How Monitum future-proofed its business with Industry 4.0

Geospatial data is a critical component of every construction project, reducing risk and improving efficiencies. But gathering this data is often costly and labour intensive, something that Lee Hellen, Managing Director of leading Australian automated monitoring business, Monitum, knows firsthand.

When working on a complex, high-risk surveying project in 2012, Hellen imagined the difference an affordable solution that automatically monitored displacement could make to the industry.

“As our sector advanced, we recognised the need to harness the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and artificial intelligence to provide precise and accurate insights to manage risks around buildings and structures,” he said.

And in 2019, Monitum, in partnership with Queensland University of Technology (QUT), embarked on a $4.5 million collaborative research project to bring such a product to market.

The three-year project, supported by $875,000 in funding from the Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC), has developed a cost-effective IoT solution using low-medium-end Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors and low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN).