This Houston company is 3D printing homes with eco-friendly materials

future of construction

HIVE 3D is bringing science fiction to reality with this Texas project. Photo courtesy of HIVE 3D

While it may be true that the mother of invention is necessity, in today’s startup market, a more important factor is disruption. That’s where HIVE 3D, a Texas-based leader in constructing eco-friendly 3D printed homes, flourishes.

HIVE 3D was already revolutionizing the home-builder industry with its lightweight gantry system and mobile robotic arm system to 3D print its homes, but it took a giant leap further with its partnership with Utah-based Eco Material Technologies, North America’s leading producer of sustainable cement alternatives.

Together, they are building the world’s first near-zero-carbon, 3D-printed homes. Using Eco Material’s cement mixture called PozzoCEM Vite, which has 92 percent lower emissions than traditional concrete that can set in just a few minutes, they are focusing on providing a sustainable, cost-efficient and affordable housing solution.

“We want our homes to last 1,000 years,” Timothy Lankau, CEO, Hive 3D CEO, tells InnovationMap. “We want archaeologists to dig them up and wonder what they were. I mean, you go to the Parthenon in Rome, and it looks similar today to how it did 2,000 years ago because the materials are so stable.

“Concrete's just a very stable material. It doesn't change over time, and that's also why building with stone and masonry is important for the future. We think it's more sustainable because it's ultimately going to be better in terms of longevity.”

Key collaboration

Eco Material Technologies and HIVE 3D’s collaborative mission began through a mutual desire to develop sustainable and eco-friendly solutions for the construction industry.

“Both companies recognized the pressing need to reduce the environmental impact of traditional construction materials and processes and the need for affordable, high-quality housing,” says Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies. “The partnership between the two companies began when Eco Material Technologies reached out to HIVE 3D to explore the potential of incorporating their eco-friendly materials into 3D printed construction.

“HIVE 3D recognized the opportunity to combine their expertise with sustainable material solutions. The finished product of this collaboration is an eco-friendly construction material that can be 3D printed into various structural elements like walls, floors and columns.”

Proof of concept

Photo courtesy of HIVE 3D

HIVE 3D’s first full project, a 3,150-square-foot home located in Burton, Texas, was printed with a rotating team of just four people using PozzoSlag, which replaces 50 percent of the portland cement in concrete and has been used in roads and bridges in Texas for over a decade.

The home used several innovations that hadn’t been used in a 3D printed house before, including parametric wall designs, foamcrete wall insulation, and pigmented concrete layers.

“Our product is more sustainable because it utilizes proprietary technology that allows for the use of alternative materials to replace the clinker and processes from traditional cement that contribute to its high emissions,” says Quasha. “It is estimated that the portland cement industry contributes to 8 percent of global emissions annually, but by utilizing Eco Material Technologies' cement replacement solutions ... builders can significantly decrease their carbon emissions without compromising on the product's setting time or long-term strength."

Each ton of portland cement replaced by a ton of Eco Material's products, PozzoSlag or Pozzocem, reduces emissions by close to one ton, Quasha explains.

The Calais project, located in Round Top, Texas, behind the Halles, an antique shopping and design destination, broke ground in March 2023 and will feature a collection of tiny homes known as casitas, including studio, single-bedroom and two-bedroom models, ranging from 400 to 900 square feet.

“These small homes will serve as a model for affordable and eco-friendly housing throughout the country,” says Lankau. “We plan to build them at a speed and cost point that is unprecedented in the affordable housing space.

“Ultimately, we want to build houses at a disruptive price point. We want to be vertically integrated and put our homes on the market at a significant discount to market wherever they are. And by significant, we're talking 20 or 30 percent. That's our goal.”

The right resources

Photo courtesy of HIVE 3D

HIVE 3D worked with CyBe Construction to create a mobile construction 3D printer and mixing system that allows the printing mortar to be mixed onsite, which eliminates a significant amount of labor and time, which means those savings can be passed on to the consumer.

“We worked with a company called CyBe in the Netherlands to build a robotic arm, and that arm has about an 11-foot reach, and it can go all the way in a circle around itself,” says Lankau. “So, it drives around the foundation of the house, printing sections of the house at a time. So, it'll print a section, drive to the next section, and print the next section.

