” Raby recalls of the 2019 decision. “That’s a pretty tall order.” Yet bold new developments are keeping the company on schedule to achieve this.

It recently opened a trailblazing new tractor factory in Le Mans, France. The product of three years of development and €40 million in investment, this ‘Future Factory’ will utilize the latest digital technologies such as virtual reality throughout all stages of assembly. Additionally, new automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move tractors around the facility and are capable of moving up to twenty tons of material at a time. The result is unprecedented production totals. When fully up to speed, CLAAS predicts the factory will produce up to 13,000 tractors annually.

The company’s move into automated vehicles is further reflected in its new minority shareholding stake in Dutch start-up AgXeed, which is working to advance automated farm machinery. Raby describes this, like its customer relationship, as symbiotic. “This gives us an opportunity to start to leverage the technology that they have…with some of the tractor savvy that we have. So that’s very exciting.”

But closer to home may be where CLAAS’s most effective development is taking shape. The company’s new training academy, 20,000 square feet of space in Omaha that is the product of two years of development, heralds a bold new chapter in the company’s labor recruitment, workforce development and dealer training. The academy hosts the company’s new apprenticeship program, mirrored on the same system, which has built and maintained the German economy for centuries.

Apprentices work at CLAAS in a laboratory setting, learning the intricacies of agricultural machinery. The second half of the program, partnered with Omaha’s own Metropolitan Community College, provides further academic and practical training. After three years, apprentices take an exam administered by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest. The program is globally respected and provides candidates with accreditation that opens doors to employment anywhere in the world. Ristow says that this particular apprenticeship program, while new to North America, will help provide a steady supply of skilled labor. “It’s pretty much the backbone of the German economy, a continuous supply of qualified employees,” he says.

This global reciprocity that makes the apprenticeship program powerful, as Ristow notes that CLAAS operates similar programs in Russia and Hungary as well. “Everyone who has that certificate is known to have a certain level of knowledge,” he says. Finally, while the program is designed to move employees into CLAAS’s production side, they can easily move to service as well. “They have the training; they have the know-how,” Ristow says, “and they should be of interest to our service team as well.”

With these developments and despite increases in steel and fuel prices, CLAAS’s team is confident about the future. The company earned the Equipment Dealers Association’s dealer choice award just before this writing, its third such award in four years, demonstrating its strong customer service prowess. Yet new product developments are on the horizon, and the company is already increasing its production capacity to accommodate them. Despite the cyclical nature of agriculture, CLAAS remains a constant. As it looks ahead to future decades of service, the company will always be outstanding in its field—in every sense of the phrase.

The post Farming For the Future: New Developments, Facilities and Labor Practices<p class="company">CLAAS of America</p> appeared first on Resource In Focus.

Terragon Environmental Technologies calls these communities ARCs (Autonomous Resilient Communities), and they arose from the idea of generating resources locally and eliminating all waste via two key technologies developed by Terragon: MAGS and WETT, along with the generation of renewable power.

MAGS is a furnace to treat solid waste that can use anything as fuel. It converts solid waste into biochar and thermal energy through a gasification process, not by burning it. The gasification process produces a fuel called synthesis gas which is easily combusted in a combustion chamber, producing the energy required for the gasification process and excess thermal energy in the form of hot water which is recovered and used by the site. The exhaust gas is cleaned within the MAGS unit before being exhausted into the atmosphere. In short, by-products can be used to produce heat for any site or biochar for use in gardens and agriculture.

WETT is a water treatment system capable of producing clean water from various wastewater streams, including blackwater, greywater and oily water. An example of its use is the treatment of water from the laundry and shower and its reuse for laundry and toilet flushing. Just this simple activity would reduce water consumption in the home by 60 percent.

By using MAGS and WETT systems, an ARC can have heat recovery from combustible waste products or biomass, use the biochar as a soil amendment, and treat water for reuse and potability, allowing resources to be treated within the community and then repurposed to initiate another cycle.

Local resources
“We developed these technologies as part of an innovation cycle aimed at generating local resources,” says Tsantrizos. “When you look at the renewable energy field, it’s all about local energy generation. The idea of not importing petroleum products from other parts of the world, but using local resources like wind, sun, and biomass to generate energy that we need locally.”

Dedicated to developing appliances that enable small to medium habitats to treat their own waste locally without environmental damage, Terragon urges consumers to consider the concept of waste, how it becomes repurposed and its value in generating useful resources.

“You may ask why is this important?” says Terragon President Peter Tsantrizos. “The normal way we do things is based on an industrial grid; we work for industry, industry pays us, and then we use that money to buy what industry provides. This works pretty well in some ways, but it doesn’t provide the same level of services to all the remote communities.”

