Fredericton Company Known For Motion Capture Helps Launch Industry First Platform
FREDERICTON–A New Brunswick company is one of a handful of players driving Terra Insights, a cloud-based and on-premises platform bringing together monitoring and data delivery solutions for several types of critical assets.
Providing a way to measure and compare vitals for large-scale engineering projects is one objective behind Terra Insights, of which Fredericton’s Measurand is one of four industry-leading brands contributing to the platform.
Vancouver area RST Instruments and 3vGeomatics, alongside Swiss-based Syscom Instruments, a maker of vibration and seismic measurement devices, combined expertise with Measurand to officially introduce Terra Insights as a one-stop service platform, earlier this month.
“Everything we do is very complementary,” says Erika May, vice president of marketing for Terra Insights. “It’s very standard in the industry today to have to work with multiple suppliers.”
While May says each of the four companies involved is highly specialized in its own area, combining their unique services under the hood of one platform just made sense.
“When you’re able to deliver data through a streamlined system, it then gives the end client that streamlined effect — from in the ground all the way to the data that they use to make those decisions,” says May.
Having one point of contact for Terra Insights means streamlining not only each client’s experience when seeking out different aspects of expertise, it’s also helping Terra Insights gain a better understanding of its clients’ projects and individual needs.
Four companies, one platform
On its platform announcement, Terra Insights CEO Mark Price described Terra Insights as the first scalable platform of its kind, allowing clients to “effectively monitor their projects with speed and confidence, optimizing resources, and ensuring compliance with increasingly stringent environmental and safety regulations” all under one vendor.
That vendor now serves over 1,000 clients, having worked on several major projects including the Canadian oil sands, UK Rail Network, the Żelazny Most tailings storage facility in Poland, the Antamina mine in Peru and California’s Oroville Dam spillway reconstruction.
In New Brunswick, Measurand itself has been involved in large projects like the Maqtaquac Dam, which undergoes consistent monitoring for its alkali-aggregate reaction expansion and requires regular maintenance to help further its lifespan.
May says overseas companies like Syscom Instruments now have an opportunity through Terra Insights to introduce themselves to Canadian clients and help find ways to offer their own unique expertise by leveraging its network to assist companies here.
“Whether or not that’s new regions or new markets, there’s a lot of opportunity now that we’re leveraging these four companies,” said May, adding Terra Insights future growth means entering new countries and connecting with new partners on monitoring projects.
Measurand’s continued growth
While May says applications around geospatial monitoring have been around for some time, environmental, social and governance policies have all led to stricter safety requirements around the world.
Beginning with patented fibre optic bend and twist sensors in the mid-nineties, Measurand soon became a leader in the motion-capture industry, working in film and animation. In 2006, it introduced the first ShapeArray, which signalled the company’s move from measuring the human body to measuring the earth.
Measurand’s ShapeArray is an instrument used for monitoring motion and direction of incremental movement over time. Sensors and microprocessors calculate position and help show what type of deformation has occurred, by how much and in what direction it’s moving.
The Great Aletsch Glacier, currently the largest ice mass in the Swiss Alps, is one area where Measurand’s ShapeArray has been used. The Swiss National Science Foundation funded the installation of a custom ShapeArray capable of tracking the glacier’s recession and its effects on adjacent rock formations in the Alps.
May says the team at Measurand are continuously finding ways to enhance ShapeArray, now the company’s main product, noting additional features for it are expected to be released over the next few months.