Ringway Infrastructure Services, the UK highway maintenance specialists, has begun equipping its winter maintenance fleet with satellite tracking from Masternaut.  With live vehicle and driver information made available over the web, Masternaut will help Ringway meet contractual obligations, improve safety, and manage their winter maintenance and gritting operations.

Ringway has selected Masternaut as their supplier of choice for vehicle telematics solutions and Masternaut is being fitted to a wide variety of vehicles with links to onboard sensors and data keypads.  Ringway operate over 400 winter maintenance vehicles throughout the UK and Masternaut will be installed as appropriate. From Devon to the North East of Scotland Ringway are responsible for approximately 27,000 kilometres of highway including the Dartford River Crossing and sections of the A1 trunk road.

"Masternaut has become a standard management tool and in order to meet contractual obligations and improve the management of winter operations all new spreaders are specified with Masternaut's vehicle tracking solution," said Scott Waldrop, Managing Director of Ringway Infrastructure Service, "Enabling us to deliver more efficient and productive works to our clients and helping us to keep the highway safe throughout the winter months."

Masternaut's on board telematics ensure that Ringway has real time visibility of its winter maintenance and gritting vehicles. Using satellite positioning technology and high speed communications Masternaut provides a record of individual vehicle movements that can be accessed in real time by any web enabled device. By automatically comparing pre planned routes and gritting activities against actual operations Ringway are able to quickly identify service issues, maintain an accurate record of activity and manage their performance against contractual or operational targets.

Masternaut also offers a Winter Reporting Module. Through integration with onboard vehicle sensors, from suppliers such as Econ and Schmidt, Masternaut is able to capture additional information, including the vehicle's spreading status together with the flow of salt and volume used, for example. This data enables Ringway to maintain accurate historical records, identify potential vehicle maintenance issues and provide detailed contract reporting.

"The information recorded by Masternaut supports our key performance indicator reporting," said Andy Wallington, Contracts Manager of Ringway Infrastructure Services. "In the event of a fault we can compare planned and actual routes, we can provide evidence of gritting activity and we can be proactive in the management of the health and safety of our drivers."