Highways England is trialling the use of smart tags as part of its £88.4 million project to improve access to one of the UK’s busiest ports.
Contractors working on the A160 Port of Immingham improvement scheme are using the RedBite asset tool to tag highway equipment such as street lighting and drainage along a three-mile stretch of the road, to aid future maintenance. Data from tagged assets will be securely transmitted to a web page where it is recorded for future use.
The technology uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, Quick Response (QR) codes and GPS tags, and allows alerts to be sent out when faults are reported on any particular piece of equipment.
According to Highways England, it’s the first time this technology has been used on a road project.
Ben Ridgeon, project manager at Highways England, said that smart tags can improve the way road equipment is monitored and maintained.
“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,” he explained. “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.”
Items that have been tagged so far along the A160 include lighting columns, signs, pavements, culverts and gullies.
As well as installing new technology, contractors working on the Highways England scheme are widening a three-mile section of the A160 between the A180 and the Port of Immingham, making the road a dual carriageway along its entire length.
Tags: ITS, The Built Environment
