January: the month that always feels like a year. Not for Team DGC though; the month flew by with exciting meetings with potential clients, projects continuing and ending, and even a trip to visit the Brompton factory. No time for winter blues over here!

 Smart Mobility

The Smart Mobility Living Lab (SMLL) continues to take shape.  With planning permissions approved, we saw works begin on the build of the new HQ in Woolwich, while build and deployments throughout the testbed shaped up alongside. DGC reps have been busy project managing and coordinating parties to ensure things come together at the right time and in time!

Continuing on the vehicle and mobility theme; DGC has partnered up with Imperial College London (ICL) and the Royal Borough of Greenwich  (RBG) to help devise a strategy for electrification of the council’s vehicle fleet of 550-odd vehicles. That’s one of the largest fleets of any London Borough and a challenge (in other words, super exciting in our minds!) as these vehicles range from standard vans - such as the Nissan ENV200 - through to waste collection vehicles and gritters requiring heavy hydraulics. The cross-industry team that make up project Birchmere are going to be uncovering ways to electrify the fleet in the most efficient way whilst staying within available grid capacity.  This will require a thorough understanding of what doesn’t work for charging (location and timings) and also finding out if robust, reliable electric alternatives of many of these fleet vehicles really exist. This might include new technologies like battery storage and on-site generation of energy like solar panels. All TBC for now but expect more details on this exciting piece of work in the coming months! This falls under the bigger Horizon 2020 Sharing Cities project that you might’ve already heard of.

Energy & Housing

In some energy-related news, the IDEMA project was completed in January and we’re now focusing on dissemination of everything we’ve learned along the way. In our IDEMA blog series, we have been sharing some of the fascinating insights we’ve gained through this year-long project looking at applying renewable energy technologies to housing developments.  The key take-out, being that less really is sometimes more. You can catch up with Hiba’s blog post series on the project here.

While we’re talking about housing, DGC were excited to attend two Show and Tells for the Housing Repairs Alpha Project – where consultants dxw digital updated Greenwich, Southwark, Lincoln and South Kesteven councils on their work exploring approaches for the design of a common pattern for reporting, diagnosing and scheduling of housing repairs. The project is part of the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG)  local digital collaboration fund. The ethos of this project is that everything we learn is shared out in the open so anyone can watch the Show and Tells themselves by going to dxw’s YouTube channel or by reading the week notes here.

Meanwhile, we are continuing our work with Royal Borough of Greenwich on the implementation of our strategy and plans for rolling our digital connectivity across council-owned housing stock.  This involves an exciting new joint venture approach, so we’re busy working with lawyers on this right now. And concluding the housing theme, we also completed the first draft of an exciting vision document for a developer client.

Partnerships & collaborations

2020 has got off to a flying start in terms of new and exciting opportunities as well.  We enjoy a great relationship with Imperial College London, having worked with them on many projects including IDEMA.  So we were particularly pleased to have had discussions this month about extending our collaboration with them. We have also had some exciting discussions about possible collaborations with a global engineering firm and progressed our partnership with an exciting player in the CAV market.  More details on all of this in the coming months!

Top things we learned this month

·       There are now large battery options that connect into the electricity grid and can help to facilitate EV charging. We are going to be talking to one of them as part of our Birchmere project.

·       How many different types of grey workshop cabinet you can get! You’ll be pleased to know the SMLL HQ cabinets will be in a fetching dusty grey.

This is only a handful of the things we’re working on in January – stay tuned for blog posts this month to find out more!