Congratulations to our Carroll J. Oliva - who was awarded as ASCE NJ's Civil Engineer of the Year!
We are proud to see him recognized for all his contributions. Oliva joined PS&S and established the company’s sanitary engineering group in 1989. For 12 years he provided process and architectural wastewater expertise while mentoring many designers, engineers and technical staff along the way. Oliva returned to PS&S in 2014 to continue his contributions to the Water Resources practice.
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Harry “Ted” Osborne, senior director, building services group, PS&S
A typical picture of a construction site might show four to five engineers wearing yellow hardhats huddled together all looking at the same a blueprint — basically, the exact opposite of “social distancing.” But, in fact, the construction industry is remarkably well set up for working virtually. Some examples: Virtual white boards: Yes, exactly, as the name implies, architects can collaborate online, brainstorm and even sketch together. Drones, which can take site and construction progress pictures and be used for exterior inspections. Augmented reality hardware: With new screen and helmet camera technologies, it’s possible for a construction manager in an office and a subcontractor at the job site to see the same thing at the same time, comparing plans with the actual work. 3D printing and prefabbing: Many projects can be built off site and then delivered to the site. My firm expects that these and other virtual and remote solutions will now gain even greater traction.
Read the rest here: https://re-nj.com/how-can-construction-teams-use-technology-to-ensure-social-distancing-going-forward/
With the launch of its Uber Air service planned for 2023, the company is designing Skyports to regulations and industry standards that don't yet exist. Photo: Uber
Uber revealed some details about its approach to building ground infrastructure for urban air mobility — which it calls ‘Skyports’ — as the company seeks to make progress despite a dearth of industry standards and regulations.
Through Uber Elevate, the ridesharing giant is working with at least eight developers of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, to be used for urban aviation in concert with cars, scooters and other modes of public transportation.
With the launch of its Uber Air service planned for 2023 in Melbourne, Los Angeles and Dallas, the company — and others planning to be early investors in ground infrastructure for urban air mobility — faces the challenge of building and designing in an uncertain environment.
“Federal, city, state and perhaps county approvals will all be based on regulations yet to come for the most part,” said Chuck Clauser, senior director of architecture at PS&S and head of the company’s UAM task force. “Location will be dependent on zoning, surrounding airspace and aerial routes, aviation approvals, impact on pedestrian and vehicular traffic, parking, energy requirements, firefighting accessibility … there are a whole host of factors that have to be considered.”
Continue reading more on Avionics International: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/05/11/heres-uber-designing-skyports-future-air-taxis/
By: John A. Sartor
How dramatically and quickly we are witnessing – and managing – change in all industries today, and notably in the architecture and construction space.
There are two things so apparent today: the absolute necessity for regular communications with employees and clients, and an investment in technology that allows employees and clients to connect with each other virtually.
We at PS&S have been fortunate. The great majority of our employees and families have remained safe through this difficult period. And – quite fortuitously – two months ago our IT team worked to develop solutions that would allow our production teams to work remotely. Their efforts have paid off. Since “shelter in place” became mandated, we have had 100 percent of our production staff capable of operating safely from home. Although not ideal, this has allowed our company to provide clients with the excellent service they expect. In fact, one client has moved additional work to us because of our capability to act in an uninterrupted fashion.
In the last week, we conducted a survey of our critical designers who work every day with CAD, Revit or GIS. All these systems depend on the connectivity of their home machines to our servers. All these systems require regular collaboration of our teams to provide the integrated architecture and engineering design that is one of our unique qualities. The survey was designed to evaluate the performance of our technology and machines; our designers’ level of communication with their supervisors; and their level of communication with their teammates and clients. The results were promising — we will need to tweak some of our approach, but after only a couple of weeks of “virtual” operations, we were optimistic.
Safety teams have become an even more important part of daily life. Ensuring that our field personnel are maintaining social distancing, equipping our teams with necessary supplies and monitoring – then communicating to employees – the latest guidance from OSHA, is paramount. As this is changing day to day and week to week, we’ve had to maintain constant supervision.
Our protocol for field work at construction sites and other locations has been updated. Changes include:
mandatory social distancing;
confirmation that employees, vendors and clients have not had, or come into contact with, anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19, or experienced symptoms;
avoiding any workspace, office or trailer occupied at a density of greater than 50 percent of design occupancy;
more stringent personal hygiene and sanitation practices;
use of disinfectant cleaning products for work surfaces, vehicle interiors, equipment, hand tools and writing implements;
only using your own personal equipment and hand tools;
no shared use of personal protection equipment.
As with all companies, our primary concern has been and will continue to be the safety of our workers and their families. Disruptions will happen, and we will manage them, but we will control, whenever possible, every safety procedure we can.
As professionals, we need to take a leadership role to help bring our communities back to a more productive state. We have the proper training and the discipline to live and work in an environment that now includes the threat of COVID-19. We have always been and will always be focused on the health, safety and welfare of our employees, our clients and our communities. I believe that we can do our part to flatten the curve and contribute to the return of New Jersey, New York and the entire metropolitan region, as well as our country, to a stronger post-pandemic society. This will be our new normal; whether it be a month, quarter or longer, we will need to follow proper protocols to maintain the safety of our work force and our communities.
