July 17, 2013 -- London's Southwark Council with help from highway technology and survey company Yotta DCL is developing a comprehensive capital investment programme for network repairs and maintenance. Southwark will use Horizons, Yotta DCL’s unique visualised asset management platform, backed by Professional Services support to help it make the best decisions for its network and users. With Yotta DCL’s advanced web-based technology and technical support, the Council will be able to target work schemes more precisely, resulting in better return on investment and improving its network.

“Horizons provides information in a very easy to understand format, which was one of its key attractions to us, particularly in helping us with communicating with Council members and the public. Horizons also enables us - with assistance from Yotta DCL’s Professional Services team - to sweat our assets, which means we can select the best treatments to maximise our resources. The system uses ‘whole-of-life-costings’ methodology enabling us to get best value from available funds,” says Mick Lucas, Public Realm Asset Manager.

Southwark weights its network according to priorities to users. Using Horizons, the Council can identify and map the roads and pathways that carry bus routes, major pedestrian walking routes and bicycle networks, prioritising them according to usage and value to highway users.

“With Horizons we can target schemes where they will have the most impact and return on our money. We can overlay our bus, walking and cycling routes on the network map, to give us an instant view of our priority assets. We can also model the deterioration over time. It is so much easier with Horizons to get an accurate visual overview of the network. It means we can spend our time developing the investment programme and align works with our budgets and other funding that will be available to us in the future,” says Mick Lucas.

“We enjoy a good working relationship with Yotta DCL. The team’s skills and knowledge are complementary to our own and we are confident that our Horizons system will develop over time as we input more and new data from on-going surveys and condition assessments. Like many UK Councils, we are faced with major challenges and so we have to be absolutely sure that we spend our funds wisely and accurately to maximise the value of our highways assets for all users, now and in the future.”

CONTACTS:

Nick Smee, +44 (0) 845 45 96882, Email: Email Contact, www.yottaDCL.com