ORONO, Maine — The “Bridge-in-a-Backpack” technology developed at the University of Maine and licensed to an Orono startup company has received a key approval that could speed its commercial adoption.
The Bridge-in-a-Backpack was more than a decade in development at UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center. The technology is an innovative inflatable composite-concrete arch bridge that can reduce construction time and costs, potentially double the life span of bridges, reduce maintenance costs, and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of bridge construction.
On Thursday night, a subcommittee of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials voted unanimously to accept design standards for the Bridge-in-a-Backpack for inclusion in its book of codes, according to Habib Dagher, director of the center. Those standards were developed by UMaine researchers and Advanced Infrastructure Technology, the startup that licensed the Bridge-in-a-Backpack technology for commercialization.
The adoption of those standards was approved by a vote of 50 bridge engineers, one from each state. It spells out the engineering specifications used to deploy the bridges in a construction setting. Importantly, inclusion in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials codes means a Bridge-in-a-Backpack used on federal or state highways is automatically eligible for federal Department of Transportation grants, said Dagher. Typically, bridges are funded 80 percent by federal dollars, 20 percent by state dollars, he said.
“It’s huge. This would be the first time composite materials will be included in the bridge code,” he said. “It opens markets.”
The inclusion is also a stamp of approval, noted Brit Svoboda, president of Advanced Infrastructure Technology.
“This is a huge advancement, for us to have this approval and recognition,” said Svoboda. “It moves us from a research endeavor into a mainstream technology.”
The technology is still a new product, and there is a degree of risk-aversion in the engineering community, said Svoboda. But this was a necessary milestone in fully deploying the technology in the market, he said.
It’s also an important step to securing future financing for the company. To date, Advanced Infrastructure Technology has been funded through family and friends, owner equity and a private equity fund. The company is now looking at angel investors and venture capital funds to ramp up and expand production capabilities.
“Now we have the substantiation that we needed to go after that big money,” said Svoboda.
The company has eight employees who have mainly focused on corporate development, product enhancement, market development and other important foundations, as it also worked on inclusion in the bridge code.
Now that the foundation is solid and the technology has been adopted into the code, hopefully growth is the next step, said Svoboda.
The company currently makes the bridge kits at Kenway Corporation in Augusta. The plan is to do more of the production work in the Orono area, while maintaining a strategic partnership with Kenway, he said.
The company has 10 bridges deployed in four different states, as demonstration models. There are 15 more bridge projects in design in another 10 states or so, with proposals in another half-dozen countries, he said.
“When we can ship this stuff from Maine to all those locations, it’s a tremendous opportunity for all of us here in Maine,” said Svoboda.
In 2010 the company met with Russian officials who were interested in deploying the technology in support of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Svoboda said the company likely won’t do much work with that project, due to the time frame and working through similar standards approvals in that country.
The Bridge-in-a-Backpack is an example of economic development that state officials have been encouraging for years, where state investment in research and development produces patented technologies that can be licensed out to commercial entities. That provides an income stream to the state university, as well as jobs and tax revenue on the commercial side.
Good. Because this grant seeker’s asinine wind power industry just sent electricity transmission rates up by 19.6% for all CMP customers. Just google “What every Maine ratepayer needs to know”.
Or did some corporate welfare recipient (CMP) use the new technology as a lever to justify increased rates (and salaries and profits)?
Your source is biased, probably not even close to accurate and definitely suspect. You’re lucky to live in Maine where rolling blackouts don’t exist. If you had to deal with that c**p, you might take a different, more informed, view of wind power.
Maine never had rolling blackouts. You can take all the windmills, stuff em in the Dolby landfill and we will still never have rolling, blackouts!
yeah…..UMaine engineering and Dr. Dagher!
BTW, if our current governor had his way, none of this would be happening as he offers o support for the University System. His and his Commisioner’s (Bowen) plan for education, standards-based, everyone dumbed down to the same level, no AP math, no advanced anything, just make sure everyone can read and write.
That’s the thing, UMaine is a safe investment for the state. The return is there — I think that last number I saw said it pays 8:1. But when you see the waste the University of Maine is known for, putting any chips in that pile is a bitter pill to take.
If it’s such a great investment, there should be no need to force everyone in the state to pay for it; let people voluntarily fund it.
