Founded 15 years ago as a market disruptor, at Gaist we have always pushed the envelope for innovation in the highways sector.
Our earliest condition surveys anticipated the move to image-based surveying and a (soon-to-be DfT mandated) 5-grade condition grading, setting us apart from our competitors with an unrelenting focus on quality, value for money all geared towards improved outcomes for highways asset managers.
And now we are once again innovating in a core area of our services to Local Authorities with a comprehensive update to our market leading condition surveys.
We are excited to introduce the groundbreaking update, ‘Gaist Next Generation Condition Surveys’, offering local authorities the most advanced carriageway condition intelligence available.
This update marks a game changer for the highways sector, providing unmatched consistency, accuracy, and repeatability in condition surveying, while ensuring seamless compliance with the upcoming data standard.
Driven by invaluable feedback from our customers and insights gained from real-world engineering experience, we have enhanced our market-leading solution. These significant enhancements to our condition methodology reflect our commitment to evolving in line with customer needs and industry standards whilst ensuring that our clients are fully prepared for the forthcoming changes to the DfT data standard.
In summary, these improvements are:
- An enhanced 5 grade system with standard 5 metre segmentation across the network to enable year-on-year accuracy and repeatability whilst ensuring full compliance with new DfT data standard.
- Improved diagnostic information in each segment, giving our customers the largest range of defect types and surface material identifications available in the market.
- Accurate measurements of the size of damage areas in each segment, introducing primary and secondary damages.
- A greater use of embedded AI in our processing
- New capabilities for scheme identification and optimisation, ensuring you can maximise the deployment of your maintenance budgets.
- Accurate and comprehensive lifecycle modelling outputs from a single condition survey covering all aspects of your network.
What This Means For You?
With the move to consistent 5-metre segments, this provides a standardised base enabling consistency of survey data year-on-year which allows the end user to understand changes to their network at a level of detail and precision never seen before. The equal delineation of segments also provides an improved visual reference when viewing on a map, available in Gaist AssetStream or your GIS platform of choice.
Improved diagnostic information highlighting clearly the type and percentage damage in each 5-metre segment, with accurate measurements for the size of the damage area(s), provides a detailed account of the condition of each section of road and footway unmatched by any other survey provider. This gives our customers confidence they have a true picture of the network for their asset management decisions.
The updated surface material and deterioration types we have embedded ensure the map-based representation of highway and footway condition is as accurate as possible, enabling more effective scheme identification and lifecycle modelling outputs. The expanded number of damage types adds more detail to the condition survey output, opening up the possibility for better engineering decisions across different treatment types.
In still providing the condition survey in 5 grades we are continuing to provide a level of granularity allowing you to intervene at different stages in accordance with your maintenance policies and treatments. For example it will allow you to identify preventative treatments such as surface dressing or micro asphalt to prolong the life of your roads and make your budget go further.
This Update also facilitates greater use of AI in our processes, helping to mitigate broader operational cost increases and allowing us to continue to deliver the most cost-effective solution on the market to our customers.
How Does It Relate to The New DfT Data Standard?
For local authorities in England, the next 12-months will bring big changes to the way highways condition is collected and reported- namely with the move away from UKPMS to a new reporting standard.
The New DfT Data Standard will now move to a recommended 5-grade reporting mechanism. Gaist pioneered a 5-grade system and because we have been using 5-grade analysis for the last 15 years, this places us at the forefront of the new data reporting requirements and enables our customers to transition seamlessly to the new era of carriageway condition analysis.
Additionally, the equal 5-metre network segmentation we have moved to allows condition data to be reported as required by the new DfT data standard. Gaist will use our detailed data on the extent and severity of defects and combine them to align with the condition category definitions set out in the PAS.
These resulting RCM condition categories will be aligned to 10m subsections on the Local Authority network as required by the DfT. Gaist will also assign these categories to each 5m polygon and so they can be viewable in GIS alongside our detailed survey data, meaning you have all the data you need for reporting and for asset management purposes
Not only does this condition survey give you more detail in a repeatable package, it makes your future reporting requirements easier to fulfil than ever before.
In summary, these changes will enable our customers to continue to be at the cutting edge of highways maintenance practices at a vital point, aligning them seamlessly with the new DfT data standard. If you are a local authority highways maintenance professional, this is the perfect opportunity for you to contact us and find out how our next generation carriageway condition intelligence can transform your highways asset management activities.
To speak to one of our experts about how the next generation of carriageway condition data can benefit you, get in touch with us
