The September issue of Rail Professional features an interview with Senceive's Callum Davidson.
Callum draws on a decade of experience in instrumentation and monitoring, geotechnics, site investigation and non-destructive testing, in both the UK and USA. Prior to joining Senceive as Head of Business Development for the UK Callum has held roles at Geo-Instruments, GEI Consultants and Lankelma.
Read the article on pages 82-83 to learn about about Callum's journey, his reflections on instrumentation and monitoring and how Senceive technology is helping users manage risk in construction, mining and rail.
Full text from the interview below:
What is your role within Senceive?
I am currently the Head of Business Development for the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands and Oceania at Senceive. In my day to day activities I work with asset owners, partners, specialist monitoring companies, contractors and consultants to promote, design and install precise, reliable and wireless remote condition monitoring systems.
Tell us about your career before you joined Senceive?
Before joining the Business Development Team at Senceive I worked in the United States for an Instrumentation and Monitoring Company, Geo-Instruments and an Engineering Consultancy, GEI Consultants. During this time I worked on many construction projects across the country from inspecting and evaluating the structural integrity of dam spillways in California, to designing and installing rail-based automated monitoring systems in Boston.
What challenges have you faced in the industry?
Because our product is not as mainstream as some conventional survey and monitoring technologies a big part of business development is building awareness and convincing people that there is another way.
The best results usually happen when there is early engagement. If the end user talks to the instrumentation and monitoring expert early in the process there is a good chance that specifications and tender documents will encourage bidders to offer innovative solutions.
What success have you experienced in the last 12 months and how do you measure success?
My remit includes the UK rail sector, and that has historically been the biggest part of our business. That has generally been the case over the last year and its been great to see routes and companies adopting our technology that have not used it before. I’m also responsible for our business in the Netherlands and we’ve had enormous success with major track monitoring projects underway on the ProRail network. Even further afield we’ve seen growth in Australia, particularly from mining railways and metros.
How has technology developed since you started in the industry?
What we offer is an IoT (Internet of Things) solution. Like most things in this space, the hardware has become smaller, faster and easier to use, generating ever more data.
Tell us about Senceive
We trace our roots data back to a 2005 technology spinout from University College London. The original Senceive engineering team pioneered the use of wireless mesh communications technology to connect sensors monitoring critical infrastructure such as rail track and tunnels with remote users.
These sensors detect movement with sufficient precision to monitor changes in track geometry, detect the early signs of landslides and identify deformation of bridges and tunnels. The sensor portfolio has grown to cover a wide range of engineering and geotechnical parameters, providing engineers with continuous data that helps them protect infrastructure and the people who use it.
Which sectors do you work in?
Senceive technology is used across the engineering spectrum of construction, infrastructure and mining - but by far the biggest user is the rail industry.
What types of products and services do you offer?
We design and build wireless remote condition monitoring technology. This includes a range of sensors and wireless communications platforms that provide users with a continuous flow of data.
What is your USP (Unique Selling Point)?
Within our niche field we have a relatively large and highly capable team of more than 80 experts that is able to deliver at scale (e.g. our recent record-breaking monitoring project in the Netherlands). The same applies to customer support team which covers all time zones from bases in Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
And in terms of technology, we can offer users unique options, such as the choice between our highly responsive FlatMesh™ and long-range GeoWAN ™ communications platforms.
How have the products and services you offer developed over the years?
Our FlatMesh™ communication platform is a great example of how our products have evolved. Its been our core technology since the early days, connecting sensors in the field with engineers wherever they may be, but has been improved year-on-year. The ethos of continuous improvement has seen it become more reliable, more responsive and easier to use. That’s why it’s the system of choice where users need a monitoring system that can sit in low power mode for many years but wake up instantly when a sudden event such as a landslide takes place, even sending photos of the site to stakeholders so they can assess the situation.
What are some standout projects you’ve been involved in over the years?
Network Rail has been a lead-user of this technology for many years and the earthworks team on Southern Route has rolled out a large-scale programme of monitoring using the InfraGuard system that provides early warning of potentially dangerous and disruptive landslips and embankment failures. They’ve instrumented more than 40 kilometres of track using over 20,000 sensors and 700 automated cameras.
A recent installation in the Netherlands saw 3600 track sensor nodes and the supporting cellular comms hardware installed in just four days – as far as we’re aware this is a record for single deployment and is a great indication of how the business has grown from startup to established market leader capable of building, testing and delivering this volume of hardware in just five weeks.
But most large, complex rail projects around the world need a serious monitoring solution so you’ll find our nodes and gateways on railways as far afield as Grand Paris Metro, Vancouver Boadway and Santiago Metro.
Has the market grown since the company was established?
You could argue that the wireless remote condition monitoring market did not really exist before Senceive. As with any technology sector, there are now many players around the world providing different types of product, but the market is big and its growing. The need to extend the life of ageing assets, to manage risk and to address the challenges of an increasingly volatile climate mean it will continue to grow for years to come, with new applications emerging as time passes.
What’s next for Senceive?
At Senceive we put serious resources into product development and there are a string of innovations in the pipeline. Many of these have been specifically requested by our users in the rail sector and they will help tackle issues such as temperature related track buckle, rockfall and changing ground conditions. We are making it easier for users to integrate monitoring data with other asset information and to handle it within data analysis and visualisation tools of their choice. I think we’ll also see growth in some exciting new geographic regions such as Africa and Latin America.
What are some of the biggest challenges this sector currently faces?
An unavoidable challenge faced by the UK rail sector is that we are running 21st Century trains on 19th Century infrastructure. We cannot afford to replace our tunnels, bridges and embankments but have to keep them in safe working order. Reliable condition data is therefore critical in allocating scarce maintenance and upgrade resources.
At an asset management level, the rail sector is seeing all sorts of pressures, particularly associated with climate, budget and safety. A wetter, hotter climate increases the risk of landslides, debris flows, flooding and scour damage to bridges, and it increases the likelihood of rails buckling dangerously due to high temperatures. All this comes at a time when there is pressure to save money and to get boots off ballast.
What are some potential solutions?
At a general level, the sector needs to embrace technology and be prepared to try new ways of solving problems.
Wireless remote condition monitoring is just one of many technologies with big potential to be more widely used to improve safety and performance. Across the UK network our sensors are already feeding millions of data points into the system each year. Add that to the data collected from the various survey trains and mobile monitoring platforms and you have both a goldmine of data and a big headache. No human can make sense of all this information so we need to harness the power of AI to spot the patterns and guide us where to target scarce resources for maximum effect.
In terms of technology, how do you anticipate things might change in the next five to ten years?
The coming years will see smaller, faster, smarter data collection tools that will gather more data. If the sector is smart enough we will find ways to integrate and analyse that data and share the findings openly.
A great example is the way that some railways have routed the automated alerts from our InfraGuard system directly to route control centres – so within moments of a line blockage controllers are able to see the issue and slow or stop traffic.
Created on: Tue 5th Sep 2023
