Remote monitoring – the foundation for success at ExCel

The ExCeL London expansion project will deliver an additional 25,000 square meters of premium event and exhibition space, as well as state-of-the-art meeting rooms and catering facilities. Construction of the new building began in March 2022 and we were delighted to be awarded the contract to provide structural monitoring services to ensure there was no movement in the foundations during the excavation and concrete filling process.

Gallagher Group’s proposed construction process involved excavating the foundations a section at a time. Thick steel braces were to be installed onto the sides of the trenches to stabilise them before pouring the concrete in. Our job was to monitor the braces for movement prior to the concrete foundations being laid.

Having understood the project specification we realised that it would be unsafe to send an operative in to physically measure and monitor the trenches. Deploying this traditional approach would also require regular site visits. To negate the need for this we proposed a remote monitoring solution. This involves attaching sensors to the braces. The sensors measure movement 24/7 and send live data to an online dashboard. This provides the project team with access to continuous live data feeds and if any movement thresholds are breached, the system sends an alert via SMS so that the breach can be investigated and remedied immediately.

Our ExCeL London case study covers the work we undertook for this exciting expansion project.