Trimble announced today that it is partnering with the University of Cambridge to collaborate on research to advance technology development in the engineering and construction industry. Trimble will work closely with the Laing O'Rourke Centre's Construction Information Technology Laboratory (CIT). CIT is a state-of-the-art research facility with a mission to solve complex engineering problems and automate difficult construction tasks through decision support tools. These tools would recognize data patterns, retrieve useful information and generate knowledge of the built environment.
The construction industry is highly information-intensive and requires extensive data and information exchange during the construction process between project stakeholders. To enhance competitiveness and efficiency, engineering and construction companies are adopting new forms of information technology to improve productivity, scheduling, quality and costs of a project. The goal of the Trimble Sponsorship Program is to enable research focused on advanced, accessible and intuitive technologies that can drive increased collaboration for the Design-Build-Operate (DBO) lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure.
The Trimble Sponsorship Program will support cutting-edge research in construction information technology. The initial focus of the collaboration is to:
- enable world-class academic research that has the potential to achieve a significant impact across the construction industry to improve safety, reduce costs, and increase predictability and operational efficiency;
- provide educational and professional development to encourage and champion construction information technology research in academia and industry; and
- focus on accelerating the advantages of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in construction as well as the use of computer vision and augmented reality technologies to simplify a wide variety of common construction problems in practical applications.
"The research interests between the University of Cambridge Construction Information Technology Laboratory in the Laing O'Rourke Centre and Trimble are truly aligned," said Bryn Fosburgh, sector vice president at Trimble. "Working closely with the research teams at Cambridge, our goal is to foster innovation and enable academic research in information technologies that can affect and transform the way the industry designs, builds and operates buildings and infrastructure."
"The construction sector is undergoing rapid transformation as a result of the revolution in digital engineering. Cambridge University has a wide portfolio of research projects which aim to solve problems in the construction sector," said Professor Campbell Middleton, head of the Laing O'Rourke Centre at the University of Cambridge. "This exciting new relationship with Trimble will enable us to work together to push forward our agenda to develop new, transformative tools and technologies to deliver a much safer and more productive construction industry and help build the infrastructure on which the well-being of society depends."
