dropping in

New drone company lands in Houston from Chicago for Texas region launch

Chicago-based Helios Visions has landed in Houston.

Photo courtesy of Helios Visions

Chicago-based company that provides drone-based infrastructure inspection services has announced new offices in Texas — including Houston.

Helios Visions announced its expansion into Texas earlier this month, and named three new offices in Houston, Austin, and Dallas/Fort Worth. The company specializes in collecting automated and repeatable aerial data via drone technology within the architectural design, engineering design and construction industries.

"Houston, Austin, and Dallas/Fort Worth are large markets, and it is a natural next step of our continuing expansion strategy," says Ted Parisot, co-founder of Helios Visions, in a news release. "Moving into the Texas market allows us to best serve the needs of both existing and new clients in architecture, engineering, construction, and commercial real estate.

"Coupled with the urgent need for infrastructure inspections across the United States, it was the right time to expand our drone services in Texas," he continues. "This also represents the continued growth and value provided by the commercial drone services industry as a whole."

Helios Visions, founded in 2015, will offer its Texas projects drone services in the following areas:

Infrastructure Inspection (bridges, overpasses, viaducts, etc.)
Building façade inspection
Construction progress documentation
Commercial real estate

"Given its central location and the high population growth trajectory, we knew that expanding into the Texas market would allow us to best serve the needs of both existing and new clients," says Calvin Gin, co-founder of Helios Visions, in the release. "I am often traveling across Texas for other projects including Luby's Restaurants and Charming Studios, so it is a natural progression for Helios Visions to expand our drone service offerings here."

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This article originally ran on our sister site, InnovationMap.

technology drones

training future workers

Meta to bring $115 million AI data center training initiative to Houston

Photo by Joe Holland on Unsplash

The facilities will train the next generation of construction workers.

Meta and Associated Builders and Contractors have entered into a partnership to invest $115 million in training programs for the construction of AI data centers, with a portion of the project launching in Houston.

The companies announced June 8 that they would open America’s Workforce Academies at ABC chapter training centers in Houston; Indianapolis; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Columbus, Ohio.

The academies will offer career readiness and safety training, plus five weeks of hands-on education. Participants who complete the program will be granted a job offer from contractors working on Meta projects.

“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities,” Dina Powell McCormick, Meta president and vice-chairman, said in a news release. “Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fiber that secures American strength in this new age.”

Overall, the Meta and ABC aim for the academies to build a more sustainable pipeline of skilled construction workers and ensure safety and job readiness for the surging number of data center projects underway.

“This new program is an innovative talent solution that is a critical part of addressing the construction industry’s ongoing workforce shortage and creates an accelerated, new-entrant strategy for job seekers ... The sustained demand for data center construction technicians means the industry needs an all-of-the-above approach to address this shortage and grow the construction talent pool,” Michael Bellaman, ABC president and CEO, added in the release.

In Texas, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has launched or broken ground on data centers in El Paso, Fort Worth and Temple. The company announced in March that it planned to grow its El Paso Data center by 1 gigawatt, representing more than a $10 billion investment.

Apart from Meta, Texas has attracted data center development to power other giants like Google and Amazon in recent years. In turn, Texas has been predicted to become the biggest data center market. Commercial real estate services provider JLL reported this spring that the state could topple Northern Virginia as the world’s largest data-center market by 2030. Similarly, CBRE predicted that Houston's data center capacity could double by 2028.

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This story was first published on our sister site InnovationMap.