Innovation turns to gold

An ingenious idea to turn garbage trucks into mobile road monitoring units has won Moreton Bay Regional Council gold in the 2020 Local Government Managers Australia (LGMA) Queensland Awards for Excellence.

Council took out the award ahead of 76 other Queensland councils.

Mayor Peter Flannery says the idea to affix road scanning technology on garbage trucks to automatically capture live, quality footage is nothing short of genius.

“Garbage trucks travel to every corner of our region, so who better to monitor the condition of our roads and automatically report potholes,” Mayor Flannery says.

Simple, yet brilliant

“It’s such a simple idea, it’s genius, and think that’s exactly why it’s a winner. The Moreton Bay Region has a large and extensive road and transport network worth more than $2 billion, so keeping on top of the condition of every kilometre can be difficult and expensive,” he says.

“This solution is supremely efficient, comes at minimal extra cost, issues are reported in real time and best of all we’re using vehicles that are already travelling our roads.”

The initiative’s proven so successful, we’re installing another 10 scanners on garbage trucks so that by the end of 2020 we’ll have 15 equipped trucks.

“By the end of 2021, I want 15 more. We have even evolved this tech to help identify uneven footpaths and are investigating robotics options to scan our stormwater pipes for defects,” Mayor Flannery says.

“We have even evolved this tech to help identify uneven footpaths and are investigating robotics options to scan our stormwater pipes for defects.”

No shortage of ideas

Another council initiative, an industry-leading suite of drawings to integrate wildlife movement infrastructures into roads and a 1,700 workforce restructure to operate from home during strict coronavirus restrictions also made the finals.

“I’d also like to congratulation our infrastructure planning and ICT teams on being finalists in the sustainability category for our fauna movement infrastructure drawings and in the teamwork category for IT capability and readiness,” Mayor Flannery says.

For more information about the awards, visit the website

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