Overview
A suite of industry leading software
Combining advanced proprietary software with project controls, commercial management, and contractual expertise, Lewis Woolcott is an innovative commercial solutions consultancy that delivers industry-leading professional services to the resources and infrastructure sectors.
Lewis Woolcott’s software suite provides forensic analysis for effective risk and project management control. The software features comprehensive analysis and modelling with cutting-edge technology to identify resource productivity, and variances from planned deployment, which helps minimise the cost of delays and inefficiency.
Challenge
An IoT platform with reliable network performance
Lewis Woolcott saw the need for an advanced monitoring solution for analysing movement of people and plants in remote construction sites. Monitoring real-time movements in demanding work environments provides many benefits for tracking how a project is progressing against the plan.
“Many of our clients in the resources, infrastructure and renewables sectors have projects that are based in remote, difficult to access locations across Australia. These sites require project controls and communication systems to manage and capture resource deployment – what's actually being produced against the project plan, and the productivity being achieved by those resources. Our systems allow a unique insight into the historical and live data, to better enable effective project decisions that save significant time and money,” says Dan Woolcott, Co-founder, Lewis Woolcott.
Site Mapping and Resource Tracking (SMART) utilises IoT sensors that talk to a private cloud software solution. The system improves safety, efficiency and accountability on site, offering detailed capture of the complete history of activity and related live metadata for any location. SMART enables real-time geo-tracking to ensure operational delivery remains on program and identifies any variances between actual and planned resource deployment, visualising current and former productivities for all resources.
The system is highly mobile and ready to withstand Australia’s toughest environmental conditions, and provides a mixed operation across broadband wi-fi networks, NB-IoT, and satellite to maintain constant operations, wherever needed.
With connectivity being at the heart of the system, Lewis Woolcott needed a strong communications partner with a complete understanding of the hardware and networking technologies required. Having worked previously with Aqura, a Telstra-owned company, Lewis Woolcott commissioned the Aqura team to design the hardware and mobility platform needed to bring SMART to life.
Solution
Transparent site management in remote locations
Aqura had previously designed the Autonomous Remote Communication (ARC) platform for similar use, a trailer-based system to deliver access to private networks from anywhere it was needed. This offered a starting framework for the SATUTE solution, but it needed to be even more compact. The design process arrived at a best fit for the communications platform to modular enough to mounted to a light vehicle
The Aqura solution overcame the issues of heat and dust, a critical requirement given the extreme operating scenarios SATUTE would be required in. This meant a careful balance between the need for the free flow of air to maintain optimal operating temperatures through the computer systems and batteries inside the unit but also to ensure it was weather proofed for operation in dusty, hot or heavy wet conditions.
Power efficiency was critical to the design to manage all day operations under extreme conditions in support of all IoT connections, satellite uplinks, and offering added support for general voice or Teams® connectivity in remote locations. SATUTE leverages solar and battery power, external power, but can also be powered by the engine of the vehicle itself.
Aqura and Lewis Woolcott also needed SATUTE to operate safely without significant user intervention. Features like satellite are self-deploying to minimise the expertise required on site to operate the system. All built on a platform and network that delivers world-class data security.
SATUTE brings a fully mobile four-wheel drive, mining spec light vehicle that will take your connectivity wherever you need it. And importantly, we don't rely on putting a trailer behind us which can get bogged down, overturn, and creates other problems for users in remote operations.
Dan Woolcott
Co-founder, Lewis Woolcott.
Impact
A powerful real-time project insights platform
The first SATUTE was built and tested after a design and delivery process and has now been in active deployment at mining projects in the Pilbara. Lewis Woolcott and Aqura have together delivered a marriage of software, hardware and network technologies that offers customers a scalable solution to suit all major projects.
“It’s not just another ute in a dusty field ... it’s changing the way large infrastructure projects are delivered, making them more efficient, more transparent, and safer. For the first time, we have full visibility of the location and productivity of all our project resources, both now and from the onset of project activity,” says Woolcott.
On its first deployment, SMART has demonstrated great value to Lewis Woolcott’s clients. From ensuring every team member and every asset on site are always accounted for, to offering a powerful ‘Rewind’ feature where project managers, even those thousands of kilometers away, can examine the history of site activity and also to see how activities are progressing right now.
Near real-time visibility substantially reduces project risks by enabling location activity for private property boundaries or cultural heritage sites with GPS and alerting when vehicles or people move too close to off limits areas. It also greatly enhances real-time insights for project leaders who are not based on site, offering a dashboard view of the entire site with easy access to all historic data captured through SMART.
“We’ve been able to help our clients deliver critical infrastructure far beyond the beaten track. This has enabled us to map project resources to fully understand how we are and have delivered the work against the program, whilst enhancing safety and the protection of the environment,” says Woolcott.
Aqura manages the SATUTE solution – many moving parts within the technology, ensuring it is always ready to go when required. Lewis Woolcott aims to deploy SATUTEs, enabling remote project connectivity, for operations across the country, whether in a North Queensland mining site or supporting a utility as it builds new power transmission infrastructure across regional Victoria. This also ensures Lewis Woolcott can deploy its SMART platform to the most remote of projects.
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