AUSTIN, TX The Construction Industry Institute (CII) announces the much-anticipated, favorable, and unanimous vote to join forces with Fiatech. The CII Board of Advisors and Fiatech members have approved their unification in January 2018.

CII and Fiatech are "Organized Research Units" in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. They both share the mission to dramatically improve the capital projects industry with innovative thinking and collaborative approaches to research and development.

For nearly 35 years, CII has been conducting capital projects research on behalf of an impressive roster of member companies including Shell, General Motors, The Procter & Gamble Co., Anheuser-Busch, Bechtel, Jacobs, Autodesk, and AECOM, to name a few. Executives from these companies collaborate with CII and academia from leading universities, making significant contributions in the areas of safety, cost and schedule improvements. Moving forward, CII's research and development activities are shifting focus to conduct industry sector-specific R&D activity that will maximize the benefits and business outcomes of capital projects.

"One of the driving forces behind CII's success is this keen focus on the people, processes, and technologies needed to deliver tangible business results to our industry," said Kenda Caskey, Engineering Manager at Burns & McDonnell, and CII's Chair of the Board. "This team of innovative member volunteers and stellar academics are pushing the boundaries to literally transform this industry - and we recognize that technology plays in integral role in this major shift." 

Fiatech leads the global development and adoption of innovative practices and technologies to realize the highest business value throughout the life cycle of capital assets. The integration of the supply chain, the introduction of computer aided design (CAD), augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR) building information modeling (BIM), and the development of mobile computing demonstrates that technology is fundamentally critical to the future success of capital projects.

"The combination of CII and Fiatech creates a projects powerhouse, bringing industry leading innovations like augmented reality, integrated software solutions and the latest in automatic sensing tools to our member portfolios," said Jim Purvis, Digital Enterprise Director at Worley Parsons, and Chairman of the Fiatech Board of Advisors. "Our new organization will be exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation projects."

Traditional reluctance to embrace innovation in this industry is slowly being overcome by the rapid emergence of relevant technology and by the introduction of policies such as the Government requirement for fully collaborative 3D building information modeling. There is also increasing potential for efficiency gains in construction processes by using mobile IT, automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and new materials.

"I'm tremendously proud of everything CII has achieved over the last three decades," said Dr. Stephen Mulva, Director of CII. "But the waves of change we now see in our industry are unprecedented and, to navigate this change, we must create a new organization for a new era. I truly believe that joining forces with Fiatech will prove to be a winning combination for our members and their shareholders."