FTCP - Freight Traffic Control (Construction) Platform

"Construction activity is essential to ensure the regeneration of not only London but also all UK cities and ultimately all cities around the world. With growing populations and increased urbanisation there's an ever-increasing need to provide more buildings for offices, retail and leisure and transport infrastructure to facilitate urban mobility.

Whilst this growth potentially poses a problem it also creates opportunities for cities to develop new systems and processes facilitating and enabling streamlining of existing operations and develop new commercial models. The benefits of co-ordinating existing technologies and enabling user adoption through a nudge approach has the ability to deliver not operational benefits but also new revenue streams from optimisation of a city's assets such as the kerbspace and road network. Efficiencies for fleet operators from being able to book guaranteed delivery slots and reserve holding areas means savings in fuel, time and thereforein emissions benefitting the environment both generally and locally. Reduced miles driven means fewer accidents.

Building visibility of construction freight vehicle movements into planning consent enables this anonymised data to be fed into real-time traffic management systems and historic data can be used in future modelling including how and where Clean Air Zones could be implemented. From an operator's perspective the granularity of data movements will enable a better understanding of whether EV HGVs could be considered as a cheaper operational option as well as enabling operational efficiencies from insightful interventions

In London 35% of daytime HGV traffic in London is generated by the construction industry, equating to 520,000 miles per day. The annual value of construction in London is £31bn and the volume of construction freight is only set to grow further. This work generates a significant amount of road freight movement, which in turn increases congestion, emissions and road risk. The cost of construction road freight for the whole of London is £780m.

Grid Smarter Cities intends to build a Freight Traffic Control Platform for construction freight to enable:
- guaranteed landing slots for deliveries at or adjacent to construction sites
- guaranteed holding areas at defined time / distance from site to prevent vehicle circling
- visibility of all vehicle movements in real-time to ensure adherence to prescribed routes
- improved delivery management for site operators
- improved routing and scheduling for delivery fleets
- EV HGV viability
- commercialisation of the kerbspace through booking fees.
- modular approach to enable scaling."