The Construction Collaborative Group

The collapse of the Surfside Condo building was a tragedy and we are only now seeing some actual answers published about what went wrong. There is a great deal of information to digest in this short article. A slab column connection being the point of failure is not that surprising, but the details make it all the more evident that this should have been able to be seen in a structural investigation that should have occurred as a regular part of building maintenance. Also not surprising is that they cited the addition of heavy landscape planters that added unaccounted for loads to the deck. This can be seen in many older buildings.

The real issue here is how this gets solved and avoided in the future. I have always questioned what happens to a mid or high rise condominium when it gets turned over to the condo owners. There…

In an era where data breaches and cyber threats are increasingly prevalent, organizations are seeking advanced methods to safeguard sensitive information. Confidential computing has emerged as a revolutionary approach, designed to protect data not only at rest and in transit but also during processing. Unlike traditional security measures that focus primarily on storage and transmission encryption, confidential computing ensures that data remains secure even while being used by applications or analytics processes. This technology leverages hardware-based Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to isolate sensitive data and computation from unauthorized access, including access from cloud providers, administrators, or malicious actors.

The core of confidential computing lies in its ability to create secure enclaves within the processor where data can be processed in an encrypted form. These TEEs prevent external interference and ensure that even if the system is compromised, the data remains protected. This capability is particularly critical for industries such as…

Each year Liberty Mutual Insurance publishes a report to identify which types of injuries are costing the most in different industries. This is a little different that ranking incidents in terms of number of fatalities or days away from work. What it actually shows is that falls (including falls to lower levels and falls to the same level), overexertion, and struck-by incidents are responsible for 73.8% of all injury costs in the construction industry. Any thoughts?