As part of driving digital transformation and innovation at pace across the infrastructure sector, Costain is proud to be a strategic technology partner for a new programme designed to drive innovation across major transport infrastructure projects in the UK launched recently by Minister of State, Andrew Stephenson for the Department for Transport.
The ‘Transport Infrastructure Efficiency Strategy Living Lab’ (TIES Living Lab) is a transformative collaboration aimed at harnessing the vast quantities of intelligence that UK infrastructure projects generate. This ground-breaking programme, in which organisations share information and demonstrate best practice, could revolutionise the way this country approaches major transport projects. Leveraging its experience as an integration delivery partner and digital technology expertise, Costain is the technology partner responsible for driving the delivery and implementation of digital technology solutions to achieve early benefits.
As an example, infrastructure schemes generate vast amounts of intelligence that could be applied to other projects to improve their efficiency. The Living Lab provides a means of harnessing this collective information so that we can explore, analyse and learn lessons from it for the future. Costain is leading a key data integration programme that will bring the data and insights together into a single platform, amalgamating thousands of data sources to drive performance across Government.
Over the next two years the partnership will invest more than £16 million in new tools, processes and data systems - bringing together infrastructure and industry leaders with business and academic institutions to build on, and establish, best practice in the way we design, build and integrate innovations within transport assets.
In his keynote address, Minister of State Andrew Stephenson said: “As we begin our green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, the need to level-up our country and boost economic prosperity has only increased – and we are determined that we don’t just rebuild, we rebuild smarter.
“The Living Lab is a great opportunity for industry and academics to work together to embrace new, more productive, more efficient and more sustainable ways of delivering transport infrastructure.”