“So instead of having this many different materials and these many different traits, people that do all these different things, we have a machine that just uses one material and prints the wall.”

HIVE 3D has an internal engineer that works through all of the structural issues that may come up on projects and helps them build homes with monolithic, foot-thick concrete walls with rebar and steel supported in them.

According to Lankau, their 3D printed homes are tornado-proof, hurricane-proof, pest-proof, bullet-proof and can virtually withstand anything because of the sustainable materials used to build them.

“They're everything-proof,” says Lankau. “Just because of the natural strength of the concrete and the steel we use to create them, they can support millions of pounds. So, it's actually a stronger material than a typical house. By a factor of 100. Like I said, it's bulletproof and tornado-proof. You could drive a car into it, and it would total the car. I mean, it's a very, very sturdy structure.”

A bright future

Photo courtesy of HIVE 3D

Moving forward, HIVE 3D would like to continue to innovate and advance its 3D printing technology by leaps and bounds.

“The science fiction goal here, which is maybe a five-year goal, is to be able to drive onto a site, press a button, and watch the robots work,” says Lankau. “We want to be a significant home builder. So, in five years, we want to be building a lot of houses quickly and affordably and we want to continue to automate more and more of the process.”

Right now, there is no formal process for commissioning a HIVE 3D printed home. Perspective customers are directed to the website, then put in a request to build a home, go through a screening process and if the project is a good fit, they'll put that project into their pipeline.

“We can build them quickly. It's just a matter of getting to them,” says Lankau. “We're also going to be doing some developments in Texas probably to start. We also have some international things that we'll be looking into next year. But right now, it's mostly in Texas. We'll be building some developments and putting those homes on the market. We hope to have some out this year and then a bigger chunk next year as we get more machines working. Those will be announced on our website.”

As HIVE 3D continues to find ways to scale its business model, there is a laser focus on the diminishing idea of the “American Dream,” where young families are able to purchase their first home. With the rising costs of supplies and labor, those families have been priced out of the market.

“That’s almost all we think about,” says Lankau. “Homeownership and that part of the American Dream is really struggling right now because the affordability gap between what the average person makes and what the average house on the market costs is just getting wider and wider.

According to Lankau, there are a lot of options to address the supply gap, but there aren’t an equal number of options to solve the affordability issue. Their goal is to find the best ways to deliver real cost savings over both traditional construction and other automated technologies.

“About three weeks ago, we kind of hit the inflection point in our current project where we printed a little house in three days. The cost of the house was what we wanted the cost to be, which is a disruptive amount less than what you could do traditionally or with any other construction technique. And we said, okay, now we're far enough along. We have this system. It's a scalable system. So, we're right now putting some capital together to go out and buy, build more of these machines and get out and start doing these truly affordable housing projects. Because that's where our heart is. Our heart's on the affordable side.”

HIVE 3D’s project in Burton, Texas isn’t available for sell yet, but it will be listed on Airbnb for interested customers to go and experience when it’s completed.

Additionally, the Casitas units in Round Top will be short-term rentals for festival patrons.

“We’ll go directly to market with our next projects,” says Lankau. “And then we'll sell that big house property in Burton at the end of this year.”

From Your Site Articles
Planning to open in the coming months, The Ion Houston has made great progress on its construction. Scroll down to view the slideshow. Photo by Natalie Harms

Photos: Here's a sneak peek at The Ion Houston's construction progress

eye on the ion

The Ion Houston is expected to open its doors this year, and the building's exterior is close to completion. Now, the construction team is focusing on interiors and then tenant build outs.

