Background
Amey Plc are one of the UK’s leading service providers, employing 19,000 people and generating £2.3bn turnover each year. In 2019, Amey Plc’s Utilities business set the ambitious challenge to leave no street work excavation uncovered overnight. There is a compelling case - incidents are far too common. In 2018, Amey Utilities had over 600 close calls and over 100 incidents related to uncovered excavations. 4 of those resulted in people falling in. Amey's stance is simple: It cannot continue
To deliver on this, activity was split into three areas:
• Making fewer excavations
• Making better excavations
• Protecting open excavations
Progress has been made across all three areas, with the first wave of solutions to be introduced in the first quarter of 2020. However, Amey are not looking to stand still, and are keen to explore the next generation of improvements.
Challenge
Amey Plc are primarily looking for a solution that can be used to cover or fill an excavation in the event of having to leave a site before works have been completed. Specifically, they are looking for a solution that can be inflated and deflated safely, meaning it can make a wide range of excavations safe, but also be easily transported.
The solution must be cost effective - the current alternative is marketed at around £50 per unit, and a successful solution will be competitively priced against this. It is worth noting that the average size of the excavations Amey are looking to make safe are 1.8m long x 1m wide x 1m in depth, and can be quite coarse, meaning a robust outer layer is necessary.
Amey have produced a video that has been widely circulated through LinkedIn and YouTube with over 9000 views, demonstrating the interest and opportunity in the Utilities industry.
What’s in it for you?
If a successful solution can be found, Amey plc would be interested in working in partnership with innovators. Their first task would be to provide all 400 excavation teams in the Amey Utilities business with the solution, before looking to target the wider UK market, which contains around 20,000 excavation teams.
If you have or are developing solutions, or if you have expertise in the above, please click "Apply" to submit your solution/expertise to the Network.
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