Keep up with development in the infra construction industry. Before you know a decade has past by.

Keep up with development in the infra construction industry. Before you know a decade has past by.

It was about ten years ago I stopped working in the Infra-construction industry. With many years of experience from the surveying and machine control manufacturers perspective I always thought that the steps towards the future, taken in ‘our’ industry, would not be that big. You can imagine my surprise when I came back to the industry just last year and fell right back into a market that has changed dramatically over the past decade.

First and foremost I must say that I’m probably one of the luckiest people on the planet to be able to start working for an organisation that actually took Infra construction to a whole new level. Where we used to work with numerous dedicated, separated and complicated data formats and software products in the past, Infrakit actually seemed to do it all within one framework.

Now that I’ve been working in the industry again for about six months it becomes apparent that the entire work field has changed, in a positive sense that is. More and more people are talking about integration, single point of truth, efficiency improvement and InfraBIM, terms that had little to no depth to them in the past. Now however it’s the actual way the business works!

In my meetings with customers it becomes clearer and clearer that every single infra construction companies develop their own strategy on dealing with data, dealing with documentation, reporting, using extensive ERP systems to automate processes that had been manual in ‘my time’. I’m really impressed, and moreover because Infrakit is, in many situations, an actual very important part in that process, in that strategy. It makes me smile every single time.

So, next to being part of that team, working close together with all my colleagues in the many countries, it made me think about the following ten years. So, if I would stop working in this industry and come back in 2029, what would have changed, what next steps would the industry have taken to be even more efficient, more productive. Well, going from my own experience now I know that Infrakit will be a major player in that field, not necessarily connecting people to machines or vice versa but I’m convinced that it will become more and more a ‘machine to machine’ environment, an environment that relies on IOT where people change their responsibilities from operator to remote operator or even supervisor of machines.

Automation on the factory floor hasn’t necessarily changed the number of people involved in the process, it has merely changed their responsibility and I expect to see the same changes in our field of work, the ever-beautiful field of Infra Construction. So I would like to call on all of you to keep track of the development of our market, before we know it it’s going to be 2029!

I can hardly wait!

Tiny Nuiten

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User Group Folder Rights Added to Infrakit

User Group Folder Rights Added to Infrakit

It is now possible to create user groups for the project. First, create a user group or groups in the Project Settings, and then add the user rights you want to each group (for example, a group Subcontractor A with 10 members added). Then, on the Files tab, you mark the folder for which user groups the folder is displayed. If you do not specify user groups, they will appear as before, for every user.
For example, confidential documents can be stored in Infrakit without public access to all project members. You do not need to use parallel Infrakit projects or other tools to encrypt a part of data. All data can be stored in Infrakit with help of user group constraints as needed.
User groups can only be created by the project administrator.
Folders can also be assigned separate read and write permissions for different user groups.

Creating a group: from the main menu Project settings, and Groups are displayed at the top

You may restrict access to the folder:

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Destia – Riippa-Eskola Double-Track Railway revisited

Destia – Riippa-Eskola Double-Track Railway revisited

We wrote about this railway project in Riippa-Eskola in 2013 and since then the project has been successfully completed in time. The methods that were used in the project by Destia were and still are advanced in railway- and other infra construction. There is a video of model-based production and quality assurance on railroad construction sites where you can see the methods used on Destia’s Riippa-Eskola double-track railway project. The methods are still relevant and of course, Infrakit is included in the project.

You can watch the video here.

You can also read about the Riippa-Eskola case on our site here.

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Infrakit Founder Story: from a Researcher to an Entrepreneur

Infrakit Founder Story: from a Researcher to an Entrepreneur

Digitalization proves most useful in projects where old working methods are questioned and modernized. Infrakit, the creator of the cloud-based service for infrastructure construction, is an excellent example of this.

The story began at the university of Oulu, where the founder of Infrakit, Teemu Kivimäki, worked on his master’s thesis in a research group focused on the automation of construction. Teemu, who used to have programming as a hobby, already had a degree in mechanical engineering when he entered the university. However, the pieces started to fall into place only after the switch to the field construction.

– I had studied robotics, laser scanning as well as space technology, where I got familiar with GPS and remote sensing. During my studies at the university I got to apply all this knowledge in designing measure devices and in 3D modeling. We were doing pioneering research in the digitalization of infrastructure construction, says Kivimäki.

Kivimäki noticed that utilization CAD and 3D modeling in infrastructure construction was still in its infancy.

– In mechanical engineering, where I come from, millimeter accuracy in 3D modeling is the norm, so the amount of paperwork in construction came as a surprise to me, he describes.

