World-leading research facility nearing completion

Construction company Rydon has formally completed several sections of a complex new research facility for the University of Bath Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems (IAAPS) at the Bristol and Bath Science Park.

These completed sections will be fitted out with research cells. The cell configurations will handle complete vehicles, individual systems, or single components, utilising the latest measurement equipment. Rydon is working with the institute to install specialist equipment such as bed plates, complex test rigs and dampers.

The entire facility is almost complete, with only the front of house facilities, offices and atrium left. These are aimed for completion in December. The facility is intended to be a global centre of excellence, leading the development of future generations of ultra-low emission vehicles and attract sector-related businesses to the region, generating jobs and economic growth.

Paul Barber, head of Rydon’s South West office, said: “It has been a rewarding experience working on a project that will help meet important environmental targets as well as define highly efficient cars and systems in the future. Despite the disruption of coronavirus, which led to some supply issues, we are working hard as a fully socially distanced team together with our partners to deliver the scheme by the end of 2020 as committed.”

Gavin Edwards, IAAPS operations and IT director, said: “We are delighted to reach this significant milestone in the delivery of the IAAPS facility, which is enabling the installation of our high-precision research equipment ready for opening in mid-2021.”

Many construction contractors and clients require contractor staff to hold and display Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) smart-cards, which prove their qualifications, before allowing them on site.

Here at Time and Attendance South West, we are an IT partner of the CSCS through our parent company, Tensor plc. This means that we can provide seamless integration between the CSCS smartcard and our WinTA.NET software, which provides time management, visitor/contractor management and fire/evacuation roll-call systems.

The integration takes the end-user form of a CSCS “card wizard”. This set of rules allows a company to quickly grant construction contractors recognition by and access to our hardware, such as clocking terminals, turnstiles, and door controllers. The wizard will run one of three scenarios when giving access rights to contractors. These are:

  • Contractors who are completely new to the system.
  • Contractors whose name exists on the system but their CSCS card has not been entered.
  • Contractors who are fully recorded on the system and have used their card at other sites, but are new to this particular site.

For each different scenario the wizard will guide the user through the enrolment procedure. The result is that:

  • The contractor’s CSCS card is read (using a USB card reader attached to a Tensor.NET Client PC)
  • Details are extracted from the card to update the contractor’s details within the system
  • Options such as a company, site, shift group and department are assigned to the cardholder

To make it easier to include new contractors in your site’s existing health and safety and security procedures, please contact us today.

We can handle any size site: our Enterprise software is able to perform for global, multi-site corporations with thousands of employees/users, while our Start edition helps small businesses with less than 50 users.