The London Borough of Brent Council has adopted Yotta’s visualized asset management software platform to tackle its most problematic potholes by prioritizing sites based on their density to help reduce the authority’s road maintenance backlog.
Through asset and condition data capture, the council is using Yotta’s Horizons platform to provide it with much-needed operational insights for hole-patching maintenance programs, enhancing both its decision-making capabilities and road safety. The decision to use the Horizons asset management software for this work follows the signing of a four-year deal between the two organizations in October 2016, which also included an annual Infrastructure Asset Management Consultancy (IAMC) package with Yotta.
Due to limited funding, Brent Council is not able to repair all existing potholes across the borough. However, it has been able to use data collected during highway inspections within Horizons, to develop a risk-based approach to inform highways maintenance programs, and efficiently and effectively repair potholes. This enables Brent to use the Horizons software to highlight areas across its whole road network where the density and risk associated with potholes is highest, and to prioritize the most effective repair locations, working with third-party contractors to deploy an innovative injection patching process on side streets and local routes, and traditional patching on main roads.
The council has been able to accelerate the speed and efficiency of its pothole patching process, in addition to quickly cutting the backlog of unfilled potholes, with a minimum level of public complaints, and receiving positive feedback from council members. Looking ahead, Yotta and Brent Council are already assessing the potential of developing the project further by drilling down deeper into the data stored in Horizons to gauge the predictors of potholes occurring, and what other data could be brought into the process to make it still more efficient.
“Previously, we tended to rely on our own observations when identifying priority locations for patching programs,” explained Jonathan Westell, highways contracts and delivery manager at Brent Council. “With this new approach, we can use information that we already have about unfilled potholes, in a new way: to direct patching crews effectively to fix the largest number of potholes we can in the shortest possible time, efficiently giving us the fastest possible return on our network maintenance investment. Yotta has been fully engaged in this process since the beginning, and is eager to work closely with us to develop innovative solutions to these kinds of highway maintenance challenges.”
Julian Collins, principal consultant for infrastructure asset management at Yotta, commented, “This innovative project underlines the capability of Horizons as a tool that allows councils to quickly and easily evaluate data, and use the insights gained to deliver enhanced highways asset management efficiencies. We look forward to continuing to work with Brent Council to build on the successes already achieved by the pothole patching program and exploring new areas where we can work together to achieve asset management efficiencies.”
