Smart Technologies

Utilities need to chart an integrated path to service excellence, financial resilience and proactive customer engagement to obtain “world-class” standing. As this year’s Black & Veatch Strategic Directions: Water Industry Report indicates, challenges such as aging infrastructure, loss of talented workforce and financial constraints continue to influence business decisions and utility performance.

As Amory Lovins says, “if it exists, it must be possible.” Nutrient cycling exists. That means it must be possible for mankind to create a manufacturing system that works just as well.

The online Diamond Route newsletter carries a host of stories that illustrate how the company’s specialists are conserving the areas around its mines and the animals that live there.

Benevity, the global leader in workplace giving, volunteering and community investment software, announced the latest expansion of its industry-leading international offering. Benevity’s software platform and related services now provide companies with employees in India the ability to engage their people in local volunteering and tax-receiptable giving to Indian charities as part of an integrated approach to infusing a culture of purpose into global companies. This enhancement builds on their market-leading international giving solution, Benevity OneWorld™, which is delivered through Spark, an award-winning cloud-based software which is gaining rapid adoption across Fortune 1000 companies.

Its realisation requires incorporating environmental protection into products from the very start. Ensuring that this happens is the task of environmentally compatible product development. It follows the principle “Design for Environment” (DfE) to develop comprehensive vehicle concepts. The aim is to improve environmental performance in objectively measurable terms and, at the same time, to meet the demands of the growing number of customers with an eye for environmental issues.

Cindy Wallis-Lage, President of Black & Veatch’s water business, discusses the importance of industry collaboration for more sustainable water systems.

This summer, a panel of judges from Arrow will select a student team participating in the competition to be awarded the Arrow Innovation Prize. This exclusive prize advances the selected team to the final round of judging at the November competition held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) headquarters in Alexandria, Va. The Arrow Innovation Prize includes an all-expenses-paid trip and private networking opportunity for the student team with a group of innovators from Arrow.

The long-term goal of The Ray is to build the world’s first sustainable road, a highway that could create its own clean, renewable energy and generate income by selling power to utility companies, while producing no stormwater runoff or other pollution and eliminating traffic deaths.

The Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business is creating the next leaders to take on carbon reduction through an innovative co-curricular initiative launched in partnership with the College of Sciences and partially funded by the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

In Europe, Arrow is working with universities that are participating in Formula Student, a global automotive engineering competition. Some 3,500 students across Europe participate in the program each year, producing more than 100 custom vehicles. Arrow sponsors the Formula-E Race Car Projects in Norway and Germany.