What is OWL?
OWL, a SaaS product developed by Onwave, provides wearable devices and an app that notifies workers when they enter geofenced areas. OWL wearable devices can provide an accuracy of within 10mm, making them ideal for various scenarios. These include creating safety zones around hazardous equipment while in operation, geofencing areas with buried services, establishing boundaries for land or specific work areas for teams, monitoring real- time locations of personnel, and ensuring the safety of lone workers through location sharing and real-time alerts.
Objectives
The Balfour Beatty delivery partner at Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) entered into discussions with Onwave regarding an OWL trial during enabling works trial at Land Parcel 48. Within the scope of this project, LTC emphasised the importance of implementing exclusion zones to preserve the local ecology, specifically protecting species like the Great Crested Newt, Water Voles, to name a few that fall under environmental protection regulations. LTC also wanted to improve communication capabilities between the site and office. Onwave were also made aware of potential unexploded ordnance (UXO) that needed to be located and geofences created around these for safety purposes.
The Solution
To support LTC in achieving their objectives in preventing biodiversity loss, Onwave supported the delivery partner in implementing the OWL system during the enabling works. As part of this implementation, the LTC team took care to create necessary geofences around ecological habitats and assets. This approach ensured that the boundaries were clearly identified and understood, and helps to prevent any unintentional disturbance to the habitat. By utilising the OWL system and creating these geofences, LTC were able to ensure prevention of any unintentional impact on the biodiversity in the area and actively promote conservation efforts.
After setting up the geofences on the platform, the team wore OWL Wearable Devices on-site which provided alerts to ensure that they did not enter prohibited zones, prioritising their safety as well as the preservation of nearby biodiversity geofenced were also created around construction plant to minimise people/plant interface.
A control hub was set up within the Marling Cross Office to display the OWL Portal Live View and Dashboard. The Live View enabled real-time monitoring of the project’s progress including on-site location of users and plant in relation to protected areas, providing valuable insights for proactive planning. The Dashboard allowed the team to access collated data in a configurable format to highlight key information.
The Outcomes
Due to OWL supporting the LTC enabling works with the delivery partner, the teams were able to:
- Highlight Site of Special Scientific Interests (SSSI) ensuring protection of the wildlife species and avoid teams encroaching on prohibited land without expressed permissions.
- Share accurate locations of ecological assets and habitat areas and restrict entry.
- Keep people safe from people/plant interface risk
- Highlight the locations of known UXO and restrict plant access in the areas Effectively control land access for people and plant in line with land agreements.
