Technically Speaking

The 2017 “infrastructure report card” from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) painted a grim portrait of our nation’s bridges, transit systems, aviation, and more, scoring an overall “D” for “poor” or “at risk”. Unfortunately, not much has changed since the last report was released in 2013.

2017 was a great year for DLT.

Did you make it to Autodesk University (AU) this year? There was a great deal of buzz about infrastructure and the ways in which, in the words of Autodesk’s Theo Agelopoulos, “we can develop more sustainable and resilient infrastructure yet optimize their operations and longevity”. But there were also some great breakout sessions on all things civil infrastructure design, engineering, and construction – many of which are now available to view online, for free!

It’s ironic, but true: software-defined networking (SDN) is tough to define. SDN solutions are not things you can touch, like a hardware gateway. They are not made of plastic or metal. They do not physically plug into anything.

Government websites can’t afford downtime. Even if they aren’t losing revenue because of un-scheduled outages, latency, DNS attacks and so on, the public loss of access to resources and employee loss of productivity is frustrating and stressful, as well as a public relations nightmare. It’s also a big distraction for IT operations.

It doesn’t matter whether you work in the federal, state or local government, rolling out any new software to your workforce can be a challenge. This is especially true of CAD software. Oftentimes, a department may upgrade from AutoCAD to a discipline-specific tool like AutoCAD Civil 3D or Revit, or depart radically from an old way of doing things with new software. Team leads or CAD managers face several challenges. Standards must be reviewed and modified, staff must be trained, trial projects must be identified, and user/management expectations met.