Latest news with #Forth
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DPR Identifies Three Key Benefits of Integrated Contract Strategies for Faster GMP Facility Deployment
Experts discuss how early collaboration and innovative contracting methods are accelerating timelines, controlling costs, and improving project outcomes. BOSTON, June 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- "When you're in the business of life-saving scientific research, every day counts," shared Mike Forth, DPR Construction's Northeast Life Sciences Core Market Leader during ISPE Boston's discussion Accelerating Speed-to-Market for GMP Facilities. "The earlier Owners, designers, contractors and trade partners start collaborating on building a facility, the faster scientists can complete their research." Adopting innovative contract strategies like design-assist and integrated project delivery (IPD) provides significant benefits for owners. "Any contract that prioritizes early collaboration will lead to a more efficient delivery. Right now, locally, we're seeing clients adopt design-assist contracts most frequently," Forth says. "This approach has gained traction nationally, but the adoption has been particularly impactful in the Northeast due to a growing need to balance complex contract terms with the urgency of life sciences projects." The success of design-assist contracts stems from their unique ability to align stakeholders earlier in the process, fostering collaboration that addresses challenges proactively. Owners are finding greater confidence in navigating the nuanced demands of GMP facilities, ensuring streamlined delivery of critical spaces without compromising on quality or timelines. For owners, there are three key benefits of integrated contract strategies: 1. Early Integration Drives Long-Term Success. Early integration allows contractors and trade partners to support design decisions, evaluate material and layout options, and align procurement strategies with schedule demands. Contractors can conduct constructability reviews and develop logistics plans while design is still evolving. This proactive involvement uncovers challenges sooner and opens the door to solutions that accelerate delivery—such as prefabrication, modular systems, or phased construction—while improving safety and quality. 2. Collaboration Enables More Accurate, Predictable Costs. Early collaboration also results in more accurate budgeting. When contractors are brought in during design, they can support real-time pricing, provide feedback on scope decisions, and help the team understand the cost implications of various design options. This is especially important for GMP facilities, where critical equipment may have long lead times or limited manufacturers. "We don't want to receive drawings for an eight-month project and then realize a key component will take two years to deliver," Forth said. "Early involvement lets us consider current and future supply chain and labor conditions to avoid those costly delays." Overlapping design and procurement also opens the door to more competitive bids and cost certainty. 3. Team-Based Models Improve Quality and Reduce Risk. Working together and holding each other accountable as a team is how you build a successful project. When all project partners collaborate in real time, decisions are made faster and with greater confidence. This reduces rework, limits change orders, and improves quality before construction even begins. "Our goal is to eliminate the roadblocks before they arise," Forth says. "We want to have solutions before there's a crisis that prevents construction from moving forward, and we can't do that in a silo." In today's fast-moving life sciences environment, projects that start with alignment finish with confidence. About DPR ConstructionDPR Construction is a forward-thinking, self-performing general contractor and construction manager specializing in technically complex and sustainable projects for the advanced technology, life sciences, healthcare, higher education and commercial markets. DPR's portfolio of work ranges from large-scale new construction to small tenant improvements and special projects. Founded in 1990, DPR is a great story of entrepreneurial success as a private, employee-owned company that has grown to a multi-billion-dollar organization with offices around the world. Strategically focused on delivering more predictable outcomes through applications of virtual design & construction, prefabrication, its team of self-perform craft, and leveraging data to learn and improve from DPR consistently ranks among the top building contractors and employs approximately 11,000 professionals across its family of companies. For more information, visit For more information, please contact: Lisa RuanoDPR ConstructionTel: 908-451-9622Email: lisaru@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE DPR Construction