There’s no “if”. It’s a great investment for the state which has very clearly proven itself year after year (see article above). Here’s also a good link providing actual ROI, slightly old but otherwise relevant. http://www.umaine.edu/meif/umaine-highlights/grants-and-contracts-the-return-on-investment-in-university-based-research/
I like your comment though, goes along the same lines as, “why am I forced to pay for the roads, let people voluntarily fund them.” haha
The page you linked to is almost laughable: UMaine is spending $12 million, which allows them to get another $50 million in “external grants and contracts”, which is mostly federal funds, i.e. our tax dollars by another name! That is what they are calling “return”, but it’s really just more money they spend, there is nothing in there about making an actual positive return on that money (calling it an “investment” is a stretch).
Private roads, formed by voluntary agreement, work just fine…
By the way, I have nothing against the project that is the subject of this article, in fact it sounds like a great idea. Point is, if it’s a good investment, they can raise their own funds, it’s neither necessary nor right to tax people to pay for this kind of thing.
What is the point of cars and trucks if DOT doesn’t build roads? What is the point of oil refineries if cars and trucks have no place to go? How many times have we relied on GPS to get us to our destination? To increase the efficiency of our shipping? All of these started with government input (our input through our government). We all provide the seeds for this technology with our taxes and new businesses grow from them. Isn’t it worthwhile for us to all invest (through our taxes) in research that may save us all time and money in the future?
Or should we all be like the proverbial welfare queen and let others foot the bill for our benefit?
Have you ever heard of private roads? (built without government input) There are even a few in Maine. The “who will build the roads” argument is a strawman justification for government, as, in fact, it’s easy to show that road construction and maintenance can happen in a free market.
Your line of reasoning seems to be that because some of the useful technologies we had were developed with government involvement, that therefore government involvement is necessary for such developments and the only way (or best way) to produce such technologies. Should North Koreans be thankful for all their government provides them? No, of course not: the government does not produce anything, it merely takes from people by force.
The only “welfare queens” in this example are the ones receiving the tax money. Let people keep the fruits of their labor (don’t take it by taxation) and you won’t have any of that.
Actually, the entire American freeway system was built for national security, so that military forces could defend the nation if it came under attack. Use by citizens was an after thought.
Many local roads are built by private money and then guess what? After a few years, when the initial profit motive has been exercised, the roads (and future maintenance) are handed over to the government for incorporation into the public road system (housing developments, for example). Plus, private roads have no obligation to allow public access. How would you like a road that could save you hours of time from your trip, if only it wasn’t gated and reserved for
others or worse, charging a fee you couldn’t afford? Where’s your freedom then? Nowhere, the GOP is manipulating you.
Where exactly are these high quality private Maine roads which you reference?? I know in southern Maine (where the majority of traffic supporting fares are collected) there is a stretch of road managed by a “Quasi-State Agency (not private) created by the
Maine Legislature in 1941, to construct, manage and operate the
109-mile, toll highway from Kittery to Augusta. Of course not enough profit exists (traffic) exists from Augusta to Fort Kent to entice a profiteer to buy into a highway system in the central-north area of our state. So I suspect those committed to support of you unfounded facts and false logic would be happy traveling by waterway and cow paths.
Great logic!!! But let’s first apply your logic to the roads and bridges within a 25 mile perimeter of your home and we’ll check back with you in 30 years to see how well your brainfart of an idea is working for you.
A product of the governor’s hated research and development.
R&D projects that are worthwhile should be able to stand on their own and obtain private funding.
Right because without exclusively private funding we wouldn’t have luxuries like the artificial heart, certain vaccines, the microchip, GPS, the internet, long range communications, cordless tools, as wll as a multitude of other technologies, inventions, etc. Oh wait these all resulted from government funded R&D.
All of which could have been just as easily (and probably more efficiently) developed by the private market. The big problems with government funded R&D are
1) everyone is forced to pay for it whether they want to or not
2) government bureaucracy isn’t very good at investing in the right things
3) It usually costs twice as much and takes four times as long.
Except of course in providing healthcare where it costs about 25% less than what health insurers charge us for it. And except in cases of nuclear powered electricity production, where the public must choose between poisoning themselves or assuming the cost of disposing of the waste generated by private enterprise. And, my personal favorite, in case of the banks “to big to fail” where the public picked up the tab and the financial geniuses who crashed our economy still got their bonuses and obscene compensation packages. Yeah, private enterprise is so much more cost effective and efficient . . . .