Timing is everything. For the past eight months, while designing our new office in Warren, which we will occupy this summer, we have been developing a strategic IT plan to transform PS&S to an integrated cloud-based design platform. This plan envisioned moving to virtual collaboration; ideally, we could work as effectively across all offices as if we were located in one. Now, I’m not saying I would ever entirely replace “in person” meetings, but our productivity and quality control should not be solely dependent on it. I commonly use the analogy of my middle school son and his friends that get together at least every weekend in a virtual environment to compete in sports games or drive cars either against each other or with each other. My vision would be to offer a similar experience to our design teams and our clients, and I believe the most recent graduates to join our team are ready to excel in this environment. Now, having spent the past two weeks dependent on Virtual collaboration, I know we will be successful. So, when we are all back together (after more time being apart, then even more time phasing back to full operation) I think implementation of our new strategy will be well received.
As stated earlier, it is apparent that, in this new environment, communication has become vital. So I have asked our team – instead of a text message or an email, to call their colleagues. We can’t replicate the camaraderie of the office environment virtually, but phone calls and conversation are so much more personal and important right now than text messages and emails.
Managing conference calls efficiently has also become extremely important. We challenged our Future Leadership Team to develop a virtual meeting protocol that we implemented at the end of March. We have become dependent on these virtual meetings being a primary source of client and collaborative communications. In addition, we have an obligation to maintain our professional standards through this period which require “virtual” quality assurance and quality control of our documents. Using advanced technology and new protocols, this has actually been easier than anticipated.
Continuing to build company culture in a new environment will also need change. Although we plan to maintain our high standards of integrity, quality and professionalism, we also plan to keep it social. So, we are adding more social interaction to our everyday life with a Virtual Lifestyles Program to compensate for the loss of the in-person interaction. The program will provide our employees a platform to share their daily experiences of dealing with the new stresses that none of us have ever experienced.
In many ways, going through this will help us appreciate each other a bit more and will make us stronger once this is behind us.
I am truly proud of how quickly we as a company and industry have come together and responded to this new challenge. As we look back at our learnings from Superstorm Sandy, remote access and connectivity was a key. Fortunately, it has helped us right now. I have always envisioned our profession moving to a more virtual environment where our designers are collaborating remotely; we have been moving our company towards this for many years and we are stronger for having embraced technology and pushing our multiple generations of employees to recognize its value.
And finally – some of our employees volunteer in their communities as EMTs, firefighters, coaches and other roles so vital in our lives. Let’s make sure we value their contributions more than ever. They have never been so important and deserve our gratitude every day.
Move in day at Project freedom Gibbsboro - New residents unpack and move in to brand new apartments.
PS&S architects and Project Freedom site engineers toast opening of PF Gibbsboro - Pictured clockwise from the top left: Jess Staszewski, project engineer FWH Associates; Marge DellaVecchia, PS&S; Mark Allen, PS&S; and Chris Rosati, project engineer FWH Associates.
PS&S, in collaboration with the Travers Family, delivered 50 video baby monitors that will go to Hackensack Meridian JFK to help protect the doctors and nurses. The monitors significantly reduce their exposure to COVID-19 patients and save valuable time and PPE.
Yesterday, we dropped off nitrile gloves, Tyvek suites, masks and goggles to Hackensack Meridian JFK. Thanks to Mark Lennon for his efforts to find them stored in our offices.
Dear Friends and Clients:
On behalf of all of us at PS&S/DW Smith, we hope this message finds you well during this difficult and unprecedented time we are experiencing together. Like many of you, we have been closely monitoring the news around the COVID-19 pandemic and its ever- changing impact around the world and in our own communities. As this challenging situation continues to evolve, the safety and well-being of our staff, clients, colleagues and their families remains our top priority.
At this time, we wanted to assure you that PS&S/DW Smith remains committed to client service. We plan to continue operating as usual with fully operational remote technology and infrastructure to provide uninterrupted service. PS&S/DW Smith has implemented a right-to-work-from-home policy for our office employees while also providing flexible schedule arrangements for a combination of in-office/remote work environment. We have instructed our staff to stay home if they are not feeling well, or if they simply feel safer doing so and provided guidance with respect to members of their household. PS&S/DW Smith has temporarily put a hold on all employee’s conference attendance, seminars, and external training as well as implementing internal meeting guidelines, but is fully equipped to handle any meeting remotely to ensure continuity with business operations and to deliver the quality client service you expect from us. We are and will continue to be in communication with our clients and be sensitive to their requests and preference to conduct meetings in-person, remotely, or, postpone if necessary. In addition, we plan to have all field work activities continue as scheduled, unless our clients direct otherwise.
We hope that you remain safe and healthy during these coming weeks as we will continue to monitor this situation and provide additional updates as they occur.
Best wishes,
John A. Sartor, PE President & CEO
Congratulations to Bob Fischer on his Lifetime Award which was presented at the Association of Environmental Authorities 2020 Spring Utility Management Conference. The conference took place at Caesars in Atlantic City on March 10-11, 2020.
Last week we attended the 3rd Annual Student Poster Competition and Career Panel, the event was held on Wednesday, March 4, 2020 Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.
Marissa Magura served as a poster judge and career panelist, providing career advice to undergraduate and graduate students and learning about advanced environmental research in techniques to detect contaminants in ambient and indoor air to chemicals in drinking water.
