New system gives Brighton real-time control of highways

Brighton & Hove City Council has implemented a new asset management system across its highways network, bringing inspections, contractor workflows and resident reporting into a single platform.

The system is being used to manage roads, street lighting, signs, rights of way and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, replacing a legacy platform that was difficult to use and relied on manual processes.

Asset data is now centralised, with mobile tools enabling inspectors and contractors to capture information, including photographs, and upload it directly from site.

“Anecdotally it has given us much better control of our service. Data is transparent and available through dashboards,” Stacey Hollingworth, Highway Strategic Asset Manager at Brighton & Hove City Council, told Cities Today. “This allows us to easily track inspections to ensure they are completed on time. It allows us to monitor staff to ensure that workloads are distributed fairly and so that peaks in workload can be identified and managed more effectively.”

This is helping with staff wellbeing as well as ensuring that reports from the public are actioned in a timely manner. It is also improving the UK city’s ability to manage contractors and KPIs to ensure value for money and contract compliance.

The council has also integrated its online reporting forms directly into the system, Confirm from Brightly Software, removing the need for manual processing before issues reach operational teams.

“It allows us to get the enquiry to the right person in order to action it without the delay of manually entering the information on the system,” she explained. “This means that we can prioritise enquiries based on risk and deal with them more efficiently.”

The rollout included the migration of a large volume of historic data and was completed without downtime or data loss. Inspectors were able to begin identifying defects within an hour of the system going live.

The system was initially deployed to manage highways inspections, lighting, signs and rights of way, and has since been expanded to include EV infrastructure. The council is now exploring the inclusion of additional assets as part of a phased rollout.