Sensat’s digital twin of the M25 demonstrates outstanding contribution to workforce health and safety

 Sensat, the leading next-generation digital twin technology startup, today announces that it has been highly commended for

Exceptional contribution to workforce safety-projects over £50 million’ at this year's National Highways Industry Awards

 Working with partners, Connect Plus and Osborne Infrastructure, the teams were recognised for their collaborative project Digitising the M25.

The project demonstrates an exceptional contribution to delivering against National Highways ‘Home Safe and Well’ aspirations on a large project. The award took into consideration actions taken to reduce safety issues on the roads as well as areas of safety that affect the workforce and its customers. Factoring in the impact of reducing RIDDOR and lost-time incidents over the project lifetime, the digital M25 visualisation has reduced workers time spent on a live highway environment and allowed teams to access the digital site replica from any internet-connected device.

“When we were awarded the 30-year contract to operate and manage the M25 network on behalf of National Highways, we knew the task was significant, yet the concept simple: to create a single source of data that the M25 community of suppliers could access within a single visualisation platform as part of our journey towards creating a digital twin,” said Andy Dean, Chief Executive of Connect Plus. “The idea of creating a highly detailed, precise digital representation of the busy, complex network was an exciting prospect for the team involved.”

Sensat CEO, James Dean comments, “Seeing the improved performance and efficiencies made as a result of our technology being embedded across teams is incredibly satisfying. Previously, the M25 site data was siloed across several different repositories and systems, leading to data being difficult to access and share, not only across different stakeholders but also within departments. However when linked with emerging technologies for predictive maintenance of assets it has the potential to create a step-change in whole-life asset management. Using this technology teams are minimising site visits and disruption to the network by consulting the digital twin first.”

Showcasing the very best in the industry, the National Highways Industry Awards has become one of the most prestigious and coveted honours in the transport sector. On the night the ‘Digitising the M25’ project was the only project to be highly commended amongst the fifteen awards, and Sensat the only SME to have won an award amongst the industry giants which was a momentous occasion for 4-year-old Sensat.

“We’re so thrilled to have been highly commended for a project we’re really proud to be a part of. Being able to capture 23 billion data points and 85,000 high-resolution images in just 30 days and create a single source of data for the entire M25 network in our digital twin platform was record-breaking for us,” concluded Dean.

Being Sensat’s first award submission to the National Highways Industry Awards, Sensat is excited to continue to work towards construction software that supports improvements in health and safety for civil infrastructure in the coming months and years.

M25 partnership is highly commended for exceptional contribution to workforce safety at National Highways Industry Awards

Having adapted to a ‘new tech normal’ set out by the pandemic, the abundance of data will move the metaverse, automation and sustainability beyond what’s thought even possible today.

Sensat, the leading visualisation and collaboration software company for civil infrastructure, today outlines its top three tech predictions for 2022. For an industry focused on boosting productivity, collaboration, safety and establishing a net-zero future, James Dean, Sensat CEO, believes that the metaverse, automation and sustainability will move beyond what we know is possible today, and be focal points for construction and civil infrastructure to surface the right information when needed to make more informed decisions.

Having moved towards a ‘new normal’ over the past year, the civil infrastructure industry has continued to adapt traditional processes whilst adopting new technology in a drive to close the productivity gap experienced by the industry. Over the past two decades, the abundance of information captured and created from the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry has boomed, and we are still discovering how to realise the full potential of this near-constant stream of data. With the metaverse and automation advancing in 2021, in 2022 the industry will really start to make the best use of it.

Dean explained, “2022 is going to be a game-changing year for the construction and civil infrastructure industry. The past 18 months have been a period of adapting and adopting for many as the industry was pushed to explore new ways in which technology and innovation could support traditional everyday processes. In 2022 this is only looking to build pace. I expect civil infrastructure will ride the wave of tech adoption and beyond, embracing newer tech trends such as the metaverse and automation to better understand the built environment and make better decisions that help reduce its environmental impact and fuel productivity gains, time and cost savings.”

After a year of metaverse hype, from Facebook’s rebrand to businesses across the globe expanding their digital offering, Sensat predicts that the Metaverse is going to drive the biggest changes in the industrial and construction space in 2022. These sectors have caused the most detrimental impact on our planet, so with the metaverse already existing in gaming, social as well as digital replicas of cities and towns, this is an opportunity to drive decisions based on the abundance, and bringing together of data, to start to reverse human destruction and drive huge sustainability wins.