The 270,000-square-foot coworking and innovation hub owned and managed by Rice Management Co. is slated to be a convening building for startups, corporations, academic partners, investors, and more. The building is organized as follows:

  • The underground Lower Level will act as academic flex space with a few classrooms and open-concept desks for The Ion's accelerators, including: The Ion Smart and Resilient Cities Accelerator, DivInc, the Rice Alliance's Clean Energy Accelerator, and the Aerospace Innovation Hub and Accelerator. There will also be an event space and The Ion's own programming.
  • On the first, street-level floor, The Ion's restaurant tenants will reside with access from both the greenspace as well as into the building. The Ion's first three restaurant tenants include: Late August, Common Bond, and STUFF'd Wings.
  • Additionally, the first floor will be home to a venture studio and the prototyping lab. There is additional space available for other tenants.
  • On the second floor, there will be 58,000 square feet of coworking space managed by Common Desk. Note: For floors 2 and up of the Ion, tenants will have access cards that allow them entrance. The first and lower floors will not require access cards.
  • The third floor of the building will house eight to 10 tenants each with 5,000 to 10,000 square feet of space. Chevron was announced as the first tenant and will reside on this floor.
  • On the fourth and fifth floors, The Ion will house one to two larger tenants on each level. These levels of the building were added on to the existing structure. The fourth floor features two balconies that tenants will have access to. Microsoft is signed on to have its space on half of the fifth floor.
The Ion is still planning on an open date in late spring or summer. For leasing information, click here. Scroll through the slideshow of construction images and renderings to see the progress of the building.

Exterior nears completion

Photo by Natalie Harms

The building's exterior is almost complete and kept much of the original building's facade. The new materials brought in match the existing color scheme.

As Houston grows, the city needs more and more construction. However, with this growth comes the need to build responsibly — and that's where technology can come in. Photo via Getty Images

Houston expert calls for more innovation within the construction industry

guest column

The construction industry has the opportunity to drive positive change through the development and deployment of technologies influencing the way we work and live, ultimately affecting our environment, communities, and personal well-being.

Carbon emissions come from a handful of broad categories, including transportation, electricity production, and industry. According to the International Energy Agency, more than a third of all global greenhouse gases come from the building and construction industry. Concrete production alone contributes an estimated 8 percent of global carbon emissions. As a result, in Houston, we are vulnerable to longer, hotter summers, stronger hurricanes and once-in-a-lifetime storms. But I'm optimistic that there is opportunity for our industry to come together and reverse the current trajectory.

We must continue developing and deploying new technologies and best practices to reduce emissions. By using data to understand the environmental implications of the materials we use, we can make adjustments that are beneficial to both our clients and the environment.

One such example is the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator, known as "EC3." Skanska USA developed the open-source, freely available software in collaboration with Microsoft and C Change Labs. The tool democratizes important building data and allows the construction industry to calculate and evaluate carbon emissions associated with various building materials.

Now hosted and managed by Building Transparency, a new 501c3 organization, the EC3 tool was incubated at the Carbon Leadership Forum with input from nearly 50 industry partners. Like the tech industry, we should promote knowledge-sharing among general contractors to drive innovation and sustainability.

The demand for this tool is growing because it's not only the right thing to do, but it also benefits our communities and drives stakeholder value. Now more than ever, clients want to be responsible global citizens and they know that adopting green building practices is attractive to their prospective workforce and their clients and customers.

In Houston, the current population of 7.1 million will double to 14.2 million by 2050. With that population growth comes the need for more housing, more office space and more transportation options. Last April, Houston enacted a climate action plan that sets goals aligned with those from the Paris accord — carbon neutrality by 2050.

Similar local plans have been and are continually being developed all around the world, a necessary step to address a global issue that impacts all of us. Like others, the Houston plan contemplates how to reduce carbon emissions that are the result of energy consumption which accounts for about half of Houston's greenhouse-gas emissions.

Innovations in energy efficiency can help drive down energy consumption. As conscientious global and local citizens, we also have to consider the emissions that are created by the raw materials that are used in construction. That's become a much easier process with the EC3 tool. Now architects, engineers and others involved in the design process can make data-driven decisions that can have significant impact on the carbon footprint — as much as a 30 percent reduction in embodied carbon — of a structure that are mostly cost-neutral.

Embodied-carbon reductions can be made simply by smartly using data. The EC3 tool is one of many steps toward innovative building practices and complements the important ongoing work done by the U.S. Green Building Council, which oversees LEED certification.

Opting for sustainable building practices is good for the environment, but it's also good for the people who will spend time in these spaces. Green building reduces the use of toxic materials, and studies have found that sustainable structures, such as schools, health care facilities and airports, have positive impacts on cognitive ability, seasonal affective disorder and overall happiness.

