Welcome to a brand new blog series! Each month we are going to be bringing you a Behind-the Scenes insight into what we’ve been up to. All with the aim of answering the simple question: “What on earth do we really do?”.

We hope to bring you closer to smart city innovation as it really is; away from the conference glamour and direct from the front line. Pushing the boundaries is not easy and at times can even be a little bit monotonous, but by persisting with the baby-steps we know we are moving forward.

D-Risk kick off

Every Innovate UK project starts with an appropriately named kick-off meeting, where consortium members sit together with their funders (Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, or CCAV, in this case) and a monitoring officer assigned by Innovate UK to discuss rules (from them) and responsibilities (mainly for us). To help you picture the scene, imagine this: a new teacher arrives to class, waits for silence and then explains how in their class they expect everyone to behave at their best and that the exams will be difficult but “fair”.  The class then introduces themselves one-by-one, sheepishly uttering something like “I’m Balazs, I’m from Hungary”. 

Next time we meet, the questions will get more difficult, so we enjoy the calm while it lasts!  D-Risk is another exciting project for Team DG Cities and we’re excited to get cracking. Look out for a future post coming soon where we’ll share more detail on what lies ahead.

As a team we have had the pleasure of working on multiple government-funded projects and we passionately believe these play such a key role in testing technologies, developing commercial models and gaining valuable insights that can ensure innovation can be deployed for the benefit of all.  Critically, they also provide a fantastic mechanism for bringing together different types of partners to form exciting collaborations; something which in this complex world is paramount, but difficult to achieve without public funding. 

Property design

After about four long months of lease negotiations between four sets of lawyers (gotta love their tenacity…) and non-lawyer colleagues caught in the middle (eternal respect), we have finally secured the property for the SMLL HQ in Woolwich. A huge milestone and there was much excitement in the office when the keys arrived! 

The HQ will bring a world-leading national test centre into the heart of Greenwich, so it’s a piece of work that is high on our priority list. Our next task is to finalise the interior and exterior designs, thinking about the big things like where CAVs will park, through to little things like the colour of the plug  sockets. As time is limited until the end of the project, we are working hard with all our partners to finish this work by early December, procure a lead contractor and commence fit-out works in January.

Other notable achievements from November

• Secured a commercial contract with a well-known developer to help them define a future transport strategy for a key development

• Moved a visionary piece of urban mobility work to its next stage with an energy company 

• Shared our experiences and expertise at a number of events, most notably at an HSBC panel about the importance of public engagement in trialling new technologies, a topic close to our hearts

• Worked with our partners TRL to deliver the next set of trials for the SMLL SRP members, ending with members (and a lot of our team) getting to ride around Royal Arsenal in the SMLL AV

Key thing we learned

The impact that listening to the radio has on an EV battery. Sounds minor? We did this as part of a bigger piece of work looking at how on-board systems affect power use on a vehicle and were surprised by the results!

If you fancy learning more about our work and how we might be able to help you, drop us a line at info@dgcities.com.  We’d love to chat about how DG Cities can help you innovate.