Sensat has already started to help build the metaverse, by creating digital replicas of 20 cities and sites, such as HS2, Heathrow and the M25, for the civil infrastructure industry.

2022 will be the year more industries are catapulted into a future of automation. As we have already begun to see the rise of autonomous vehicles through the five stages of automation, the infrastructure industry is next. Digital twin technology can already take construction from a Level 0 to a Level 2 (partial automation) and as AI in construction continues to evolve, automation will reach a level never seen before.

3. Sustainability, Beyond Human Decisions

As the world wakes up to the need for a more sustainable future, it will be a jumping-off point to bigger things. Businesses will harness the power of tech to take us to a place beyond sustainability. Access to data and information is almost instantaneous, and our ability to make sense of it in new and subtle ways to make decisions is practically automatic. But this technology is not replacing humans; it is augmenting how we engage with the world. As sustainability moves to the forefront of every business agenda, we will see companies explore tech’s ability to not only operate sustainably but give back to the planet.

“At Sensat, we are committed to building visualisation and collaboration technology that will help the civil industry really harness the information all around us to start to close the productivity gap but also positively address the negative impact on the built environment.” Dean continued, “There is a new wave of civil infrastructure upon us and those who choose not to adopt the tech out there today will ultimately fall behind as others benefit.”

2022: Breaking civil infrastructure barriers with metaverse, automation and sustainability says Sensat

James Dean recognised as UK’s youngest founder in prestigious list for fastest growing tech start-ups.

, a leading provider of drone data capture and visualisation software that enables civil infrastructure companies to digitally represent the real world, is pleased to announce that its CEO, James Dean, has been recognised as the youngest founder in the 

– a list acknowledging the top 100 fastest growing start-ups in the UK.

With technology companies keeping the economy afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Telegraph’s list celebrates the many tech firms that have thrived in a year of extraordinary turbulence. Powered by data partners Beauhurst, the Telegraph reveals founders at Britain’s fastest-growing start-ups whose dynamism and thirst to succeed have weathered Covid’s storm. As his first year making the list, James Dean features at number 88–the youngest founder to make the list, and one of only three founders under 30 years of age.

James has been recognised, following a successful $10 million Series A funding round led by Tencent in October 2019. Alongside his co-founder Harry Atkinson and a growing team of 50+ talent, James has taken the business from strength to strength, achieving treble digit growth, developing its data capture and SaaS business models and adding to its tier one accounts in civil infrastructure. With James at the helm, Sensat is continuing to transform the industry by building robust digital infrastructure sites, through its drone data capture and visualisation platform, which is now relied upon by organisations such as Aecom, BAM, Connect Plus, Kier Group, Morgan Sindall, Mott MacDonald, National Grid, Network Rail and Osborne, to name just a few. Sensat has also been selected as one of the first five (out of 109) companies to join the HS2 Accelerator initiative, which aims to develop technologies to be integrated into Britain’s high-speed rail project.

James said: “We started off by wanting to create a platform to digitise the real-world, where we could take never accessed before data-led insights to drive more sustainable business decisions, to ensure human development is in balance with our natural environment. With a passionate and driven team, we have come a long way in just a few years, and our mission today is to help the civil infrastructure industry take the data we provide to drive more informed-decisions to shape and build a more sustainable world.

“In 2020 alone, we have not only upscaled the business with key hires and product development but also started to change the mindset of the civil infrastructure industry in terms of how they think about and use of data. Adoption of digital solutions has picked up significantly in the last year, and we are now seeing a tech boom, which is great for the industry. Our data and visualisation solution lays the foundation for this real-world digital representation that drives smarter decisions, greater efficiencies, cost control and increased revenues while enabling a sustainable built environment. This is just the start of things to come.”

Sensat CEO Makes Telegraph Tech Hot 100

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M25 partnership is highly commended for exceptional contribution to workforce safety at National Highways Industry Awards

2022: Breaking civil infrastructure barriers with metaverse, automation and sustainability says Sensat

Sensat CEO Makes Telegraph Tech Hot 100

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