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Topcon: Technology the only way to meet infrastructure needs

Operators, materials and machines will not be able to keep pace with growing infrastructure needs as the global population grows, a Topcon Positioning Group official said on Wednesday. The solution: technology. “That’s the only way we can meet that gap in the construction industry,” Mark Contino, vice president of global marketing, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
March 6, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
Topcon's LN100
Operators, materials and machines will not be able to keep pace with growing infrastructure needs as the global population grows, a 342 Topcon Positioning Group official said on Wednesday.

The solution: technology. “That’s the only way we can meet that gap in the construction industry,” Mark Contino, vice president of global marketing, said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Contino said the global population will grow 30% in the next few decades. “That will create infrastructure demands,” he said. But those demands cannot be met by today’s equipment and workforce. “There are only so many machines, and so many operators, to get this work done,” he said.

Technology will increasingly have to be used to find efficiencies to fill that gap, he said.

A more immediate change Contino and others at Topcon have observed is the increased use of technology by smaller contractors. A few years ago the contractors said they couldn’t afford the technology. “Now they say I can’t compete anymore unless I have it,” Contino said.

It’s up to companies such as Topcon to find ways to make that technology accessible and user friendly, he said.

He pointed to the company’s LN-100, a BIM 3D layout solution, as an example. The product, released in December, integrates flow of project data from the design to the field. The unit provides straightforward operation, removing what Topcon refers to as “the intimidation factor.
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