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cumbrian firms urged to back 'Just One Pound' appeal to support suicide survivors
A group aiming to help suicide survivors and their families across Cumbria is asking businesses to back its 'Just One Pound' appeal. A sister whose brother took his own life is leading a bid to raise awareness of suicide by putting Cumbria at the heart of a national Baton of Hope campaign. Now a group of Cumbrian businesses giving their support to the campaign are asking fellow firms to back an appeal by inviting all their employees to each donate 'Just One Pound' to the cause. Lisa Birdsall and her brother Stephen in 2012 (Image: Baton of Hope) Ken Johnston, Business Liaison Manager at Forth which has bases at Flimby, Cleator Moor and Barrow, and fellow members of the Cumbria Baton of Hope committee, came up with the 'Just One Pound' appeal to help people make a small donation even when times are tough. Mr Johnston said: "By encouraging businesses across Cumbria to ask their employees if they would donate 'Just One Pound', we are hoping that it will not only enable a greater number of people to donate, but also to acknowledge that suicide is an issue that we should all come together across the county to address. 'Whatever our background, wherever in the county we live and work, many of us know someone affected by suicide. If we are to truly tackle mental health and suicide issues in Cumbria it needs us all to unite and find better ways to help.' Lisa's husband Jonny Birdsall's campaign image (Image: Baton of Hope) Lisa Birdsall, whose brother Stephen took his own life, said: "In Cumbria we have some of the worst statistics on suicide in the UK - Cumbria's overall statistics on suicide are 55 per cent above the national average. "The former Copeland area has the highest suicide rate per capita in the UK. Carlisle is second. Ken Johnston's AI campaign image (Image: Baton of Hope) "Men account for 75 per cent of suicides. "But females outnumber men by more than half in terms of suicide attempts." She added: 'When it comes to talking about suicide we often focus on the despair. "We need to turn the message around because the golden thread binding us all together through this is hope. I want us to show what there is out there to help people. Lisa Birdsall, husband Jonny, and Baton of Hope founder Mike McCarthy on the Baton of Hope tour in Gateshead in 2023 (Image: Baton of Hope) 'We are raising the profile of the need to talk. To be preventative we need to be open and honest about mental health discussions. 'There are a lot of suicide charities, but we can be siloed. The Baton of Hope is designed to bring all of us together and make us a stronger force for change.' Ms Birdsall is determined to change the narrative around suicide, focusing on hope rather than despair. Ken Johnston (left) and Lisa's husband Jonny Birdsall pictured at a campaign mural created by Cumbrian-based artists Beardy and Twiggy at Strand Street, in Whitehaven to promote the appeal (Image: Baton of Hope) The campaign is part of the national Baton of Hope initiative, which aims to unite suicide charities and organisations to create a stronger force for change. The Baton of Hope will be hosted in Cumbria on September 7, with more than 80 baton holders, including suicide survivors and families, forming a relay through the county. The event is supported by a range of businesses providing funding and logistical support. Graham Cartwright, projects director at Forth, said: "We know how prevalent suicide is in Cumbria and we know how devastating it is for everyone concerned, for all families and friends, and we absolutely know that more needs to be done to help those who are in a dark place and who feel, for whatever reason, that there is no other way out. "We have been only too glad to give our support to Lisa and Jonny to help make the Baton of Hope coming to Cumbria a turning point for mental health support in the county." Campaign QR Code (Image: Baton of Hope) A campaign mural has been created by artists Beardy and Twiggy, who are based in Cumbria, on Strand Street in Whitehaven to support the appeal. The Baton