We are also seeing an influx of client requests for sustainable and healthy building upgrades, especially since the onset of COVID-19. These upgrades are changing the way we live and work while supporting infection control, from touchless elevators to advanced air filtration systems.

For example, innovation has been instrumental throughout the pandemic for the aviation industry's safe operation. Increased biometrics across airport touchpoints, flexible passenger gathering areas that include modifications to passenger hold rooms and departure lounges, and environmental monitoring and wayfinding technology to alert passengers of airport congestion points are a few new concepts airports are incorporating into builds to keep travelers healthy now and in a post-COVID world.

Overall, the construction sector will play an essential role in how we approach expanding the built environment over the next 30 years. Using data and striving for continual innovation, we have a great opportunity to come together as an industry and create real change that will benefit our collective lives and those of generations to come.

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Dennis Yung is executive vice president and general manager at Skanska, one of the world's leading project development and construction groups, where he oversees building operations for Houston and North Texas.
Houston-based SiteAware has raised $10 million in its latest round of funding. Photo courtesy of SiteAware

Houston construction software startup raises $10M in series A round

money moves

A growing startup that provides artificial intelligence-enabled verification software to the construction industry has announced the closing of a multimillion-dollar round.

Houston-based SiteAware announced last week that it's closed a $10 million series A investment round that was co-led by San Diego-based Axon Ventures and Germany-based Robert Bosch Venture Capital.

The company's platform uses AI and digital twin technology to provide real-time verification of construction fieldwork. According to a press release from SiteAware, the construction industry represents a $1.3 trillion market share of the United States economy.

"The cost of construction errors and the risk mitigation costs contribute to 10 to 30 percent of this number. SiteAware's technology significantly lowers this overhead, allowing for customers to reap the benefit," says Zeev Braude, SiteAware CEO, in the release.

By scanning buildings under construction, SiteAware's technology constructs a 3D model of the area and compares the progress of the structures to the construction plans in real time. This technology allows for any deviations from the plan to be realized as soon as possible, which means avoiding costly repairs or reconstructions.

"By enabling general contractors and developers to reduce the cost of errors and better mitigate risk, the ripple effect lowers the cost of real estate, providing better value opportunities for home buyers," Braude adds in the release. "Our technology closes the gap between plans and field work, solving this very important challenge within the trillion dollar construction sector."

SiteAware, which was founded in 2015 by Braude and CTO Ori Aphek, previously raised seed funding in 2015 and 2016. Existing investors, including lool Ventures, Oryzn Ventures, The Flying Object and Power Capital Venture also participated in the round.

"SiteAware has built a state of the art technology which provides the digital value that the construction industry has been needing, and we're excited to join in their vision," says Arad Naveh, partner at Axon VC, says in the release. "We were highly impressed that they were able to build a customer base of market leaders, and moreover, the impact that SiteAware's tools are already making."

SiteAware's technology can analyze construction sites in real time. Image courtesy of SiteAware

Houston comes in at No. 7 on a new list of most apartments completed during the first six months of 2020. Photo courtesy of Caydon

Houston booms with new apartment construction in 2020, report says

STANDING APART

The coronavirus pandemic has brought many activities to a unsettling halt. But it has failed to blunt Houston's apartment construction boom.

New data from Yardi Matrix, a supplier of commercial real estate data and research, shows that Houston comes in at No. 7 for most apartments completed during the first six months of 2020, with 2,085 apartments built.

Houston also comes in third place for projected apartment completions in 2020 is the Houston metro area. Yardi Matrix foresees the Bayou City region welcoming 10,404 new apartments this year, up 2 percent from 2019.

Little surprise to those paying attention to Texas real estate: More apartments were completed in Austin during the first six months of 2020 than in any other U.S. city. In the first half of the year, construction of 3,827 apartments was finished within the city of Austin, according to Yardi Matrix.

Right behind Austin on that list is San Antonio, where 2,871 new apartments hit the market in the first half of this year. Dallas follows Houston at No. 8 with 1,869 units; behind Big D is Farmers Branch, No. 18 with 1,161 units.

