Contractors working for Highways England are trialling new technology to improve the company’s monitoring of highway equipment on its £88.4m Port of Immingham improvement scheme.
The trial will use the RedBite asset tool to tag Highways England assets such as street lighting and drainage along a three mile stretch of the A160, to aid future maintenance.
Once the product is tagged - the data is securely transmitted to a webpage where all data relating to that piece of equipment or asset is recorded for future use.
Highways England is improving the A160 from the A180 to Immingham
Ben Ridgeon, Highways England project manager, said: ‘Managing and tagging assets using intelligent software has many benefits, not only in recording the location of that equipment but, more crucially, in monitoring that asset in the future.
‘With such heavy usage on our assets, wear and tear is inevitable. By using a system where we can record and maintain a large amount of data on a range of different equipment, we can improve accuracy on the condition of those assets.’
The technology uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, Quick Response (QR) Codes and GPS tags. Highways England said this is the first time it has been used on a road project.
RFID involves the use of radio waves to convert and transmit information from an RFID tag to a digital device – such as a smartphone. Alerts can also be sent out when faults are reported on any particular piece of equipment.
Items that have been tagged so far along the A160 include lighting columns, signs, pavements, culverts and gullies.
Immingham is the UK’s largest port by tonnage. Highways England is upgrading the three mile section of the A160 between the A180 and the port to a dual carriageway.
Yesterday Highways England published its Innovation Strategy, which included using technology for ‘improved management of our network and infrastructure assets’.
