How NTRO reduced its client data delivery time from three months to 48 hours
Airteam collaborated with the National Transport Research Organisation (NTRO) on custom software that makes its road transport research activity more efficient.
Partnering with Australia’s leading transport research organisation
The National Transport Research Organisation (NTRO), Australia’s leading independent transport research body, works with government and industry to improve Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific region’s roads, rail, ports, and airports networks. Through its research, infrastructure planning, and operations, it helps clients (including local councils, transport agencies, and industry partners) improve the transport networks people rely on every day. By helping its clients make stronger transport and infrastructure decisions, NTRO enhances the safe movement of people and freight through the places communities depend on.
Helping NTRO connect its clients to road data insights
NTRO, Australia’s leading independent transport research body, dispatches a modern fleet of survey vehicles, including its Intelligent Pavement Assessment Vehicles (iPAVE), Automatic Crack Detection Vehicles (ACD), and Unsealed Road Vehicles (URV), to capture road surface, structural, and safety data.
Our relationship with NTRO began after its legacy road survey system had reached its end of life. As NTRO has earmarked insights and intelligence as a major growth area, it needed new ways to optimise how it manages its data requirements.
In our extensive discussions with NTRO, we discovered it was invested in solving several operational challenges to make its road survey process more efficient and expeditious.
The Intelligent Pavement Assessment Vehicles (iPAVE) is a prime mover and trailer that collects all data as it drives, monitoring how pavement responds under load. Large and heavy vehicles face restrictions in where they can travel by road.
Historically, NTRO’s process of planning routes to send its data survey vehicles on was highly manual — the transport research leader also needs to manage for large and heavy vehicles that reckon with restrictions and prohibitions along various stretches of roads, including smaller streets in suburban areas.
NTRO had historically planned road survey routes by manually highlighting maps for its survey team. It also circulated static PDFs and disconnected spreadsheets that siloed data, posed version-control risks, and protracted route planning operations.
The road survey process was fraught in other ways too. Road survey drivers had to manually manage log data, which increased the risk of potential inaccuracies. The flow-on effect for NTRO’s clients was that they struggled to access and interpret road data effectively, meaning decision-making on repairs and funding was delayed, which affected overall road maintenance efforts.
“The deep technical knowledge that's available [through Airteam] … has been hugely valuable for us….”
– Russell Gallagher, Chief Technology Officer, NTRO.
In response to the logistical difficulties of NTRO’s data management, Russell Gallagher, NTRO’s Chief Technology Officer, began development of a data reform strategy for NTRO (referred to as SALUS now) three years ago.
SALUS is NTRO’s latest-generation road network survey and data management system. The software solutions NTRO needed to progress SALUS involved building technical infrastructure to move road survey data from vehicle sensors into usable systems, Russell explains.
“It was everything from actually getting the data from sensors, managing the large data pipeline that these vehicles have, and building the systems out for the on-vehicle processing,” he says. “It was the data compression elements, the upload elements, the design of the database, and the portal."
“It was pretty clear that we just did not have the capacity in the existing NTRO team to actually support this development."
“So there was a requirement to partner with somebody to help us with this.”
The custom software solutions we tailored for data reform
The data reform strategy Russell envisioned meant a rethink about how NTRO captured data. His original pitch focused on introducing a new fleet of road survey vehicles. He had in mind new ways of capturing data, processing data directly on vehicles, uploading data directly from vehicle to cloud, implementing a database that was as scalable as needed, and building results visualisations into the data flow.
NTRO put together a shortlist of potential software partners to deliver on this. It considered companies’ sovereign development capabilities, security credentials, expertise in AWS, and reputation for designing intuitive user interfaces.
Russell says NTRO also needed to partner with a team that could work flexibly within a complex project characterised by evolving requirements and unknowns.
NTRO decided on Airteam because it could accommodate the full suite of requirements, he adds.
“The whole process has been really straightforward and easy – even from the original quoting, which was kind of tricky because we had a basic strategy document, but there wasn't a detailed engineering statement of works, or any kind of level of detail in the information that we were providing,” Russell says.
“So together we structured these pieces of work and we structured a way of working together from a contractual perspective that allowed flexibility… When you combine all those different elements, that's why we picked Airteam.”
Airteam’s solutions for better route planning and data capture
To tailor a route planning and data capture solution that worked seamlessly for all stakeholders, we delivered a multi-dimensional digital platform featuring a route-planning tool, in-vehicle dashboard, and data visualisation portal.
To build a solution of this scale, our service scope extended beyond designing and developing tools. Our collaboration with NTRO included research, workshops, and meetings. We spent several months embedding in NTRO’s world to develop a deep understanding of the needs of its route planners, drivers, and operators in the field, and the end clients accessing its data.
Our software delivery approach included:
• Conducting research with drivers and operators to understand day-to-day workflows and identify opportunities to improve usability.
• Running workshops with NTRO stakeholders to align solutions with operational requirements and project objectives.
• Testing prototypes and physical mock-ups to validate design decisions before development progressed.
• Refining interfaces through continuous feedback to ensure the tools reflected the realities of road survey operations.
• Ongoing support.
“Being able to absorb Airteam team members into the NTRO team, as if we were all just one big team – that's been hugely beneficial."
– Russell Gallagher, Chief Technology Officer, NTRO.
Faster planning, richer data, and safer road surveys
Our tailored solutions for NTRO have improved how it plans its road surveys, captures information in the field, and translates the resulting data into insights that support maintenance decisions.
Major outcomes are as follows:
• Airteam reduced NTRO’s manual survey route planning from as long as a week to as little as six hours.
• NTRO can now move road data from field to insight in as little as 48 hours, giving asset owners faster evidence for maintenance and investment decisions.
• The new system helps NTRO generate richer datasets and deeper insights from its road survey operations.
• Operators and drivers now use intuitive interactions, automated capture modes and ergonomic controls that reduce cognitive load in the field.
• The in-vehicle dashboard lets survey teams capture critical road data with less distraction during field operations.
The partnership has significant implications for the safety of Australia too. NTRO's Road Safety Services are dedicated to reducing road trauma by providing comprehensive, data-driven solutions tailored for government agencies, industry stakeholders, and the community.
With over 1,200 deaths and 40,000 serious injuries occurring on Australian roads annually, road safety is a critical concern. As NTRO’s data reform progresses, so does its progress working towards its goal of zero fatalities and serious injuries.
It’s been gratifying for us to embed with NTRO so we can tailor highly customised software that ultimately plays a key role in making Australia’s roads safer.
Russell says the relationship has had big benefits too.
“Being able to absorb Airteam team members into the NTRO team, as if we were all just one big team – that's been hugely beneficial.
“I appreciate the time the team spent in the daily stand-up meetings, for example, because we're all trying to figure out different problems and we're all working as one. So that's a huge, huge value that Airteam brings.
“The deep technical knowledge that's available – and that's across the UI, the AWS, the database, the Android development, and all the other things that we've had these unique requirements for – has been hugely valuable for us.”
We work with government, transport, and enterprise organisations to resolve complex operational bottlenecks through custom software.
If you’d like to explore how tailored software could support your operations, contact us at hello@airteam.com.au
