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.