How to make HS2 (settlement prediction) 80% faster

Our in-house productivity team saw an opportunity to save a huge amount of time when analysing settlement data on newly constructed railway embankments for HS2. By automating some of the repetitive, time-intensive processes, such as analysing monitoring data, we have freed up skilled professionals to put their talents to much better use elsewhere on the project. The team developed a digital solution for HS2’s Phase 1 earthworks, for which many thousands of measurements had to be logged and analysed over 18 months. Using traditional methods, the task would have required the equivalent of two engineers working full-time for nine months; processing and interpreting the vast amount of data would have taken 3000 hours. With the Instrumentation Monitoring Interpretation Tool for Embankments (IMITE), this data is now automatically plotted onto ground settlement curves. It also interprets the data and makes long-term settlement and heave predictions. With the value of IMITE proven on Phase 1, it is now ready for use on further HS2 work, as well as other projects where settlement monitoring is needed.