Balfour Beatty has enhanced its position in the UK Rail market with the acquisition of Omnicom Engineering Limited.

Founded in 1995, Omnicom Engineering is an innovative UK company which specialises in the development of vehicle borne software and hardware platforms for asset survey, inspection and monitoring for use across the transportation sector to enhance effectiveness of infrastructure assets. The company, based across Derby and York, has a client base which includes Network Rail in the UK and Australia’s largest rail freight operator, Aurizon.

Balfour Beatty said the investment will offer clients unrivalled expertise across the rail infrastructure lifecycle; from feasibility studies and planning through to design and implementation, maintenance and asset management.

Mark Bullock, managing director of Balfour Beatty’s UK Rail business, said: “Omnicom Engineering is a true innovator which is benefiting from over twenty years of investment in research and development. We will leverage this expertise alongside the high speed laser measurement technology that already exists within Balfour Beatty, to provide unrivalled technical solutions to clients in the growing high-speed and unattended data collection market in which we see opportunities for increasing our business.

“Together, Omnicom and Balfour Beatty’s range of asset management solutions will offer an unrivalled richness of information to support the maintenance of roads and railways across the world.”

Omnicom Engineering specialises in video and laser surveys, in addition to high-speed video inspection, such as OmniVision which enables clients to replace manual track inspection with automated machine vision from a high speed vehicle. Balfour Beatty’s existing systems include high -speed laser and inertial measurement of track geometry, infrastructure gauge, points condition monitoring and software solutions to visualise condition and support asset management decisions.