As the world becomes more damaged by practices for generating our own energy, water and food, remote communities are the first to feel the effects, he says, which created the concept that will allow these communities to develop a healthier and more sustainable way of living.

Need for change
How does the concept of “no waste” relate to the generation of energy, water and food security? Tsantrizos says this is where the misconceptions surrounding waste need to change.

“Waste is useless things we don’t need. We throw them out, and then we transfer them to some central processing facility. As the economy of the world evolves, we produce more waste, more stuff we don’t need, and we just transfer it to other people.”

Because of this, the waste management business is growing, but the amount of waste we generate per year is too. There’s an alternative to the idea of waste, however, that involves using resources locally to generate our primary resources, including energy, fertile soil and water.

“The way we actually think about waste management, the modern way, is recycling. It’s the main objective of our waste management effort. This has been presented to us as a viable alternative to generating waste. The problem is it doesn’t work.”

In reality, items that come from life forms like wood, paper, and food, all must in some way or another end up back in the earth. We can use these materials to make compost or biochar, produce energy, and eventually put them back in the earth to produce fertile soil for food.

Water is another example of waste being transferred in a beneficial way. Our homes use a one-pipe-in, one-pipe-out system. One type of water comes into our homes: potable water that’s used for everything. We drink it, wash our clothes, flush our toilets, give it to our plants, do laundry and wash floors with it.

Water for purpose
“This is quite damaging in the sense that all our drains are connected,” says Tsantrizos. “All the water we generate, even if it’s clean, goes to the same pipe exiting our home, the same pipe our toilets are connected to. So all the water from our home is now sewage and contains the effluence from our toilets and our laundry. It’s very difficult to convince people to reuse this water.”

The alternative is “water for purpose:” taking the water used for laundry and showers, cleaning it and using it for utilities like toilet flushing, laundry or washing floors. Kitchen and toilet water can be cleaned and used for irrigating and watering plants. By doing that, water consumption is reduced by about 80 percent, and basically eliminates the concept of waste, because there’s no wastewater from our homes.

“This relates the concepts of waste to the concept of energy, water and food security,” he says. “Effectively from our waste we can produce energy, fertile soil, and water. Those are the three elements needed to produce our food. Everything is interconnected in that very fundamental way. The more waste we generate, the more stuff we throw out, the more likely we suffer from energy and food insecurity.”

Beyond the technology and environmental aspect, these systems’ true importance is the impact on communities, says Tsantrizos.

“Communities need to have people depend on each other. You develop a community. Imagine a community where everyone is completely isolated from one another and basically looks to the industrial grid to provide everything. They go to the grocery store, they buy what they need, they go to the gas station, they open their tap, they get their water, and they have no interaction with their neighbour.”

This is where we’re heading in terms of the dominance of the industrial grid in our life, he says, while we’ve lost the ability to know our neighbours.

Living local
“I’ve lived in societies where things weren’t like this. One neighbour would produce fruits and one would produce grains and another would fish. There is a knowing within the community who is providing the primary resources. This creates an interdependence between people, which is fundamental to creating a sense of community.”

If these communities are healthier environmentally and socially and have better quality food, how do we get there?

“One thing that happened as a result of the COVID pandemic is we realized how important our social bubble was,” says Tsantrizos, “that small group of people we maintain contact with. COVID also disrupted our supply chain, so a lot of food that was coming from other parts of the world, and our energy, all these things were now problematic. That was an indicator of how beneficial generating local resources is, and how beneficial not spreading the disease by having a locally based economy can be.”

This is where the government comes in, he says. The Government of Canada has made it clear it wants to build a clean-tech economy, transforming the way we live, the way we do business, and basically changing our entire core infrastructure.

Building Back Better, for instance, is a government initiative developed to invest between $70 billion and $100 billion over the next three years in ways that will help Canada move out of recession toward an economy that is greener and more innovative, inclusive, and competitive.

The government has already done some interesting things with Innovative Solutions Canada, creating a number of challenges that develop specific technology related to living with COVID, or energy or waste management. These challenges were essentially designed to create a technological infrastructure needed to create communities.

Contributing to communities
“Imagine doing this with one of our northern communities,” says Tsantrizos. “We create a challenge where we ask Canadian companies to contribute ideas and technologies: food, water and energy, and zero waste. Consortiums could form, and could demonstrate this concept in some of our communities. Then we could actually roll this out across the country and supply to all the communities.”

But problems in communities are not just technological, he adds: there’s also human capacity.

