Speaker: Nathaniel Jones, PhD, Building Physicist at Arup

Dr. Nathaniel Jones is a building scientist, educator, and software developer. He delivers solutions for healthy and comfortable buildings using engineering and computer science, with an emphasis on tools that aid informed design decisions. He is the developer of comfort.arup.com, Arup’s advanced online comfort modeling tool, and of Accelerad, a suite of open-source GPU-based lighting and daylighting simulation tools used by architects, engineers, and educators around the world. Nathaniel serves on the board of the International Building Performance Simulation Association-USA chapter, where he chairs its Research Committee and the subcommittee on Emerging Simulation Technologies. He is the author of twenty journal and conference papers related to simulation of the built environment, and he has regularly been an invited speaker on the application of parallel computation to building simulation.

Topic: Massive Parallelism, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Models

Why does my Revit model take forever to load? How do gaming engines manage to render complex environments at 90 fps? Big models can be frustrating to work with, but computer science is serving up new tools that make big data manageable and even fast to manipulate. This presentation will discuss how massive parallelism has recently been made available to everyday digital users through graphics cards and vectorized computing and show how fast parallel computing can change the quality of the built environment.

Speaker: Peter Razavi, Technical Solutions Executive, Construction at Autodesk

Peter Razavi is a Technical Solutions Executive for Autodesk Construction Solutions. He currently leads a team of subject matter experts in supporting Autodesk’s largest global customers with their technical needs and desired workflows throughout the project lifecycle. Prior to joining Autodesk, Peter worked for one of the world’s leading project development and construction groups in a project management capacity. This experience allowed him to evaluate and implement numerous construction technologies to accelerate the company’s digital transformation journey and streamline collaboration between all project stakeholders. Peter has experience working on projects with different delivery methods including IPD and has worked on projects in various market sectors such as biotech, health care, higher education, aviation, and commercial.

Topic: Connected Construction

In construction, the gap between the office and the field is nothing new. Whether you are on the jobsite or in the trailer, it can oftentimes feel like you’re operating in a silo with little visibility. However, the construction industry is transforming; we’re seeing new ways of working and data collection at a rapid rate. At the same time, project risk is increasing with little to no room for miscommunications and mistakes. Today more than ever, we need to close the gap and truly connect teams that are ready to embrace and excel in our industry’s future. Autodesk Construction Solution’s mission is to connect data and teams throughout the entire project lifecycle from design, preconstruction, construction, to operations. With Autodesk’s newly announced unified platform, project stakeholders can leverage the same interface to complete lifecycle workflows such as design collaboration, model coordination, quantification, project management, field execution, and project turnover.