Graduate puts a gridlock on London's Olympic congestion
Released: Friday 3rd August 2012 at 13:35
A SUNDERLAND graduate has come up with a solution to prevent the predicated gridlock in London once the athletics gets off the starting block at the Olympics Games.
Dr Steven Turner says that people who work in the Capital but commute into the city should look at accessing all their necessary documents from the comfort of home using the latest cloud-based networking, instead of facing traffic congestion, bringing the city to a standstill and distracting from the Olympic legacy.
The University of Sunderland graduate has issued the advice to “work remotely”, as the Capital is expected to become increasingly busier, despite a quiet first week on the roads, as the athletics begins today, 3 August. It is estimated that an extra three million journeys will be made in London alone with a number of the blue riband events attracting major crowds as Jessica Ennis and Dai Greene compete for gold medals.
Earlier today the Central Line in London was suspended on the busiest day yet causing chaos in London for fans trying to get to the Olympic Park. Around 200,000 expected attend the Olympic Park today to cheer on Jessica Ennis and other British hopefuls.
Dr Turner, 31, graduated in 2007 with a Masters in Network Systems and is now Vice President of IT Optimisation at Intergence, a Cambridge-based optimisation consultancy.
He said: “Many people who are working in London will spend a lot of time getting to and from work, even more so than usual with the people going to the Olympics. They could potentially save hours if those people who are office based work remotely and prevent London from becoming an extremely uncomfortable and busy experience for the visitors.”
Cloud-based networking technology involves services being provided by a third party external to the organisation, for example, a central hard drive for documents.The Olympics is providing an ideal platform for companies like Intergence to trial remote working.
“The Olympics has provided a catalyst for businesses to introduce more flexibility into the workplace and is the perfect opportunity to test-drive the remote working model,” said Dr Turner.
Originally from Hexham, Dr Turner landed his current role with Intergence thanks to the contacts he made while studying at Sunderland.
He explained: “As part of my course I was always pushed to meet people in the industry and Dr John Mellis, a visiting lecturer, helped me set up a placement. When he started working at Intergence he recommended me to the company for employment because he had seen my work while I was studying.”
“I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for the University of Sunderland. The institution has certainly given me the technical skills, the interpersonal and communications skills that are essential in this industry.”
Dr Turner’s role at Intergence involves looking at the performances of applications and programmes for organisations in the public and private sector.
As well as his Masters at Sunderland, Dr Turner completed a PhD ‘using genetic algorithms in conjunction with parallel processing to produce a multi-utility network optimisation tool’.
The Olympics opened to a critically acclaimed ceremony last Friday featuring Mr Bean, Sir Paul McCartney, Arctic Monkeys and hundreds of volunteers. The £27 million show also celebrated events such as the Jarrow March and the NHS. The event will culminate next week before it all happens again with the Paralympics starting on Wednesday, 29 August.
Intergence aims to help companies set up their own IT projects and choose the right resources for what they want to do. They are also one of the Government’s suppliers for their cloud computing procurement initiative.