The Building Safety Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation to affect the industry in decades and HAWCE is delighted to be providing two presentations about innovative technology and solutions to improve health & safety both for workers on site and occupiers of buildings

6pm to 8pm, The View (Level 3), Worcestershire County Cricket Club, New Road, Worcester

The event is free: light refreshments including sandwiches will be provided.

Our speakers:

Jenny Rohde is Growth and Partnerships Director at PLINX, a young, fast-growing and award-winning construction tech business based at Malvern Hills Science Park. Jenny brings 30 years experience of introducing new technologies that address some of the world’s most important environmental and societal problems.

Jason Whittall is Director of Digital & BIM at ONE, an award winning multi-disciplinary design company with a Worcester HQ and offices in Birmingham, London and Cardiff. Jason is passionate about all things relating to BIM, digital and innovation within the construction sector.

Content of Jason’s presentation:

The Building Safety Act (2022) and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 place an array of responsibilities on duty holders to share information with relevant parties.  Effective & purposeful engagement between duty holders, residents and the emergency services has become an important aspect of this new (and upcoming) legislation.  Accountable & Responsible Persons now have a responsibility to demonstrate how they are engaging with Residents as well as measuring the success of their strategies.

The presentation will cover how the “ONE Engage” project secured part-funding from Innovate UK.  We will look at typical case-study scenarios to illustrate the scale of the challenges our industry is now facing, and how ONE Engage exists to provide innovative new ways of addressing some of these issues.

Background Information:  “ONE Engage” platform – an innovative solution fulfilling the needs of the latest building safety legislation for high-risk residential buildings in relation to Resident Engagement and Information Exchange.  ONE Engage follows the Gemini Principles, and promotes the concept of “data for public good”; emergency services can now potentially gain immediate access to building plans, safety information, and critically know which residents are vulnerable and need evacuation assistance. We connect residents, landlords and the Fire and Rescue Service to improve safety, using digital information management.

Content of Jenny’s presentation on Leveraging Smart Technology Benefits for Construction Sites

Content: Construction contractors are under increasing pressure to improve their performance in terms of safety, productivity and sustainability. Digital solutions are being employed in the design and project management aspects of the construction project, but on-site operations are still largely managed in traditional ways. Whereas adoption of machine telematics is rising, providing information on plant operation there is still a large untapped opportunity to improve operations with digital tools.

PLINX’s presentation will provide a brief overview of some of the types of digital technologies being used on construction sites and the influence that smart proximity sensors, and the data they collect, can have on continuous improvement for safety, efficiency and sustainability. There will be an overview of the PLINX smart system and brief case study examples of how it delivers value to contractors.

Background Information:  PLINX is a Worcestershire business, nurtured through Worcestershire’s tech accelerator – BetaDen, and now based at Malvern Hills Science Park. The technology was initially conceived by PLINX’s founder, Tommy Williams, as a way to keep him and his family safe while surfing. However, it soon became apparent that there were pressing problems in construction that the PLINX technology was well positioned to solve. Since then, PLINX has further developed the system and expanded its capability. In the last few years PLINX has secured contracts with HS2 contractors, including deploying network along the Southam to Great Missenden section of the project, as well as undertaking a variety of projects overseas.