This award is for any geotechnical company that can show excellence in the way it has used digital technology to improve systems, performance, processes or project delivery within its own business between January 2021 and March 2022.
Atkins has developed a mining risk toolkit which can establish an initial risk rating in a matter of days. This is significant since the traditional approach to mining risk assessment (MRA) can take many weeks, and even months in the case of long linear infrastructure projects. A full MRA is typically undertaken during preliminary design once a single route option has been selected. This means that key decision makers are often unaware of the mining risk in any granular detail until it is too late to avoid.
The Atkins mining risk toolkit further removes the need for specialist input. The digital approach also makes the time-consuming process of reviewing the data more efficient. This gives the specialist engineer more time to spend on mitigating the risks with innovative solutions.
The Atkins ground engineering and tunnelling team has been working with Forestry and Land Scotland to undertake geohazard and geotechnical assessments of assets across their network. Over the last nine months Atkins has assessed sites ranging from rock faces to emergency debris flows. These sites are often remote and pose several health and safety challenges dues to active geohazards.
Atkins has developed workflows that can be applied to both emergency works and planned asset inspections that are changing the way engineering geologists and geotechnical engineers undertake and report on-site inspections. With unmanned aerial vehicle's and digital site data collection methods Atkins has reduced risk to the site teams and increased the quality of its deliverables. It also has been better able to engage clients and third parties using 3D models and drone derived 2D visuals.
Bachy Soletanche: TiPS and Zetta-LYZE cloud-based tools
Bachy Soletanche’s innovation team has created two new digital, cloud-based tools TiPS and Zetta-LYZE which have transformed site productivity rates and streamlined data management.
TiPS allows the site team to provide live updates on worksite tasks, enabling anyone in the team to instantly monitor site productivity rates. This reporting process saves time and improves the accuracy and accessibility of the data.
Zetta-LYZE meanwhile has transformed the way the company manages pile records. It has saved each of its site engineers 10 hours of work per week. It provides 2D and 3D visualisations of pile schedules, optimises planned sequence and eliminates error across the company's projects. Zetta-LYZE’s modular capabilities, along with its ability to leverage big data, make this an innovation that could transform geotechnical project delivery.
Concept Engineering Consultants: e-Site app
Concept Engineering Consultants has developed an in-house app called e-Site which works on any desktop or mobile device. Its user-friendly interface makes it simple to use regardless of technical ability.
All employees, subcontractors, and visitors at any of Concept’s permanent facilities or temporary sites are issued with a unique ID card containing a QR code. Individuals use the QR code to digitally sign in and out of each facility they visit.
e-Site allows company staff to conduct electronic inductions and daily briefings, as well as share site-specific risk assessments and instructions. It is useful for remote auditing and recording safety inspections. With the app, staff can also easily complete daily vehicle and rig checks. On top of this, the app enables online and real-time reporting of any incidents, accidents, positive interventions, and observations.
Smart tamp uses Fugro's RILA technology – a remote, flexible, train-mounted survey system – to survey the network at line speed and generate highly accurate geodetic track data. It improves network uptime, increases safety by reducing the requirement for boots on ballast, and offers cost and carbon savings.
The technology has many benefits. It is predictive, it can be used to coordinate track-based maintenance and reduces annual maintenance costs by up to 30 %. It reduces the number of hours that staff are exposed to track worker and produces 2 % to 3 % higher network availability.
The technology produces a better aligned track, reduces the need for traction power by an estimated 5 %, and makes a significant contribution to carbon net zero targets. It uses a quantitative assessment of previous tamping works to determine if treatment has been performed successfully.
Geobrugg: Digitalisation via the Geobrugg Guard
The Geobrugg Guard is a simple, easy to use device that increases the safety of staff monitoring assets such as roads, as well as asset users themselves, such as drivers. The Guard also saves asset owners money by decreasing the number of monitoring inspections necessary. It further provides an immediate response to safety-critical events, and predictive maintenance of protection systems.
Geobrugg says that the Guard has helped it evolve from purely a materials supplier to a digital monitoring-based business model provider.
Larsen & Toubro: Digitalisation of plant and machinery
Asian engineering construction company Larsen & Toubro digitalised all its plant and machinery across all its construction projects. As a result, it has been better able to monitor its assets around the clock, assess their operational efficiency remotely and take corrective action in time.
Larsen & Toubro’s objective was to use the power of data-producing computer technologies to significantly improve its core operations. When it set up the predictive maintenance systems, the company focused the technology on assets that provide the most value. These included concrete batching plants, motor graders, cranes, wheel loaders, and excavators.
Senceive: InfraGuard for responsive critical asset protection
InfraGuard is a wireless monitoring solution that enables asset owners to manage critical infrastructure exposed to geotechnical risk. It provides near real-time warning of ground movement and is ideal for assets that are remote, high value and vulnerable to damage from geotechnical events such as slope failures.
The system tells as well as shows remote stakeholders what is happening on site. Smart tilt sensors respond to ground movement to give immediate insight of events such as landslips. It sends alerts of small-scale movement which could be early signs of a slope failure, and graded alerts of further and sudden movement, validated by photographic images.
InfraGuard has been collaboratively developed with asset owners. More than 20,000 sensors are in use worldwide.
Structural Soils has invested in and developed multiple mobile data capture modules within the commercially available Flowfinity application. Flowfinity is a digital cloud-based data capture and management tool which has allowed the company to automate the process of transferring data from point of collection through to point of delivery.
Structural Soils says that the single application approach has significantly streamlined development and roll out times. The software has been developed across the whole organisation. Structural Soils is now able to send data to clients in real time which has drastically reduced transcription errors from paper to digital logs.
With Flowfinity the company’s data managers can spend more time ensuring the quality of the data as opposed to simply inputting large quantities of data.
Vibro Menard has created an in-house digital solution called Omnibox that enables the smooth exchange of data from office-to-site and vice versa. The system provides intelligent pilot assistance to operators for several ground improvement techniques. It combines machine data and soil data.
Omnibox is made up of a data acquisition box that can read the machine protocols of the very diverse machines across the company’s fleet. Adding new sensors to the box for any given project is simple. The system’s pilot assistant interfaces with the operator to provide various applications specific to ground improvement techniques. Meanwhile, its online platform communicates with the application on site in real-time, performs high level quality control and improves machine use and maintenance.
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Tagged with: GE Awards 2022 GE Awards 2022 shortlist
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