The information management needs came up in several research projects, and in 2010 Kivimäki made the decision to commercialize his research.

I was already familiar with entrepreneurial life through a mobile game company that I had founded with my friends, and the next step felt natural. First I called Destia who had participated in one of our projects and asked if they were willing to pay for the creation of a system that was designed during the research.

Besides Destia Kivimäki contacted Novatron, a company that manufactures GPS devices and machine control devices for work machinery and made a proposition of creating an interface for the control system of work machines. The collaboration lead to the founding of Infrakit, a centralized information storage and cloud service for work sites.

The cloud service streamlines information management

According to Kivimäki, plans are often updated little by little during a construction project, and in bigger projects changes to the plans are made daily. Earlier this would have meant that there were several versions of the plans, which made updating them more challenging. From an information management point of view this was laborious and slow, and resulted in expensive mistakes in construction.

Thanks to Infrakit, all the information is stored in the same place where they can be transferred directly to the work machines. The plans of the project are uploaded to the service in an open file format, after which they can be inspected in the map view or in 3D.

– Since Infrakit is a SaaS service, it can be used in a browser as well as in a mobile application, which makes it really practical to use in the field. Users only need credentials and an hour’s introduction to the service, Kivimäki explains.

‘Back in the day the measure report was delivered to the project owner with six months’ delay, but Infrakit makes it possible to monitor project progress in real time.’

The service also makes it easier to produce project documentation during construction. The documentation consists of measurements made by the work machines and the photographs taken by the foremen, among other things.

Back in the day the measure report was delivered to the project owner with six months’ delay, but Infrakit makes it possible for all parties to monitor project progress and conduct quality control in real time with the help of the map view.

– This way we can maintain accuracy in our construction work and avoid mistakes. The digitalization of infrastructure projects results in savings of 20 % compared to traditional working methods.

(originally published in Finnish at itewiki.fi )

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CEO’s greetings from InterGEO 2018

CEO’s greetings from InterGEO 2018

Teemu Kivimäki, CEO 

It has been a great pleasure to see many of our customers around the world in one place. There has been surprisingly many familiar faces not only from Finland but also from Norway and Holland where Infrakit offices are located. At trade fairs people have time to sit down and discuss possibilities for future co-operation. And those who know us already have familiarized themselves with Infrakit’s newest features. Good news is that the knowledge of cloud services and of the possibilities they offer has increased and surprisingly many new people have visited our stand knowing already what Infrakit stands for. InterGEO is also a great place to meet our integration partners, the big international surveying hardware companies.

As an international corporation the fair has been a great opportunity for our employees from different countries to meet each other. Meet here our newest colleagues account managers Tiny Nuiten from Netherlands and Aki Vänttinen from Finland.

Tiny Nuiten, business development manager & Aki Vänttinen, account manager

“InterGeo is the right place to get into your companies field, meeting with customers and relations. As one of the newest members of the Infrakit team it feels like coming home. Together with my new colleague in Finland, Aki Vänttinen, we are the ‘new kids on the block’ but feel right at home.” -Tiny Nuiten

Jero Juujärvi, sales engineer from Finland and Anders Tiltnes, general manager from Norway

Jenni Piela, marketing manager from Finland, Ognjen Popovic, regional manager from Serbia & Linda Hakala, marketing coordinator from Finland

We look forward to InterGEO 2019 in Stuttgart!

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5 reasons to visit INTERGEO 2018

5 reasons to visit INTERGEO 2018

1. The world’s No. 1 event for the geospatial community
InterGEO 2018 is the leading international trade fair for geodesy. Geoinformation and land management’s hot topics will highlight ground-breaking developments and projects in a dynamic geo-IT sector. Last year, more than 18,000 visitors discovered the latest innovations and the community is continuing to grow!

2. High-profile conference with key topics
The digitalization with its innovations regarding BIM, virtual and augmented reality, UAV and smart cities will be the main topics at InterGEO 2018.

3. Host city Frankfurt
Frankfurt will be a meeting point for experts and decision-makers from the worlds of politics, science and industry on an international stage during the days of InterGEO.

4. Technologies and practical applications
Interesting topics such as BIM, autonomous driving, virtual and augmented reality technologies will be covered at InterGEO.

5. Infrakit will be there
We will be attending to InterGEO for the 3rd time this year! You will find us in the exhibition hall 12, section 12.0C.002. You’re welcome to meet us!

Fill out this form if you want us to send you a free ticket to the fair.

You can also book a meeting with us in advance by sending e-mail to jenni.piela@infrakit.com or by calling to + 358 40 8380644.

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