“We don’t necessarily have the skills, especially in remote communities to operate and maintain and do these things. We talk about local food production; these communities are basically hunters and fishermen. They need new skills. There’s a requirement beyond the challenge of identifying the most suitable technologies. Another challenge is creating capacity within these communities.”

Very often these communities have no local jobs available, and the most talented are forced to leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere, or they end up working an industrial activity.

“It doesn’t give them any kind of motivation to succeed. In a traditional community, where the community generated resources, there were jobs for everybody. Everyone could grow food or generate energy or manage water.”

It all begins with education, says Tsantrizos. We have to restructure our education system that right now entirely focuses only on doing things like getting a job.

“We get no training at all about how to grow a tomato, or change a diaper, all the critical things we need to know. These skills are undervalued in our society. Being a stay-at-home parent is probably the most important thing any human can do. It’s the joy you get from raising your own children or growing your own food. There’s a kind of euphoria that comes from those things.”

Physical health and more
The issue’s not just about physical health, it’s about emotional and social health, too, Tsantrizos stresses. Education doesn’t just mean a school education: It’s teaching young children experiences like fishing and contributing to the family in a meaningful way. “We deprive them of that excitement when we lock them up in boxes and schools and then teach them how to go get a job.”

Right now we also spend very little money on our primary resources, he says, and instead spend most on things we may not need.

“You’re probably spending more money on social media than on food you need to survive,” he says. “When we start looking at the cheapest way to get food and get energy, we actually devalue them and we create value for other things like going on a cruise vacation. This shift must happen and it must happen on the education side, and in how we value the things we consume.”

At the grocery store you’ll find locally grown tomatoes alongside imported ones. Locally grown tomatoes will taste better, but of course they’re more expensive. While you can produce tomatoes cheaper in Mexico, they aren’t the same tomato you’ll grow locally, plus you’re not contributing to the health of the society where you’re living.

Tsantrizos wonders why growing food is so inappropriately rewarded. Why do we not value the person going out and working the field to provide food so we can actually create Canadian jobs? There’s value in having your own resources, he says, and there’s value in protecting your local environment.

“If you look at success stories, all of them are local stories of people that manage to regenerate the farm,” he says. “It’s always stories of managing what they have and protecting the land and the water they live from. We need to enhance these stories. We need to make local heroes of the people and not devalue them.”

Thriving together
Ultimately, Tsantrizos says society must shift its basic understanding of what happiness is, and how to achieve it. And it’s not by consuming “things.” He adds, “Everyone talks about growing the economy as being the way we succeed, but they’re really talking about growing the consumer economy, because we live in a consumer economy. The idea is get more money, and consume more stuff and that should make you happy.”

What’s more, he says, the problem is that happiness is almost never derived from consumption. Happiness is a relationship-based emotion that comes from seeing your friend smile, or the relationship you have with your spouse or your children. “These are the sources of happiness – our health too. Not when we buy a car.”

In summary, a society focused on health and happiness is a better society than one focused on growth of the consumer economy.

“Ultimately people talk about destroying the planet. We’re not destroying the planet. The planet is far more resilient than we are. We’re just destroying the conditions that the planet has maintained all these years and that have allowed our societies to grow. So we’re damaging our societies. We’re damaging ourselves.”

But there’s still time to change all of that for the better.

“Whether it’s a military base or remote community or a city block, all of us can benefit from the idea of becoming more resilient and more autonomous with potential primary resources and also with our waste,” he says, “and Canada has a great opportunity to lead this transformation globally.”

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Well, that’s about to change. Farms are now associated with sources of fuel that can help power vehicles and even towns and cities. Hardworking farmers are future-proofing the planet with alternative energy.

It makes sense in a lot of ways for agriculture and renewable sources of fuels to go hand in hand. After all, the concept of biofuel has been around for quite a while. For instance, ethanol, which is far and away the largest source of biofuel, has been produced in the U.S. for more than 40 years, dating back to the Energy Policy Act of 1978. Ethanol is proven to reduce carbon emissions by almost 40 percent in vehicular emissions – one of the largest culprits of greenhouse gas emissions.

The connection between ethanol and agriculture is that, by and large, most of it is produced from corn, with a small portion coming from sugar cane. In fact, ethanol is actually the same type of alcohol that is found in our adult beverages.

And, like the alcohol found in that tasty margarita, the process of creating ethanol is achieved through fermentation. After it is processed, what you end up with is a fuel that is measured at a gasoline gallon equivalency of 1.5. So it takes a gallon and a half of ethanol to produce the same amount of energy that a gallon of gas does.

