The UK’s most widely-used visualized asset management software platform is helping an Australian state road and traffic authority drive operational efficiencies and achieve enhanced strategic planning across its road network.
One year on from adopting the solution, the road and traffic authority for the state of Victoria, VicRoads, is reaping the rewards of using Yotta’s ‘Horizons’ visualized asset management software. Launched in Australia in early 2015, Horizons is a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) system, designed to make it easier for asset management, infrastructure, and finance, teams to visualize, manage and optimize all their strategies and records in a unique and effective way. It has the potential to bring a broad array of benefits to local government departments and state road authorities across the country, which could use the platform to: improve the management of their road budgets; engage with more stakeholders, including local communities; and evaluate a much broader range of factors as part of the overall decision-making process.
Key gains achieved so far by VicRoads include: the ability to model various budget scenarios and compare them with historically selected forward works programs; model the impact of changes in funding levels on network condition; and the opportunity to model different road schemes against each other, while also taking socio-economic criteria into account, in order to determine priorities. Horizons’ flexibility has made it easy for VicRoads to incorporate a wide array of different data sets from third party systems into the system. The software also enables VicRoads to quickly and easily view and identify gaps in the data or incorrect information. It not only provides the authority with significantly enhanced insight into its highways assets, but it critically also gives it faster time to insight.
The agency has found Horizons easy to use, as there are no complex algorithms to be developed and analysis can be carried out and completed rapidly, in turn enabling VicRoads to make more accurate decisions faster, and to deliver higher service levels to key stakeholders. The software platform was implemented at VicRoads by a consortium including asset management delivery leader, Fulton Hogan, and Opus, a leading multi-disciplinary infrastructure consultancy. The consortium is primarily using the software to support the program development and asset management of two large-scale Maintenance Alliance Contracts, encompassing more than 4,660 miles (7,500km) of arterial road network across Victoria.
“VicRoads is a forward-thinking authority that is eager to embrace the latest technology to enhance its strategic asset management approach. Implementing Horizons has not only given them a clearer picture of the status of their highways assets today, it also allows them to plan ahead more proactively,” noted David Paine, national asset manager at Fulton Hogan. “With Horizons they can plot in multiple future scenarios and visualize the likely impact of each. This in turn enables them to put work plans in place that optimize their likely results for each possible outcome, and allows them to capitalize on the insight achieved by making faster and more accurate decisions about the future approach.”
