Industry Roundup: Wrightsoft Wins AHR Award; Siemens’ Inventor of the Year

By Consulting Specifying Engineer Staff December 20, 2004

• For the second consecutive year, Wrightsoft , Lexington, Mass., has won the AHR Expo Innovation Award —this time, for its Right-Radiant Plus software. The software is capable of producing an automatic loop drawing, coupled with calculations, in a single application and acts as a “live model,” simultaneously and instantly updating the drawing and calculations based on any changes made within the program.

Osman Ahmed , a senior principal engineer for Siemens Building Technologies , Buffalo Grove, Ill., has been selected Inventor of the Year by parent company Siemens AG of Germany. Ahmed’s work involves research with micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), an area of microchip technology that uses both the electrical and mechanical properties of silicon chips.

Honeywell has reached an agreement with the board of directors of Novar plc to purchase the company for $2.4 billion, including the assumption of approximately $580 million of outstanding debt. The Novar board has unanimously recommended the offer.

• The National Assoc. of Electrical Distributors announced a $250,000 commitment by Cooper Industries to the endowment fund for the NAED Education and Research Foundation . The principal amount of the endowment will remain untouched while the interest will be used to commission future projects and research studies.

Northrop Grumman’s , Herndon, Va., smart video-surveillance system garnered top scores as part of an evaluation hosed by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and the U.S. Air Force National Assessment Group . The evaluation tested leading-edge security technologies to meet the tougher anti-terrorist threat scenarios against many government agencies and facilities worldwide.