As the end of the year draws to a close, we thought instead of our normal monthly review, we’d take a bigger trip down Memory Lane, looking at how we lived in 2019. Every year has its ups and downs but for me, this year has definitely been on an upward (albeit slow one at times) trend, where a lot of hard work started  to pay off towards the end of the year. 

Smart Mobility Living Lab

The project that has definitely dominated most of our lives at the company has been SMLL. It is undoubtedly the most complex project we have been part of to date, as we, along with the whole consortium of amazing partners, endeavour to do something never done before: create the most advanced urban testbed for self-driving cars and smart mobility.  Such scale of ambition has been incredibly exciting but also exceptionally complicated as we've set about building a testbed not only suitable for today's technology but with the ability to adapt and serve future technologies and, as yet unknown, customer requirements.  And it's not just the "big stuff" that's required some serious brain power. The day to day has also required hands on perseverance.

At DG Cities, we are responsible for designing and implementing the SMLL HQ, a unique place where autonomous vehicles will be made trial ready and rapidly charge their batteries, staff can work on upgrading the testbed and clients can develop their products in a secure and private environment. As we are creating something completely new, it is difficult to predict exactly what this space will look like in a few years time, so we are delivering a design with as much flexibility as possible. Balancing all the space needs, challenging timelines and financial aspects has been hard work, but has enabled us to gain invaluable insights into what the future of AV development will look and feel like.

Across the project, all that hard work is starting to pay off now and we have been racking up considerable successes. As well as an HQ we also now have a resilient control room space, kilometres of dark fibre to connect all our infrastructure, roadside monitoring sites popping up across Greenwich and QEOP and an automated vehicle running on trial routes and collecting data.  Phew! And this is just the beginning, with a lot more to come over the coming months. 2019 has been a year of building the foundations for SMLL, with a lot of incredible work happening largely behind the scenes that will enable us all to finish a great project in early 2020, with many learnings that we are carrying into our client work.

Digital Connectivity

Another key achievement for the year relates to a huge initiative for the Royal Borough of Greenwich. We have advised the Cabinet to look for new ways of facilitating a rapid expansion of digital connectivity infrastructure for all residents, by strategically co-investing with the private sector. Our recommendations were received positively and the Council is now actively moving towards establishing a Joint Venture to provide a full fibre broadband coverage for the Borough.  A great example of how DG Cities is innovating for the benefit of city residents.

Innovation at the front line

2019 has been a big year for us project wise, having successfully started a number of new projects, going through their set-up periods, scoping exercises and working with our partners and clients to establish momentum. Many of these projects are continuations of previous successful initiatives and are building on the knowledge of MERGE Greenwich, eRCV or the Roambem project. We are now working on the second phase of our electric refuse collection vehicle repowering project (eRCV2), implementing the technology in two new cities across the country. 

We also started project Endeavour, with the mission to prove whether ride sharing services using autonomous vehicles can be commercialised and scaled up for wider public use. The project has huge potential and we will surely be talking about it a lot next year. 

Meanwhile IDEMA allowed us to demonstrate our expertise outside of mobility and look at energy generation strategies for modular housing, refining our thinking in how alternative energy technologies can be best used for best environmental outputs. Our commercial project portfolio has also been growing this year and we’ll be disclosing the positive results of these in the coming months. 

A New Home

We have also left our long-term home at Mitre Passage in recent months and made a move across the Peninsula to Ravensbourne University’s Incubation space. We definitely miss the views and the comfort of our old space, but are happy and excited in our new home, surrounded by the creative forces of staff and students. This new location will surely give us a boost for the future and push us to move into 2020 with more motivation and renewed excitement for the interesting work we’re fortunate enough to be doing.

And finally, thank you to all our partners and clients who we have worked with in 2019.  We are incredibly excited to embark on a new decade and continue to undertake purposeful urban innovation, delivering tangible benefits to cities, and their residents.