Canary Wharf Group chooses tech for smart cities programme

The Canary Wharf Group plans to test out the solutions of the three firms that won the third wave of the Cognicity Challenge competition.

The property developer will implement the new tech, from BlockDox, Puckily and 3D Rep, over eight weeks. The winners were chosen from a group of 12 companies, with the competition taking place at the Level39 start-up accelerator in One Canada Square.

Sir George Iacobescu, chairman and CEO of Canary Wharf Group, said: "We chose to run the Cognicity Challenge to identify companies and technologies which will help ensure that Canary Wharf Group's developments remain among some of the most advanced in the world.

"Collaborating with 36 start-ups has provided the opportunity to appraise our own processes and understanding of innovation in the smart cities arena, at the same time as helping shape their thinking and products. We are looking forward to the piloting phase and its outcomes."

The companies were split into two streams, with BlockDox and Puckily both earning first place victories in the 'Connected Home' category. This means that the 50,000 funding prize will be split between the companies. 3D Repo, meanwhile, won for the 'Virtual Design and Construction' stream.

They will all be part of an expansion project from Cognicity, building residential skyscrapers that exhibit groundbreaking smart city technologies, to be dubbed Wood Wharf and situated east of Canary Wharf.

"This is just the beginning of an incredible journey for 3D Repo, Puckily and BlockDox," Claire Cockerton, CEO and Chairwoman of ENTIQ which designed and delivered the programme for the Canary Wharf Group added. "Their solutions will drastically improve the way we plan construction project and interact with our homes.

"A procurement model like Cognicity is one of the best ways of ensuring lasting, authentic innovation which has the power to transform the urban environment as we know it."

The programme is designed to find companies able to work together in areas such as smart buildings, sensor networks, big data and the IoT. Winners of previous phases include Polysolar, Voyage Control, SeaB Energy and Demand Logic.

Ian Jones, Intel's UK smart cities director, said: "Data will play a central role in the cities of tomorrow, driving the innovations that these firms are developing. Teaming with the Cognicity Challenge means we can coach these entrepeneurs on the role of data, how they can protect it, and distil valuable insight from it, to create amazing impacts for the residents of smarter cities."