COMIT visit London Bridge with MobiCloud

Left to right: Gerry, Jason, Iain & Stuart

Last month COMIT visited Costain's London Bridge site as part of the MobiCloud project meeting that was held in London and hosted by Costain. The site is a very interesting one to visit, set as it is in the heart of London and posing a number of engineering challenges.

This £400m project is part of the £6bn Thameslink Programme and aims to increase the capacity of the station. It includes the development of a new street-level  concourse and new entrances on Tooley Street and St Thomas Street. There will also be a pedestrian walkway through Stainer Street to connect the north and south ends of the station.

Throughout the 5 year project the station will remain fully operational, which poses significant logistical and planning issues for the redevelopment. The original London Bridge station was opened in 1836 and is among the oldest railway stations in the world. However, the old is definitely meeting the new. Costain are deploying some very modern technology to help meet the challenges including extensive use of  Building Information Modelling (BIM).

Site Diary App running on an Apple iPad

Costain are also using a Site Diary App, which has been developed as part of the MobiCloud project. This uses cloud-based technology to allow site engineers to readily capture events on site using a mobile device such as an iPad. It automatically records local weather information as well as GPS location. It aims to be a replacement for the traditional paper-based site diary records.

MobiCloud Project - free trial of Site Diary App

As you probably know COMIT are one of the partners in MobiCloud, which is an EU supported project that aims to develop a European Corporate Appstore and the technology to develop cross-platform, context-aware applications.

One of the other MobiCloud partners and a member of COMIT is Costain. Appear and Costain have worked together to develop a Site Diary app that is currently undergoing trials on a number of Costain sites.

The App is intended to replace the current paper-based recording of Engineer's site diaries. It overcomes a number of the problems that arise from manual records, including the automatic recording of GPS location and weather information as well as providing an electronic audit trail.

Costain hope that the App will improve the detail and quality of site diary entries, while at the same time reducing the time taken to record them and the overhead of managing the process - particularly that of associating supporting material, such as photographs, with recorded events.

For a limited time the Site Diary app is available on a trial basis for free to other interested parties. If you would like to see what Costain have come up with and try out the Site Diary app for yourself, then you can sign up via the MobiCloud website.

MobiCloud Project Meeting in London

Last week COMIT attended the MobiCloud meeting in London. Our own Technology Chairman Iain Miskimmin helped with the organisation (and moved a lot of chairs and some particularly heavy desks). Bentley kindly allowed the use of their offices in Gracechurch Street for the two-day event.

The view of London from Bentley's offices (which are on the 9th floor of the building) is fantastic.

View from Bentley's offices in Gracechurch Street

Of course, being construction focused we had to try and count the number of construction sites that we could see from the windows. Not an easy task but the general consensus is that there were about 40. Hopefully that bodes well for the UK economy!

COMIT member Costain, who are a partner in the MobiCloud project, were the main host and event organiser. Despite a slight hiccup due to an unplanned fire alarm (false alarm luckily) on the Thursday morning, the meeting went very well. On the Thursday afternoon Costain arranged for a tour of their site at London Bridge which was fascinating and on the Friday morning there was a Breakfast Seminar for those new to the MobiCloud project.

The meeting included an update of progress on the MobiCloud trial projects and a demonstration of Costain's Site Diary App which is currently being tested on site. For more information about these please see the MobiCloud project blog.

Waterloo station from the London Eye

Of course it was not all work. Costain arranged for the visiting MobiCloud partners who come from Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands to see some of the London sights, including an evening meal and a trip to the London Eye. Of course, the view from there was even better than the one from Bentley's offices. From the London Eye at night, even Waterloo station looks cool!

A few night-owls even made it out for a drink on the evening before the meeting. One or two of us utilised mobile technology in getting there - and learned the hard way that when it comes to addresses and a city with London's rich history, omitting words like "new" or "old" in a street name can lead to a very long walk indeed.

Stuart, Mark, Martin, Katy, Vladimir & Patrick