of Hope Cumbria event has received backing from partners including the Decommissioning Alliance (TDA), as well as a range of businesses, organisations, charities and venues. Those offering their support include Forth, Sellafield Ltd, Goodlives, Whitehaven RL, the Beacon, schools from the area, Whitehaven Harbour Commissioners, Irvings Coaches, Penrith Young Farmers, Carlisle United FC, the new fire station in Carlisle, Andy Man's Club, the NHS, first responders, Carlisle Castle and English Heritage. The Baton of Hope charity was founded in 2022 by two dads, Mike McCarthy and Steve Phillip, who both lost family members to suicide. Mr McCarthy wanted to ensure that the legacy of his son Ross' death would be to change the landscape of mental health services in the UK. The Baton of Hope is due to set off from Leconfield, Cleator Moor, in the early morning of September 7, starting at Forth's offices and Sellafield Ltd's Engineering Centre of Excellence. It will stop at the Goodlives project at Westlakes Science Park, before moving onto Whitehaven. It will then travel to Bassenthwaite Lake, Penrith, and onto Carlisle. A website has been created where more information can be found about the Cumbrian leg of the tour To donate to Cumbria's 'Just One Pound' appeal visit:
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fundraiser conquers height of Everest in Wainwright challenge
A determined fundraiser is set to complete his challenge to climb all 214 Wainwrights in the Lake District in one year, three months ahead of schedule. Ken Johnston, a business liaison manager at Forth, embarked on the challenge in July to raise funds and awareness for Goodlives West Cumbria. This charity helps local residents find employment. Forth is an award-winning UK advanced technology solutions business with bases at Maryport, Cleator Moor and Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. Mr Johnston's dedication has seen him scale 9,587 metres in just six days, surpassing the height of Mount Everest, which is 8,849 metres tall. This is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest and Eskdale's Harter Fell combined. Mr Johnston, who works at the engineering firm, is set to complete his challenge by the end of April. His determination saw him cover 100 miles in the process. The Goodlives West Cumbria teddy bear mascot accompanied Ken Johnston on his hikes (Image: Supplied) In January, he doubled the distance of a charity walk from Forth's HQ in Flimby to Goodlives' base in Cleator Moor, making it a 40-mile round trip. Mr Johnston said: "I am currently undertaking the challenge of walking all 214 Wainwrights so I thought I would continue that mission with the aim of scaling the equivalent of Everest in one week. "I'm known for pushing my limits, so of course I wanted to go higher and in less time – and, when I had surpassed in just six days, my next goal was to break the 100-mile mark. "This trek was tough going over boggy ground and I had to push on through painful blisters, but I wanted to really challenge myself to make the rewards of completing the hikes feel more worthwhile. "All of this is to raise money for, and awareness of, such an amazing charity which benefits the lives of many people living in West Cumbria." The fundraiser was part of Forth's campaign to raise £25,000 for Goodlives to mark the engineering firm's 25th anniversary. Mr Johnston is not finished with his fundraising efforts. Alongside his colleagues, he aims to conquer the Three Peaks of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, and Snowdon within 24 hours on July 12. This was the original date set by Mr Johnston to complete his Wainwright challenge. He will be joined by Lewis Mattinson, Aaliyah Rawlinson, and Imogen Frazer, with Graeme McLoughlin providing logistical support. Mr Johnston added: "As a company, Forth is really passionate about championing local causes and Goodlives West Cumbria does an incredible job in helping people improve and develop their employability skills to get them into work, thus benefiting the local economy. "It's a landmark anniversary for Forth as we celebrate 25 years in business, and that journey has included supporting our local community along the way. "We are determined to raise as much money as possible for Goodlives." During his challenge, Mr Johnston was accompanied by the Goodlives West Cumbria teddy bear as a mascot. For those interested in supporting Forth's fundraising campaign for Goodlives West Cumbria, donations can be made on Johnston's JustGiving page.
