By Luke Carothers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrei \u0218ueran founded Graphein nine years ago on a leap of faith with his business partner Eurgen Ursu.\u00a0 While \u0218ueran says that simply starting a business in itself is an adventure, starting Graphein was even more of a fraught road.\u00a0 This is because pitching Graphein meant pitching new technologies and solutions to a market that he says favors \u201cthe good old ways.\u201d\u00a0 Despite the challenges, \u0218ueran and Ursu made a bet when they founded the company, but, so far, they\u2019ve played their cards right.\u00a0 Based in Romania, Graphein is a service integrator for the construction industry\u2013supporting engineering, surveying, 3D scanning and modeling, and building behavior monitoring\u2013and an Autodesk partner.\u00a0 \u0218ueran says that he and Ursu take pride in that they\u2019ve managed to gather people within Graphein that are able to both \u201cdeliver jaw-dropping results\u201d and maintain an open culture filled with passionate individuals.\u00a0 According to \u0218ueran, this ability to recruit and retain top-level talent, that are also amazing individuals, has led to a pleasant working environment and a great reputation with clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u0218ueran is, at his core, a geodetic engineer\u2013\u201dalways and forever\u201d in his words.\u00a0 He never envisioned taking on the role of an entrepreneur.\u00a0 However, \u0218ueran believes that becoming an entrepreneur came into his life in a \u201cnatural manner\u201d, having stemmed from a long lasting desire to improve and innovate his field of work.\u00a0 His movement into entrepreneurship has allowed him to do just that, and, since founding Graphein, he has been able to get more involved with the process of product development.\u00a0 This includes working more in the testing phase and contributing input to the process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u0218ueran believes that one of the most common needs across the construction industry is the ability to optimize and speed up processes without compromising the quality of work.\u00a0 \u0218ueran also believes that drones have and will continue to play a massive role in providing this service for the construction industry. For many companies in the construction industry, the deployment of drones has resulted in massing time-savings while also producing \u201ctop-notch\u201d results.\u00a0 An extended result of the effect drone deployment has had on the AEC industry is that companies are able to get involved in more projects.\u00a0 \u0218ueran extends this, believing that drones have also increased companies\u2019 abilities to engage in projects with various degrees of difficulty.\u00a0 These positive results mean that the construction industry has gained a high level of trust in the technology, but still other technologies that have the same potential to shape the industry are still in the process of earning this trust.\u00a0 As the benefits of these technologies are demonstrated, \u0218ueran believes that, like drones, people will begin relying on them more.\u00a0 \u0218ueran notes that there have been projects brought to fruition solely by using drone surveying.\u00a0 In the example of drones, this wider adoption of the technology has led to a new market filled with \u201chigh quality products.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To highlight just how much drones and drone technology have shaped the construction industry, he points to an ambitious project that involves building a highway that connects the cities of Sibiu and Pite\u0219ti in Romania. This massive project consists of 7 tunnels, 24 bridges, and 18 viaducts.\u00a0 In the process of constructing this important piece of infrastructure, Graphein and the other project teams relied on TOPODRONE products like LiDAR ULTRA and AQUAMAPPER.\u00a0 According to \u0218ueran, the project has put his team to the test because of its location in an \u201cunfriendly landform,\u201d which consists of densely wooded areas and significant elevation changes.\u00a0 \u0218ueran says the project has put his team and equipment to the test, but, by relying on the best products, these difficulties are surmountable.\u00a0 To overcome the challenges posed by terrain, Graphein\u2019s team has been deploying TOPODRONE\u2019s LiDAR ULTRA on board a DJI Matrice 300 drone to capture laser scanning from an altitude of 100-120 meters.\u00a0 Using this technology, he says they were able to capture an area of densely-wooded terrain 32-km lengthwise by 400 meters wide with only 14 drone flights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The highway construction project from Sibiu to Pite\u0219ti also contains an added wrinkle that, according to \u0218ueran, proved to be the biggest challenge.\u00a0 Part of this difficult terrain scanning included mapping under the 6 river crossings on the project.\u00a0 To achieve this, \u0218ueran and his team relied on TOPODRONE\u2019s AQUAMAPPER\u2013a device for airborne bathymetric surveying\u2013 which was then only recently out of development.\u00a0 He says that, despite the potential difficulties posed by this underwater mapping, AQUAMAPPER has vastly improved the performance of the bathymetric surveying for the project.\u00a0 What is perhaps more remarkable is that, despite the terrain challenges stemming from water, trees, and topography, surveying for the project lasted less than 10 days.\u00a0 \u0218ueran points out that drones played a significant role in shaping the project, and the time they saved is a testament to how much drone technology has advanced in the construction industry.\u00a0 By relying on tools like those developed by TOPODRONE, \u0218ueran believes that more projects like the one in Romania will see immensely positive results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Luke Carothers Andrei \u0218ueran founded Graphein nine years ago on a leap of faith with his business partner Eurgen Ursu.\u00a0 While \u0218ueran says that simply starting a business in itself is an adventure, starting Graphein was even more of a fraught road.\u00a0 This is because pitching Graphein meant pitching new technologies and solutions to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4972,"featured_media":2073524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[1856,11767,1869],"tags":[8901,43839,50062,50061,7873,49650,1319,1578,50064,50059,50060,50063,679,29584,8,19531,30452,24874,677,1111,38925,4019],"acf":[],"views":17,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/photo1686929587.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2073520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2073524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2073520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csengineermag.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2073520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}