Connected Places Catapult, the UK’s innovation accelerator for cities, transport, and place leadership, has announced that it is set to host i3P, a membership body which brings together powerful organisations from across the infrastructure sector. i3P will transfer to the Catapult from Innovate UK Business Connect, where it was co-created in partnership with industry in 2016.
i3P’s mission is to facilitate impactful collaborative innovation, enabling the UK infrastructure industry to deliver improved and more sustainable infrastructure assets for our society and the UK economy. To date, i3P has been involved in a number of projects across its focus areas of carbon, productivity and safety, these include:
- Helping members to understand how to achieve 10—20 per cent productivity savings through adopting innovations in earthworks;
- Supporting the Environment Agency and other clients to identify and evaluate innovative approaches to upskilling site supervisors on employee mental health;
- Supporting members to speed up their net zero journeys by establishing a low carbon technology accelerator community of practice.
By moving to its new home at the Catapult, i3P and its members will benefit from access to the Catapult’s workforce of over 300 staff with unique innovation expertise gained from across both the public and private sectors. They will also benefit from superb facilities designed to support collaboration and close proximity to the existing communities with links to the infrastructure sector that the Catapult already hosts, including the Digital Twin Hub, Freight Innovation Fund Cluster and 3Ci (the Cities Commission for Climate Investment).
Erika Lewis, Chief Executive at Connected Places Catapult, said: “Excellent infrastructure underpins thriving, inclusive places. By hosting i3P, the Catapult can better help support the development of technologies that benefit the sector and in turn deliver improvements in sustainability, productivity and safety. By combining our convening power, I’m confident we can support even more innovation in infrastructure.”
John Norton, Head of Technical Strategy and Innovation at Nuclear Restoration Services and co-chair of i3P said: “i3P exists to make collaborative transformational innovation happen. By bringing together the UK’s infrastructure industry to share common challenges and work together to develop and deploy innovative solutions, we know we can deliver benefits for people right across the UK. By moving to Connected Places Catapult I’m confident we can be even more effective at supporting major infrastructure projects to innovate.”
Steve Moore, Director of Operations at The Environment Agency and i3P co-chair said: “I’m looking forward to this new chapter in the evolution of i3P as we move beyond challenge discovery to focus on the practical development and delivery of solutions for the benefit of our members. As we move into this next phase, I want to pay tribute to the partnership that we have enjoyed with Innovate UK Business Connect, in particular Executive Director, Colin Tattam. Colin has been a key figure making i3P what it is today. I’m very pleased we are staying within the wider Innovate UK system with this transfer to Connected Places Catapult.”