WIRED
26-03-2025
- WIRED
The Best Programming Language for the End of the World
Mar 26, 2025 6:00 AM Once the grid goes down, an old programming language called Forth—and a new operating system called Collapse OS—may be our only salvation. ILLUSTRATION: SAMUEL TOMSON Once I started thinking about the apocalypse, it was hard to stop. An unsettling encounter with the doomsday clock that hangs over New York City's Union Square got me frantically searching WikiHow for survival tips. I soon found my way to the doomsday writings of a Canadian programmer named Virgil Dupras. He believes the collapse of civilization is imminent and that it will come in two waves. First, global supply chains will crumble. Modern technology relies on a delicate web of factories and international shipping routes that are exquisitely vulnerable to rapid climate change. The iPhone uses memory chips from South Korea, semiconductors from Taiwan, and assembly lines in Brazil and China. The severing of these links will, Dupras says, catalyze total societal breakdown. The second part will happen when the last computer crashes. The complexity of modern hardware means it's nearly impossible to repair or repurpose, and without the means to make new devices, Dupras believes there will be a slow blackout—less bang, more whimper. Routers die. Servers take their last breath. Phones crap out. Nothing works. Except Collapse OS. Lightweight and designed to run on scavenged hardware, it's Dupras' operating system for the end of the world. Dupras lives in the countryside of Quebec, Canada, with his wife and two kids, in a 500-person town where people chop their own wood, grow their own food, and sometimes build their own houses. It felt odd sending him a Google Calendar invite—I knew from his trove of essays that he hates big tech. When we spoke, he sounded oddly monotonous. Was it a bad connection? Muffled audio? No. Unlike many of his sustainably minded neighbors, Dupras thinks the battle against climate change is futile. We've already lost. 'Once you've peeped into the abyss, you can't really unsee it,' he says. Dupras has simply accepted his fate, to the point where it's become an article of faith. The same way there are Catholics, there are Collapseniks, he says. But he's not hopeless. A hopeless man wouldn't prep so monomaniacally for the anti-singularity. Dupras started building Collapse OS in 2019 in an attempt to preserve mankind's ability to program 8-bit microcontrollers. These tiny computers control things like radios and solar panels, and they can be used in everything from weather monitoring to digital storage. Dupras figured that being able to reprogram them with minimal remaining resources would be essential post-collapse. But first he had to teach himself a suitably apocalypse-proofed programming language for the job. ILLUSTRATION: SAMUEL TOMSON In the late 1950s, the computer scientist Chuck H. Moore was working at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, predicting the future position of celestial bodies and satellites based on observational data. Machine memory was scarce—these were still the days of punch cards—and Moore needed a way to optimize processing efficiency by minimizing memory use. He developed a program that executed simple commands directly, one at a time, without needing to be recompiled. Over the next decade, it grew into a programming language that he called Forth. Forth communicates directly with the hardware. It controls a computer's memory via commands called 'Words' that you define on the fly. Because the foundational set of commands sitting under those Words is defined in native machine code, only a small part needs to be translated—meaning a smaller assembler and less RAM. As a result, Forth offers a remarkable amount of what Dupras calls 'power density,' making it the perfect foundation for Collapse OS. That matters because the lights (probably) won't go off forever—instead, our easy world of electricity on tap will be replaced by precious and hard-won local generators. Efficient use of processing power will be pivotal. In a post on his sprawling manifesto/blog/brain dump/manual, Dupras describes how his discovery of Forth conjured 'what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.' It took Dupras two years to finish Collapse OS. Booting a copy of it from a USB stick gives tech-savvy users the ability to program microcontrollers, which, in turn, could allow them to automate greenhouses, control phone lines, and even regulate power. But Dupras knew that wouldn't be enough to rebuild society after the collapse. So in 2022, he began work on Dusk OS—a version of Collapse OS that runs on modern devices. Dupras used Forth to build his own compiler that made Dusk OS compatible with code written in C (the foundation of most modern software). This way, without having to rewrite logic that already exists from scratch, Dusk OS is able to retrieve and edit text and access file formats commonly used to back up devices. It can be emulated to work on smartwatches and old tablets and is designed to be hacked and bootstrapped to its user's liking. At first I couldn't see why any of this would even matter: Surely computer access won't be a priority when we're fighting each other for food? At no point during The Last of Us does