"Around the U.S., we have seen a variety of states, counties, and cities choose to close nonessential businesses for 'stay at home' or 'shelter in place' orders. For the most part, construction activity has been included as an essential activity that can continue with business as usual during these orders," Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix, says in a release.

"The popular Texas metropolitan area saw an increase of 62,000 residents from 2018 to 2019," Yardi Matrix says. "In response to the high demand, Austin metro has been an active scene for new construction in the past five years, having completed over 50,000 new apartments since 2016."

In the Yardi Matrix forecast, Dallas-Fort Worth eclipses all other U.S. metro areas for the number of new apartments predicted to be finished this year — 19,318. This would be DFW's third year in a row to lead all metro areas for annual apartment construction, with New York City claiming second place.

While that's an impressive amount of apartments, this year's anticipated final total for DFW would be down 29 percent versus last year, Yardi Matrix says.

Coming in at No. 19 for predicted apartment completions this year is the San Antonio area, with 4,595 new units on taps. However, that total would represent a 20 percent jump over last year, putting San Antonio in fourth place for the percentage increase from 2019 to 2020.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

Houston-based Hitched has dug up new investment money from a local private equity firm. Pexels

Houston-based digital marketplace for industrial equipment raises $5.5 million series A

money moves

A Houston startup that acts as a digital marketplace for industrial equipment in the oil and gas and construction industries closed a sizeable series A financing round this month.

Hitched Inc. raised $5.5 million in its series A funding led by Houston-based Cottonwood Venture Partners, a growth equity firm that focuses on digital tech solutions in the energy industry.

"It is encouraging to see the support and excitement from CVP," Hitched's Founder and CEO Adam Gilles says in a press release. "With this Series A funding, we plan to continue to shake things up in the oil & gas, construction, and industrial industries."

The company, which was founded in 2018, coordinates the rentals — from hosting and chartering to managing them — all on one centralized platform. Hitched has a catalogue of equipment from generators and cranes to light towers, pumps to forklifts, and the site lists out the cost per day of each piece of machinery.

According to the release, Hitched will use the fresh funds to advance its product development and customer experience as it continues "to reinvent the industrial rental marketplace."

"We're delighted to partner with the Hitched team. The industrial rental segment is incredibly opaque and riddled with inefficiencies," says Ryan Gurney, managing partner of CVP, in the news release. "The Hitched platform provides both a transparent marketplace and an important management tool that allows both the renter and rentee to optimize rental inventory."

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Houston universities rack up rankings in reports on top schools for entrepreneurship

5 years running

Rice University and the University of Houston have once again scooped up accolades for their entrepreneurship programs.

For the fifth consecutive year, Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business has been ranked the No. 1 graduate entrepreneurship program by The Princeton Review, a provider of education services, and Entrepreneur magazine.

“Our close ties to Houston as well as national startup ecosystems give our students unique opportunities to pitch to and connect with angel investors, venture capitalists and corporations,” Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance, says in a news release. “These connections allow for mentorship, as well as launch points for new ideas, not only for our students but also for the city and surrounding communities.”

The list identifies 50 undergraduate and 50 graduate programs that boast the best entrepreneurship offerings based on factors such as coursework, experiential learning opportunities, and career outcomes. The ranking measures more than 40 data points about the schools’ entrepreneurship programs, faculties, students, and alumni.

Also for the fifth consecutive year, the University of Houston’s Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship in the C.T. Bauer College of Business has been named the No. 1 undergraduate entrepreneurship program by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine.

“We believe in entrepreneurship, we believe in free enterprise, and we’re in the number one city for entrepreneurship,” Dave Cook, executive director of the Wolff Center, says in a news release.

“When we put students into this entrepreneurial mix,” he adds, “and we introduce and reinforce free enterprise values, our intent is to change students’ lives and to create the next generation of business leaders with the highest integrity who are going to go out and create their own cultures, their own companies and their own futures.”

The University of Texas at Austin is the only other school in the state to make the top 10 of either the graduate ranking or undergraduate ranking. UT captures the No. 6 spot on the graduate list and No. 2 spot on the undergraduate list.

Aside from The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur honor, Rice climbed four spots in Poets&Quants’ annual ranking of the world’s best MBA programs for entrepreneurship.

