Several construction apparatus was set up in advance of the ConExpo-Con/Agg trade display at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, last Wednesday, March 1, 2017. The show will be running from March 7-11, and is projected to attract approximately 130,000 attendees. Outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, one was able to see a 16,000-ton excavator sitting in a large sandbox. This will be the star of the construction industry’s prime international assembly, CONEXPO-CON/AGG, which comes to town this week.
Conveyed 1,800 miles from Tennessee, the bulldozer encompasses a 400-pound, 7-foot-long steel arm, known in industry jargon as a ‘boom’, created from a 3-D printer. It will be the foremost use of large-scale 3-D printed steel when it starts digging up sand at the spectacle. The excavator represents the remarkable industrial change affecting numerous facets of the building industry — from smart apparel to drones to 3-D printers — since it last convened for CONEXPO-CON/AGG in 2014.
For the first time organizers have arranged a separate, 75,000-square-foot area called Tech Experience. This is to help the 130,000 construction mavens descending into Las Vegas to understand the future of their sector.
According to Sara Truesdale Mooney, who is the CONEXPO-CON/AGG show director, “Over the past three years, all technology has advanced at an exponential rate, and the same can be said for the construction industry.”
“Today we have autonomous trucks and augmented reality to allow drawings through glasses on a job site. It is CONEXPO-CON/AGG’s role to raise awareness of new products and technologies, drive adoption and industry efficiency.” Mooney continued.
The Tech Experience will offer a collaborative look at the developments and keys in areas such as job location, labour force and organisation. Microsoft and Hyperloop will be amongst the businesses presenting at the Tech Experience. CONEXPO-CON/AGG is using equipment in innovative techniques this year as well. This will be the first Las Vegas show using admission badges that double as monorail cards.
Great occasion
CONEXPO-CON/AGG, which is happening from tomorrow Tuesday 7th March to Saturday 11th March, happens every third year. Featuring over 2,500 exhibitors, representing several subdivisions of the industry such as asphalt, aggregates, concrete, earthmoving, lifting, mining and utilities.
Contractors will be making up 63% of the people joining, while equipment dealers and distributors, the next largest group, will comprise 17%. Foreigners account for around a quarter of attendees, originating from 150 countries.
Merely organising and presenting CONEXPO is a technological achievement in itself. The show will cover 2,500,000 square feet — enough to fit 43 football fields — around the convention center. Approximately 475,000 square feet of outdoor pavilion area is needed, a record for a local convention. Corporations including Caterpillar, Liebheer and Komatsu will be exhibiting apparatus such as excavators, cement-mixer trucks and cranes weighing a collective 110 million pounds.
$24,500 Worth of fuel
It takes over 330 forklifts and 33 cranes, a total of 45 days to set up and disassemble CONEXPO-CON/AGG. Over 445 barrels of gas, esteemed at roughly $24,500, will be expended by generators and light towers throughout the show. Caterpillar will have one of the biggest shows at the display with over 40 mechanisms spread out over a zone the size of a football field. Eight of the apparatuses will be displayed for the first time. In total, there will be about 1,000 innovative products at CONEXPO-CON/AGG this year.
Therefore, it’s really not surprising that the influence on Las Vegas is momentous, at nearly $190 million, not including gaming profits.
A 13-year expert at Desert Cab, John Madonna expressed that “the demographic it attracts is a grand slam — male, mid-40s with strong incomes who truly desire to spend as much as they can on this trip. CONEXPO never disappoints.”
A Historical Overview
CONEXPO’s beginnings date back to more than a century and 2,000 miles to Ohio in 1909. The show took off in the course of the construction boom sweeping the United States post World War II. Overseas companies started presenting at CONEXPO in the 1970s.
The necessity for more space required the show to move to Las Vegas in the 1980s. The CON/AGG show teamed up in 1996 with CONEXPO, generating the construction industry’s prevalent worldwide convention.
Nowadays, CONEXPO-CON/AGG is the prime convention in Las Vegas by square feet and third-leading by attendees after CES and AAIW/SEMA, both of which interest more than 150,000. CONEXPO-CON/AGG is formed by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
Tech experience
The new Tech Experience section will have 49 exhibitors representing live 3-D printing, solar-powered roads, drones, robots and more. Additionally, it will be the site of 40 so-called Tech Talks — concise, motivational presentations reminiscent of Ted Talks — that will concentrate on modernization.
Tech Talk presenters comprise Hyperloop One Director of Manufacturing Wayne Rapp, Microsoft HoloLens Senior Director for Strategy D’Arcy Salzmann, Solar Roadways Co-Founder Scott Brusaw and JB Knowledge CEO James Benham. Salzmann will talk about the use of Microsoft’s wearable gadgets on job locations, while Benham will explain how drones are transmuting construction sites.
There will also be almost 150 instructive classes at the Westgate Las Vegas convention center discussing 11 topics, from safety to business administration to equipment upkeep.
The Entertainment Factor
Once the day of classes and inspecting equipment is over, there’s also a portion of entertainment for attendees. CONEXPO-CON/AGG overlaps this year with NASCAR, and planners are endorsing it among the list of entertainment possibilities for participants.
Apart from NASCAR, CONEXPO-CON/AGG guests are eligible to concessions at SpeedVegas, the High Roller, Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopter Tours and Las Vegas ATV Tours. CONEXPO-CON/AGG is accommodating meet-ups for young attendees to give them the opportunity to network and make new industry contacts. The meet-ups include stopovers to the Omnia Nightclub at Caesars Palace and Hakkasan Nightclub at MGM Grand.
Coordinators are also holding a benefit concert by rock group Foreigner at the Brooklyn Bowl on Wednesday for 2,300 guests. The money collected from the ticket sales will go to fund a not-for-profit trust, aiding military veterans find jobs. “Veterans have a skill set that really fits with the construction industry,” voiced CONEXPO-CON/AGG’s Mooney.
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