Pedro Pascal pause his flight from the zombies to bang out an email. But Dupras makes a good point: What happens after we've reacquainted ourselves with hunting and gathering? If we want to rebuild society, we'll need to know how. And in the event of a civilizational collapse, a lot of our collective expertise—like my precious WikiHows—will be locked away on hard drives or lost in the cloud. Dupras hopes that Dusk OS will give post-collapse humans access to archives of lost knowledge, like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault for human endeavor. The catch? It's best to have Dusk OS downloaded on an old phone, memory stick, or laptop before the collapse. Otherwise, without the internet, you'll only be able to get it by copying it from someone who already has it installed. Which brings us to the other thing—the reason Dupras equates proficiency in Forth to power. Very few people will have both a copy of Dusk OS and the knowledge to operate it. This select group will hold the keys to rebuilding society and will become, in effect, post-collapse philosopher-kings. It was time for me to go Forth and conquer. Coding in Forth reminded me of the lawless dystopia in Mad Max . You make your own rules, subject to the limits of the context. You can redefine the IF statement if you so please. You can rewrite machine code instructions for a Word. You can even change Words during run time. Because Words become keywords themselves in Forth, you can create a language that's optimized for a single purpose, packing commands that would otherwise be dozens of lines into just one. 'In Forth, you're creating your own language,' Leo Brodie, author of the first Forth textbook, Starting Forth , told me. The low-level nature of Forth, while key to its processing power, made programming feel foreign. It uses postfix, a form of mathematical notation that renders 2 + 1 as 2 1+ and which I found neither intuitive nor even really legible. And while most languages allow memory to be broken up and moved around, Forth is stack-based—meaning data is stored chronologically and managed on a last-in/first-out basis. I kept running into bugs, forcing myself to abandon programming conventions I had considered universal. I found myself struggling to speak the language of the machine. When I emailed Dupras to ask for help, he compared using Forth to driving a stick. It's more granular than C. Where the latter defines calling conventions, variable storage, and return stack management, Forth leaves it all up to the programmer. It directly interacts with memory the same way C does but far outperforms C in precision and efficiency. 'People mistake Forth as just a language,' Dupras says. 'It's a way to interact with the computer.' The reason Forth isn't more popular is the same reason most of us drive automatics. The personal computing boom of the 1990s sparked an obsession with making tech fit your palm and making code easier to write. Languages were abstracted to protect programmers from themselves, and somewhere along the way, we got lost. Things became bloated for the sake of convenience and, in Dupras' words, started 'oozing inscrutable pus at every corner.' 'The way we understand efficiency is so skewed,' Dupras says. Forth is a scythe to Python's lawnmower. 'If you calculate the number of joules per blade of grass, you'll find that the person scything is more efficient,' he says. 'When you think of speed, you'd see the lawnmower as more efficient.' Forth forces you to be precise and memory-efficient—to marshal your resources carefully, as you would after the collapse. Dupras cuts his own lawn with a scythe, obviously. 'At a certain point, you can go as fast as a lawnmower,' he says. I began to find my way. Rather than sending bytes into the ether and trusting the system to figure out where they go, as I would in Python, I got used to being responsible for allocating and freeing memory. All I could think about was what was being stored, where it was being stored, and how much space it required. Each line of code suddenly bore weight. I was Immortan Joe, my laptop was my Citadel, and memory was my water. Soon I found myself refining and revisiting my code like I would a run-on sentence. Instead of expecting the machine to anticipate my needs, I tried to think like the machine, to meet it more than halfway. And because I had to think twice, all the needlessly complicated acronyms that remind us to be concise in other coding languages—YAGNI (you aren't gonna need it), KISS (keep it simple, stupid), DRY (don't repeat yourself)—were rendered obsolete. After spending days fiddling with Forth, returning to Python felt luxurious. I never had to consider memory scarce, and I never had to thoroughly explain myself. It felt like catching up with an old friend. At that moment, the resources that go into making programming 'user-friendly' became painfully apparent. ILLUSTRATION: SAMUEL TOMSON Before I met Dupras, I thought of efficiency in terms of speed. But the true costs of that speed are carefully hidden in rural data centers and distant copper mines. I rarely considered the energy required to power each additional gigabyte of RAM, or the fact that cloud computing now has a bigger carbon footprint than the airline industry. Despite the compounding environmental costs, memory is as cheap and plentiful as it's ever been. Today, languages that sit closer to the machine are only used out of necessity: banks trying to minimize latency for financial trades, spacecraft working with limited onboard resources, outdated systems that would require too much work to update. But during a civilizational collapse, the quiet luxuries of array handling and automated memory management will largely disappear. As convenience whisks us further away from the machine, we risk forgetting how computers actually work and losing the ability to rebuild our tech in the event of a collapse. 