The Federal Highway Administration, academia and 23 state transportation departments are collaborating on a $2 million project to create an open data exchange standard for BIM for bridges. Aaron Costin from the University of Florida is leading academic research for the project, which could become the foundation for a national standard.

BIMcollab and XEOMETRIC have partnered to allow users of ELITECAD to manage and coordinate issues directly within their software. "We decided to team up with BIMcollab because our main goal is to ensure open information exchange in the openBIM process and there is no better partner for that than BIMcollab," says Wolfgang Stoger, CEO of XEOMETRIC.

Network Rail Wales and Western Region in the UK deployed building information modeling to manage railways during the coronavirus pandemic by building digital twins of two stations. John Nolan, program manager of BIM at Network Rail, said the project to create digital twins of the Exeter and Paddington Stations relied on Bentley technology.

Civil engineers in Ireland plan to test parts of used wind turbine blades as structural components in pedestrian bridges. If the test is successful, many bridges could follow, employing 11,000 tons of blades that are likely to be decommissioned across Ireland by 2025.

Acciona used digital twin technology to complete testing and commissioning of a recently built seawater desalination reverse osmosis plant in Saudi Arabia. The technology allowed specialists to overcome mobility challenges resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, said project director Ignacio Lobo Gutierrez.

Architecture, engineering and construction companies can stay lean financially by focusing on tech investments at the enterprise scale, as opposed to stand-alone projects, according to a report from Deloitte. AEC firms can also remain competitive by billing indirectly for IT and by taking advantage of the budding market for smart retrofits.

Venture capitalists are "ready to act" on the growing markets for property and construction technology, which has seen accelerated adoption during the coronavirus pandemic, writes Angelica Krystle Donati. Anuj Nangpal from JLL Spark predicts the sector will evolve this year to prioritize the needs of mid-market occupiers and mid-sized real estate investors.

The Wild offers an augmented and virtual reality platform for virtual tours using building information modeling information. Gabe Paez, founder and CEO, says the technology aims to "take people from across the globe and instantly put them into a shared built environment."