Last year, Rice’s graduate school for business landed at No. 7 on the list. This year, it rose to No. 3, behind the first-ranked Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis and second-ranked ESTM Berlin.

This is the fifth annual ranking of MBA programs for entrepreneurship from Poets&Quants, a website that focuses on graduate-level business education.

“MBA programs are increasingly sought after in today’s environment, and our focus on entrepreneurship sets us apart,” Peter Rodriguez, business dean at Rice, says in a news release. “The entrepreneurship classes emphasize a combination of mindset and skill set and focus on multiple stages of the entrepreneurial process, preparing our students for any industry and climate.”

Poets&Quants relies on 16 data points collected through an annual survey to come up with its ranking. Among those data points are:

  • Average percentage of MBA students launching businesses during their program or within three months of graduation between 2018 and 2022.
  • Percentage of MBA elective courses with all of the curriculum focused on entrepreneurship or innovation during the 2022-23 academic year.
  • Percentage of MBA students active in the business school’s main student-run entrepreneurship club during the 2022-23 academic year.
  • Square footage of incubator or accelerator space available to MBA students during the 2022-23 academic year.

America's labor shortage crisis: Local Houston company’s solution for a thriving future

A Brighter Future

The labor shortage crisis gripping America is not isolated to a particular region; it's a challenge that reverberates from coast to coast.

CNN Business projects that this issue could cost the nation a staggering $1 trillion, while the Manufacturing Institute predicts that 2.1 million jobs will go unfilled. To address this pressing concern, a local Houston company called Innovapptive and its connected workforce platform stands as a beacon of hope to improve productivity and capacity, while also upskilling the digital native worker.

Innovapptive is a provider of a “mobile first '' AI-connected workforce SaaS solution to help companies manage labor shortage by empowering front-line workers with digital tools to boost productivity.

The platform’s integrated suite of apps for both the front-line workers and back-office staff closes the loop between people and assets to eliminate inefficiencies. By connecting the front-line workers and back-office with critical information in real time, and harnessing the potential of generative AI and cutting-edge AI/ML technology trends, Innovapptive is enhancing productivity and upskilling workers for some of the world’s largest brands.

Solving the labor shortage by focusing on productivity

The labor shortage crisis has left industries scrambling for solutions. Rather than simply trying to fill the void with more labor, the focus should be on optimizing the existing workforce.

By enhancing the productivity of front-line workers, companies can not only meet the demands of the market but also reduce the need for additional labor. A connected workforce platform can improve the productivity of the front-line workers by 10% to 20% to help companies do more with less.

Empowering front-line workers with real-time connectivity

Innovapptive's connected workforce platform brings front-line workers, back-office, and assets together by providing them with the right information at the right time.

Operators can simply execute their inspections, rounds, and raise issues. These issues automatically convert into an ERP notification and get pushed to a maintenance technician to close out the open compliance issue, while keeping the operator in the loop in real-time. At the same time, the warehouse is alerted in real-time on the work order priorities and criticality to ensure spare part kits are ready for the technician’s pick up.

This effective communication and collaboration between operators, maintenance, and warehouses is a game-changer for asset intensive companies nationwide. Workers can access essential data and insights instantly, leading to smarter decision-making, quicker problem-solving, and improved operational efficiency.

Recently, Sabert, a sustainable packaging company, launched Innovapptive’s solution and is seeing dramatic improvement in productivity. Click here to watch the video.

Harnessing generative AI and cutting-edge AI/ML technology trends to upskill workers

To achieve dramatic productivity improvements upwards of 20%, companies need to leverage the power of generative AI and AI/ML technology trends.

Innovapptive's platform has launched a beta version of its generative AI capabilities, automating the creation of paper-based inspections, SOPs, and work instructions. Furthermore, the company recently launched a computer vision-based AI/ML inspection solution in partnership with Deloitte.

The solution allows an operator or an inspector to simply take an inspection image and the image is instantly analyzed to predict the condition of the equipment, criticality, and use generative AI to describe the problem to their maintenance teams. By converging technology trends such as cloud, mobile, generative AI, and AI/ML, Innovapptive is streamlining processes and eliminating bottlenecks, resulting in substantial productivity gains.

