Portable traffic lights and safety equipment for roadworks in Australia

Tracking Roadwork & Traffic Management Equipment

Quick Answer: A hybrid tracking model is the best way to track all of the gear associated with traffic management and roadworks construction.

When you run a traffic management company, seeing a collection crew returning to the yard with an incomplete truck is not a moment you enjoy.

A multi-message sign or frame left behind. A pallet of traffic cones unaccounted for. An arrow board that has mysteriously vanished from a roadside. In the roadworks industry, these lost assets aren’t just an annoyance, it means a financial loss.

The Right Traffic Management Tracking Strategy

Often when dealing with equipment tracking, the focus is on very expensive construction machinery or larger assets.

But that usually means the unique area of high-turnover assets that are used in roadwork management are often overlooked, thus leading to greater loss and higher expenses.

Asphalt repair with roller and orange cones

It is important to realise that effective traffic control asset management requires a specific strategy. It is obviously not practical or cost effective to put a $150 GPS tracking unit on a $25 traffic cone. On the other hand, leaving your mid-tier roadworks equipment completely untracked encourages theft and loss.

The solution is a hybrid tracking model. You need to match the right technology to the risk level of the specific asset.

Using GPS Tracking Devices

This type of tracker is perfect for VMS boards, arrow boards, portable traffic lights, solar light towers and any other expensive pieces of equipment.

These are your highest capital investments. If they go missing, thousands of dollars walk out the door. For these pieces of roadwork equipment an active, hardwired or battery powered GPS is the suggested standard.

By installing a dedicated GPS tracker you get real-time, minute-by-minute visibility on a live map. If that piece of equipment is hitched and moved outside of a designated geofenced work zone, your operations manager receives an instant alert. Similarly, a portable traffic light tracker ensures that you can dispatch recovery teams immediately if it is tampered with overnight.

Using Low Cost Tracking Tags

Tracking tags can be used for mid-tier traffic management equipment. For example, multi-message signs, heavy-duty barriers and custom roadwork signs.

Interestingly, this is where traffic management companies lose the most money. These items are too expensive to lose regularly, but too numerous to justify a monthly GPS subscription for each one.

Some businesses have been tempted to use tags (like Apple AirTags) as anti-theft trackers for traffic signs. However, they quickly hit the big problem of stalking alerts. Consumer tags are designed to alert nearby smartphones if a tracker is “following” them. The first problem with this is that a thief would soon be alerted to the presence of a tracker and can dispose of it. Another potential issue is if the roadwork equipment is in a public work zone – passing drivers or on-site subcontractors could receive annoying “Unknown Tracker” pop-ups on their phones.

The professional alternative are Biztags. These silent asset trackers utilise crowdsourced Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) networks to ping their location, but they do it silently. Using Bluetooth trackers for traffic management gives you the perfect middle ground as you can start tracking multi-message signs and barriers accurately without cellular subscription fees and without triggering warnings.

Protect Your Traffic Management Assets

For roadwork equipment like traffic cones, bollards and guide posts you may feel that tagging individual items isn’t viable. In this case simple bulk-allocation tracking, such as tracking tagged transport cages and referencing digital site plans will ensure complete count accuracy upon retrieval.

By combining active GPS for your top tier assets and silent BLE tags for roadside signage, you can eliminate a lot of costly guesswork and ensure no gear is left, lost or stolen.

Get in touch with our team today to discuss a hybrid solution for your roadwork equipment.

Schedule a discovery session with our team to find out more.

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Woman driving her car with both hands on steering wheel with car GPS tracking installed

API & Custom Integration Experts

With more than 25 years of spatial data experience, Tracklogix makes vehicle and asset tracking easy, reliable and affordable. Our tracking experts will find the perfect solution for your needs.

Phone: 1300 672 072