'No one remembers how to write a text editor,' says Devine, an independent programmer who corresponds with Dupras. 'When you start forgetting how to do something as crucial as that, when things start to fall apart, they fall apart hard.' Devine views efficiency in programming not as a lawnmower or a scythe but as something more like a wildflower meadow—'the least amount of transformation of state possible.' In their view, AI is the pinnacle of 'human-centric' programming, where the computer figures out what you're trying to do and does it for you. Something clicked for me at that moment. As programmers grow more reliant on high-level languages, the average proficiency of low-level languages plummets, which increases the demand for the computing resources that support that abstraction in the first place. AI won't just take our jobs, it'll make us forget how to do them—if we don't run out of the energy to power it first. But maybe there is another way. Since 2016 Devine and their partner Rek have been living full-time on a small boat in the northern Pacific, and they use lower-level languages like Forth to maximize what they can do with the 190 watts of daily power they get from two solar panels. I found them on a mailing list of roughly a hundred Collapseniks. Their lifestyle was like a sneak preview of the resource-constrained life Dupras expects us all to be living soon. When I reached out for a chat in August, they told me they might have cell service in October. When we finally connected (audio only), Devine struck me as a younger, more optimistic version of Dupras. While fully sympathetic to Dupras' vision of collapse, Devine believes in the power of low-level programming not for its ability to rebuild society but for its potential to prevent collapse. Devine has observed a growing trend called 'permacomputing' that fosters a more mindful relationship with technology, one that considers resource constraints. As I returned from the wilderness—back to the world of luxuries like hash tables and built-in libraries that I'd previously taken for granted—I brought back with me a new awareness of the intricacies of the machine, and maybe even a little hope. Forth is how Dupras prepares for the worst, but it's also helping people like Devine and Rek code—and live—more sustainably. If we can all do that, perhaps the end of the world isn't as inevitable as it seems. Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at mail@
BBC News
26-02-2025
- BBC News
Sunderland man jailed for bombarding partner with threats
A man who bombarded his ex-partner with threats, including claims he would torture her and "stamp" on her children, has been Forth, 39, deluged the woman with violent and aggressive text messages and voice notes before turning up at her house, Newcastle Crown Court was arrested after climbing on to her shed roof to try and access a window he had previously broken, the court from Sunderland, was jailed for one year and four months after admitting sending threatening communications, threatening criminal damage and harassment. Recorder Ian Mullarkey said it was an "appalling episode of threatening and abusive behaviour" which "terrorised" the woman. 'Excessively jealous' Forth and the woman began a relationship in March 2023 which was "initially good" but then "deteriorated", prosecutor Graham O'Sullivan said Forth, a roofer from Moorsley Road in High Moorsley, was "emotionally abusive and threatening" and appeared to be "excessively jealous", the court an argument on 26 January, he spent that evening sending her vile messages and voice notes, Mr O'Sullivan the threats were claims he would torture the woman, put her in a coma, smash her windows and, if her children tried to intervene, "stamp all over" them, the court called police who attended her home, with officers able to monitor his movements through the couple's phone location services, the court was told."Alarmingly, they could see he was getting closer and closer to her home," Mr O'Sullivan he arrived, he climbed on to a shed with the apparent aim of getting to a bedroom window he had previously broken, the court talked him down and arrested him, but as he was led away he was heard to say the woman would "get a good hiding" when he was released, Mr O'Sullivan a statement read to the court, the woman said Forth had made her feel scared and mentally unwell, adding she feared what he might do and just wanted to be her "old self".In mitigation, Sophie Allinson-Howells said the episode was out of character.A restraining order banning Forth from contacting the woman for five years was also made. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram. Send your story ideas here.
