Industry News
HA: The Highways Agency has reached agreement with TomTom to feed up to date traffic information from England’s motorways and major A roads into its sat nav services for road users. The HA, which manages the 4,300-mile strategic road network, collects data on traffic flows from sophisticated monitoring equipment built into the road surface, backed up by CCTV and other sources.
This data, which is already provided to drivers through the Agency’s own channels, will be fed to TomTom for its High Definition Traffic Services and is expected to be particularly beneficial to families heading off on holiday over the next few months.
The HA provides its traffic information to TomTom™ in a Datex II format, which it helped develop as a European standard specifically for road data information exchange. The Agency data provides real-time traffic information & predictions based on past conditions, helping road users to plan their journeys to avoid congestion.
ScotGov: Wave energy developer Aquamarine Power has revealed the latest in leading edge hydro electric wave energy technology. First Minister, Alex Salmond, unveiled the next generation full-scale Oyster 800KW device at Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) yard in Methil, Fife where it was built.
The Oyster 800 can generate 250% more power at one third of the cost of the first full-scale 315kW Oyster device (Oyster 1), which was installed & grid-connected at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney in late 2009 and operated through 2 winters, delivering over 6,000 operating hours.
The first Oyster 800 will now be transported by sea to EMEC for installation with another 2 being deployed in 2012 & 2013, linked to an onshore hydro-electric plant in a 2.4MW array. A farm of just 20 Oyster 800 devices would generate sufficient power for up to 15,000 homes.
Press release ~ Aquamarine Power ~ European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) ~ Carbon Trust: Accelerating Marine Energy
BIS: A new national web based system, Talent Retention Solution (TRS), will ‘help match skilled employees facing redundancy to UK companies in growing sectors of advanced manufacturing and engineering who are recruiting’, Minister for Business, Mark Prisk, announced last week.
The easy to use system comes as a result of work undertaken by the Skills and Jobs Retention Group (SJRG) and Semta (the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies) to support defence engineers who may be struggling to find work in today’s difficult economic climate.
Following a short implementation phase, TRS will become fully operational by January 2012, when it is expected that over 1,500 employers across the UK will have signed up to the system, ranging from large organisations in each sector to the smallest SMEs. The system will provide live data broken down by skills & geography.
Press release ~ Talent Retention Solution ~ Semta (the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies)
BIS: Britain’s most enterprising individuals & businesses last week attended an evening reception at Buckingham Palace after they were announced as this year’s winners of the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2011.
The Queen’s Award rewards people who have played an outstanding & significant role in promoting the growth of business enterprise & entrepreneurial skills and attitudes in others – for example amongst young people or those in disadvantaged groups.
The application/nomination period for The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise 2012 is now open & closes on 31 October2011. Entry is free and forms can be completed & submitted online.
DCMS: A list of approved broadband suppliers will be selected to help simplify the procurement process as part of rolling out broadband to rural areas. The Framework Agreement will be aimed at local authorities & Devolved Administrations allowing them to select suppliers from the pre-qualified list through ‘call-off’ contracts, rather than run independent procurement processes from scratch for their own areas.
For suppliers this will mean only having to bid once to be selected for the Framework, rather than up to 40 times for individual broadband procurement processes across the UK. A set of draft requirements has been published for suppliers interested in bidding – See ‘Policy Statements & Initiatives’ section for more information
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