Customer Stories

As the largest road project under construction in the U.K., England's £1.5 billion upgrade and expansion of the A14 highway will modernize 34 km of road between Cambridge and Huntingdon. The A14 Integrated Delivery Team, a joint venture between Costain, Skanska, Balfour Beatty and Atkins Jacobs, has applied new approaches in sharing project information with the workforce, residents and landowners affected by the work. overview Location UNITED KINGDOM TRANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS TRANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS Mark Lawton is Skanska UK's chief engineering surveyor and lead survey manager for the A14 C2H improvement scheme. He knew that it would be important to discuss the project impact and benefits with people not familiar with highway construction. With 70 structures, a 750-meter-long viaduct and a new 19-km-long bypass around Huntingdon, the project will improve safety, increase capacity and reduce travel time between Cambridge and Huntingdon by up to 20 minutes. Lawton needed to explain where the road was planned to go and how the construction would affect the surrounding areas. But for many of these stakeholders it would be difficult to understand the project based on conventional highway design plan sheets. So Lawton turned to the Trimble SiteVision outdoor augmented reality solution. Running on a user-supplied Android®-based smartphone, SiteVision combines precise GNSS positioning with 3D design data to provide real-time, on-site visualization of the project's planned roadways, structures and construction zones. The simplicity of the SiteVision system made it possible for both technical and non-professional people to understand and visualize the plans. "I tell people that it's just a phone," Lawton said. "It's a small, easy and friendly way to show people what is happening." He explained that once a resident can see how trees and land will be protected, Skanska UK can gain buy-in for the work. Lawton also needed to work with construction teams in planning the work and defining locations for fencing, excavation limits, construction materials, equipment and trailers and work yards. By using SiteVision, Lawton could provide a big-picture view enabling contractors to see how their work interacts with other needs and activities on the site. "We went to a bridge site and worked with the engineers who would be driving piles and getting steel in place." he said. "At the same time, the site foreman is deciding where he's going to have his lay down area, job cabins and wash-outs for the concrete trucks. It was easy to use SiteVision to mark out four small plots and say

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