Free market healthcare is cheaper. There is very little free-market about the current mess-of-a-“system” we have in the US
Private companies should be responsible for disposing of their own nuclear waste. Instead, the federal government said they’d take care of it, of course, they haven’t, so we have waste sitting in “temporary” holding pools for decades while the govt tries to figure out what to do.
The banks were not “too big to fail”, they should have gone bankrupt, what happened constitutes “moral hazard” and is the opposite of free market.
The things you mention are (so benignly) called “externalizing costs”. It means that the public indirectly picks up the tab for the true cost of doing business, while a huge corporation keeps the profits (and uses them to forward their agendas through lobbies who buy GOP votes).
This is why we can all have computers for a few hundred bucks while people in rural asia take on all of the old ones we throw out, then die or suffer deformities from heavy metals poisoning, as one example. Here is some food-for-thought:
http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/
Now you’re in the “woulda, coulda and shoulda” world. The reality is that private enterprise can be extremely risk-averse. MaineSt was pointing out the fact that government funded research often produces society wide benefits. The fact is no private enterprise got interested in these things until they realized the profit that they could make from publicly developed technology. That type of mooching from the public is a fairly common event in our “capitalistic” economy. The “angel” investors who may choose to move the bridge in a back pack forward may reap extensive profit from the research that we all paid for – – and we will all benefit from the new jobs, increased public revenue and the efficiencies in public construction. Think of the failing bridges on our public highways – the roads that bring our consumer goods to us and return the profits to the businesses that produce them. The replacement time and cost of the failed infrastructure is reduced to a fraction of the traditional methodology – – but the simplistic perspective you espouse doesn’t let you see or admit to any benefit from the public investment.
I agree that not every public dollar is well-spent, but that doesn’t mean all public spending is wasted. If you look at private enterprise spending you will find well-spent funds and wasteful spending too. This bridge in a backpack is following a long standing pattern that lead to a good part of our economic success over our history. The “capitalism fundamentalism cult” wants to ignore that reality and have us all believe that America “coulda, shoulda and woulda” become an economic powerhouse without its government.
Agree with most of your analysis – what we have is not a “capitalistic” system but rather a mix of capitalism, corporatism, and socialism, designed to reward the ruling class. Yes, in my “woulda, coulda and shoulda” world, taxpayers should not have funded this in the first place… if we don’t learn from that mistake, it will happen again and again and again.
R&D, like our highway system, begins with the military. We can all see how well blackwater worked out. We are not a nation of mercenaries…(mostly, …the exception being vulture capitalism). You don’t think that our ability to sit here and b**ch about politics came about because private investors took the initiative to encourage and defend DEMOCRACY at all costs, through hundreds of years, do you? No, that was our government once (long ago) made up of people smarter than us, who decided that there is a direct-and-historical link between national security and technological supremacy. I just wish they would hurry up and recognize that the same idea applies to our business practices. Oh yeah, and Mitt Romney IS Gordon Gecko!
You just do not have any clue as to how our country became the leading world power post WWII power. Actually our government is very good at some things such as highways, mail delivery, military defense, law enforcement, fire fighting, education, promoting research, etc. These just happen to be things where the private market could not make a profit unless it turned the service into garbage (for maximum profit). Folks like you are seen everyday driving down our highways, calling 911, going to your mailboxes, sending your kids to school, and talking trash about being forced to contribute to our shared social services. If you don’t want to benefit in the laws of large numbers then confine your activities to your trails and caves!
Unfortunately, that money would have to come from the one percent and they are too busy leeching from the other 99 percent they have no idea how to do something worthwhile, particularly if they have to part with some of it.
Actually, this project was started while Baldacci was governor. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the Lepage cultists believed Paul made it all happen.
This is a big win for Maine. Take it were you can get it in this sorry state of affairs.
Can I buy one made in China yet!
R and D, we need more of it. Lets come up with something equally signifcant, like the East West highway in a backpack. We can keep the costs down, eliminate the Corps and the Politicians. Lets put more people back to work…the East West highway in a backpack!
Did I miss it, or was the one in Caribou mentioned anywhere? Seems that it was mentioned in the article about the connector highway in Caribou being finished.