Golparvar-Fard wins 2016 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction

Associate Professor Mani Golparvar-Fard has won the 2016 Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

The Daniel W. Halpin Award for Scholarship in Construction was named in honor of CEE at Illinois alumnus Daniel W. Halpin (MS 69, PhD 73), a leading authority on the use of simulation in studying construction processes, and is given by ASCE to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship that advances construction engineering as a science.

Golparvar-Fard was cited for his “cutting-edge research focused on creating new knowledge in computer vision sensing and analytics to formalize simple yet effective project monitoring and control techniques for construction teams, as well as for his active engagement teaching philosophy.” In addition to receiving the award, Golparvar-Fard delivered the Halpin lecture at the 2016 Construction Research Congress in Puerto Rico.

“As a faculty member and as an alum, I feel very pleased, humbled, and truly honored for receiving this award from ASCE named after Dan Halpin, our world-renowned alum in the area of construction engineering and management.” said Golparvar-Fard. “This is a reflection of the incredible research that my students have conducted and I am very grateful that I have had the opportunity of working with so many remarkable talents, both students and faculty collaborators, at the University of Illinois.”

In Golparvar-Fard’s work, building information models (BIM) and visual data in forms of images, videos and 3D point clouds are used analyze and monitor construction and infrastructure projects. He also leads a research team which built “flying superintendents”—an end-to-end predictive visual data analytics platform that runs on aerial robots and uses stills and videos to monitor construction activities on project sites. With this technology, both actual and potential performance problem can be identified in time to take corrective action. His recent collaboration with Turner Construction company to implement the technology at the new arena for the NBA’s Sacramento Kings in California resulted in an award in Turner’s Fourth Annual Award for Innovation program. The technology is currently implemented in several other high profiles jobsites in the U.S. and overseas. Golparvar-Fard’s most recent research on the topic has resulted in several patents and a new start-up company, and the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign named him a Faculty Entrepreneurial Fellow in 2015.