March Community Day

Last week COMT held its Spring Community Day in London. It was hosted by COMIT member Computerlinks and 58 people attended, which is a COMIT record.

COMIT community days usually get between 35 and 50 delegates, with 57 being the previous record (Winter 2012, hosted by Bentley in London). COMIT holds community days at various locations around the country to engage as many people as possible, but it is true to say that events in London tend to have a higher turnout.

Computerlinks provided a great venue in Cannon Street. There was a perfect view of the construction site across the road which was quite appropriate for a construction event.

Among the 58 attendees we had guests from 10 non-member technology and construction organisations and we also formally welcomed five new companies into membership. As usual we had a great mix of presentations and plenty of networking opportunities.

In the morning Carl Siddons from Network Rail gave a presentation about Immersive Virtual Reality, followed by one about  RFID and tracking technologies by Marvin Johnson of Bechtel.

After a short coffee break the focus turned to mobile Health & Safety with a presentation from Harrison O'Hara about the potential risks of mobile devices on site and their mitigation. Harrison is a graduate engineer from Costain and is currently working with COMIT as part of his Engineering Doctorate at Loughborough University.

Harrison was followed by COMIT's Stuart Young who announced the formation of a COMIT Mobile IT Health & Safety Working Group. This group will be developing safety protocols for the use of mobile devices on site in cooperation with organisations such as the Health and Safety Executive. Stuart demonstrated a proof-of-concept hi-visibility waistcoat with a pocket for a tablet computer.

Still on the theme of health and safety, there was a guest presentation from Damian Lynes and Roy Brown from OnSite Support. This covered various methods of tethering tools to mitigate some of the risks posed by working at height. This was followed by a mobile health and safety workshop, the results of which will be compiled by COMIT as part of the H&S working group.

After lunch and more networking Jason Philips and Alex Brandon from our host Computerlinks, provided an over-view of their services and some of the technical challenges to be faced in enabling the wide adoption of mobile devices in construction. This was followed by a presentation by Harry Parnell and Simon McGowen from Balfour Beatty about the use of BIM and Mobile Site Forms on the M25.

For more information about the March community day, including 3D printing with silkworms, look out for our 2014 Spring Newsletter which will be available on our website in the next few weeks.

You can now read the full COMIT Spring Newsletter here