Since its introduction in the 1970s, ethanol usage has grown to the point that now nearly all of the gasoline sold in the U.S. contains about 10 percent ethanol. Not only that, but an ethanol blended 98 octane is the official fuel used by NASCAR. And, in 2019, NASCAR drivers hit a cumulative total of 15 million miles using the high performance biofuel blend.

Other crops like soybeans and canola can also be dual purposed. However, there are increasing challenges with using these kinds of crops, known as feedstock, for fuel – primarily, the growing demand for food and animal feed from these crops. The result is that what were once components of biofuel production are quickly becoming too pricy to be viable.

“As many of the world’s governments continue pushing to a greener future, the energy transition is colliding with another challenge facing the world as it struggles to emerge from the pandemic: skyrocketing food prices,” says Yahoo Finance.

So there is a real challenge when looking to feedstock as potential sources of clean energy.

As a possible solution to this, research into the use of carinata and camelina crops, also known as false flax, is being explored.

In a Reuters article, Jerry Steiner, executive board chair at CoverCress Inc., a St. Louis company that converts native field pennycress to improve yields, fiber and oil composition for fuel production, says, “The solution to this feedstock problem is going to come from a whole lot of sources.” The company is aiming to plant up to 1,000 acres this fall, and ramp that up to 3 million acres by 2030.

Likewise, Yield10 Bioscience in Massachusetts is also working with camelina to produce a high-value crop that can be used for fuel production.

“One of the goals of Biden’s climate plan is to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 52 percent by 2030, which he will need help from farmers to achieve. Farming produces roughly 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency,” Oliver Peoples, CEO of Yield 10 Bioscience, told Forbes.

There is a lot of potential in using these types of plants as they naturally pop up across North America on their own, so farmers need to put less work into them and they can be ultimately cheaper to produce. And not only are these easier to grow, they can be used as what’s called a cover crop, which farmers can grow outside of their primary growing seasons to store carbon and protect the soil from nutrient loss.

The process for converting biomass into energy begins when these crops are harvested from a farm. Next, they’re transferred to a power plant. The materials are then burned to heat water, and the steam that is produced turns the turbines to produce power.

As a side note, biomass materials not only come from specifically planted crops; other by-products that come out of industries like agriculture, forestry and construction can also be converted to energy. Think of the dead wood in managed forests, the trimmings of vegetables that are sold for food, and what’s left over from construction sites. Ultimately, what this does is take the materials that would otherwise end up in landfill and convert them into energy that can help power a grid.

While it may seem like a slam dunk for the environment and for farmers to just start converting these crops and by-products into sources of alternative energy, there are challenges that are part of the bigger picture of biofuels. The first issue is the cost of producing biofuels. As mentioned before, while feedstock sources to this point were cost-effective for use in fuel production, they are quickly increasing in price because of growing global demand, pushing the related costs beyond feasibility.

And ironically, while these alternate fuels are based on naturally occurring sources, there is still an environmental footprint, from growing to transporting them, as well as the larger amounts of materials needed to achieve the desired results. Plus, there could also be significant impacts to land use and water sources to grow these crops.

But the tipping point for all of these alternate sources of fuel could well be happening now, with a renewed emphasis on finding alternate sources of power.

As economies around the globe emerge from the pandemic, there is a renewed sense of urgency about environmental change and what can be done to slow it. Not only has the U.S. set new goals for reducing the impact of climate change, so have the Group of Seven (G7) countries.

As the New York Times reports, “Mr. Biden and six other leaders of the Group of 7 nations promised to cut collective emissions in half by 2030 and to try to stem the rapid extinction of animals and plants, calling it an equally important existential threat.”

To meet these new goals, these governments are going to have to look to a number of sources for biofuels, including the agriculture sector. Europe has already increased production of biodiesel (a process similar to ethanol blended gasoline) with more than 14 million tons consumed yearly.

In turn, this has led to significant growth to agricultural and rural economies. In addition, 25,000 jobs are also directly linked to the production of biodiesel. And beyond that, 220,000 jobs are connected to the biofuel industry as a whole in Europe. Europe is expected to increase these numbers in order to meet its emission-reduction goals.

In the U.S., the government will also likely face an increasing need to rely on agriculture and farmers to help reduce emissions and increase alternate sources of fuel to help achieve its new, ambitious goals.

As Zippy Duvall, a Georgia farmer and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, sees it: “The fundamental truth about biofuels is more important than ever: They are helping reduce our emissions and play an important role in agriculture’s sustainability story. As the Biden administration focuses on climate, farmers stand ready to provide the crops needed to produce more biofuels and help achieve clean energy goals, in addition to our climate-smart farming practices.”

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