As most of you who live in a major city may know, there are a lot of big construction projects underway. The UK Government’s National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline identifies a total of 694 major infrastructure projects either being built now, or will be built in the next 10 years, totalling £462 billion. These multi-million pound projects include Crossrail, Thames Tideway Tunnel, improvements to the motorway network, Hinkley Point C Power Station, and Housing Infrastructure Funds.
And that’s before you think about significant new developments and infrastructure investments being made by the private sector. Just look at the number of cranes in many city centres to see how healthy this construction market is.
Major projects are not the only contributor to construction and freight traffic on city streets. But they represent a unique opportunity to tackle the air and noise pollution issues from logistics operators because of their scale. Crossrail, the biggest construction project in Europe, still has the majority of its deliveries and transport of waste material by road, despite making changes to reduce the overall number of lorries on London roads.
These projects raise a number of multi-faceted issues in terms of freight movement routing, delivery hours, and the safety of types of vehicles used. Many projects use tried and tested solutions to minimise impacts on local communities. But it is time that new solutions enable site managers, logistics contractors, and programme managers to engage with the communities impacted by the movements of their site.
For a site manager, having Emsol solutions installed on site and access to the platform will give you real time performance data, and notification of breaches in air and noise pollution limits within seconds. All from an easy-to-use interface. This is an important first step, as the manager then has access to the information needed to make a decision before it is reported to him either through a complaint passed on by the communications team, or from a local resident whilst out on site.
The manager can not only then see the breaches as they happen, and reports on those that have, but he can quickly share what actions have been taken. This can be through sharing this on social media (utilising an in-built social media function), but also having a report to hand in case there are any queries that arise at a later date.
That is good for informing communities, but what about taking action? That’s easy. Our system then allows the project manager to send the breaches report to the fleet operator. As a responsible operator seeking to achieve the highest possible FORS accreditation, they can then action against this breach report to ensure that it does not happen again.
What makes the difference here is pivoting the whole operation from one that is reactionary to external complaints, to one that is proactive in notifying of potential issues, taking action, and sharing that action. For major construction projects who seek to be good neighbours, doing this is critical. EMSOL is creating the solution that will enable just that.