Furthermore, Innovapptive is expected to launch a video AI/ML technology in FY-24 to rapidly upskill workers. This trend allows employees to access on-demand training materials and instructional videos, reducing the learning curve and increasing proficiency. By facilitating continuous learning and development, companies can adapt to changing demands more effectively.

A brighter future for asset-intensive industries

The labor shortage is a nationwide concern that requires a unified approach. Rather than relying solely on more labor, companies can take advantage of Innovapptive's connected workforce platform to empower front-line workers, connect them in real time, capture critical information efficiently, and harness the power of generative AI and cutting-edge AI/ML technology trends.

This holistic approach not only dramatically improves productivity by 10% to 20% but also reduces the need for additional labor. By embracing video AI/ML technology, businesses can rapidly upskill their workers, ensuring they remain agile and adaptable in the face of evolving challenges. Together, we can build a brighter future for American industries and address the labor shortage crisis more effectively.

Some of the world's largest brands rely on Innovapptive's technology, platforms and software, including:

  • Shell Oil
  • Hess
  • Chevron Phillips Chemical
  • Dominion Energy
  • Jemena
  • Loudoun Water
  • Newmont Mining
  • AkzoNobel
  • Pluspetrol
  • EDF Renewables
  • Sabert
  • LiftOne
  • Par Pacific

Innovapptive is headquartered in Houston with offices across the globe in India, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. To learn more and see what Innovapptive can do for your company, visit here.

Houston park opens new facility amid major transformation project

next step

The latest project from a Houston park that's got an ongoing transformation project underway has revealed its latest new feature.

Memorial Park, Houston’s most popular destination for runners and one of the best trails in Texas, has unveiled its new, state-of-art running complex on November 4. The new facility was first announced in 2019 as a part of the park's master plan redevelopment project, which includes the innovative Land Bridge that opened earlier this year.

Encompassing years in planning and constructing, this new complex features the 400-meter Roy H. Cullen Timing Track, a viewing decks, an event plaza, several gathering spaces, trails, and more. More than a simple running track, the complex is designed to be a central gathering spot for all Memorial Park visitors, notes Memorial Park Conservancy executive director Shellye Arnold. The complex will also serve as new gateway to the park’s Bayou Wilds trails.

This new complex is meant to bring more park visitors to multiple areas of the park, Arnold notes, as well as improve track conditions for the thousands who use it, including Houston Astros and Texans players and Olympians. (Olympic legend Carl Lewis is a frequent user.)

“The old timing track in the park is just worn down and not really that accurate, and it has strange turns and corners,” Arnold tells CultureMap. “The running complex is very fitting for the park and for Houston.”

Credit goes to the game-changing Ten-Year Plan, which turned the Memorial Park Master Plan marathon into a sprint with an accelerated set of projects via catalyst gift from the Kinder Foundation and various donors. Partners include the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, Uptown Development Authority, and Kinder Foundation, and the City of Houston Mayor’s Office.

That mean a new experience not just for runners, joggers, and walkers, but all visitors.

“It’s a microcosm of the park, a place where a lot of people go and train at four or five in the morning,” adds Arnold. “But it’s a gathering place in the woods. If you think about Memorial Park, part of the whole experience is being immersed in nature. And so this particular timing track is really much more nature immersive than the old timing track.”

Community access is also a priority, for adults and kids.

“There are a lot of schools in Houston that don’t have access to a high quality track — or a track at all,” Arnold says. “And so now, their runners can come out and use the track. It won’t be used for meets, because we won’t close it off to the public very often at all. But it’s all about accessibility. Any school in Houston that wants to use it will be able to bring their students out and enjoy it.”

So while running may be the draw, really, it’s the complex is yet another chance to enjoy Memorial Park’s 1,500 acres and 25 miles worth of trails.

“There are places to hang out,” says Arnold. “There will be a cafe that will open up nearby in the first half of 2024 and an event plaza that’s also opening that will be a place to gather or just hang out with a group. Those are some of the many of the reasons that we did this. All the things that we do is to build community and foster a sense of connectedness — and this track will do that.”

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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