Altus Traffic

A digital-swat team enabling seamless service delivery: Altus Traffic

4mation works with Altus’s core business application, ensuring it runs seamlessly by providing high up-time, fixes and integrations. Our mission-critical work enables Altus to effectively deliver 2.5 million hours of traffic services annually and maintain the safety of their 1600+ staff.

The story

Altus Traffic is Australia’s largest professional traffic control services provider. They specialise in the expert management of traffic and compliance, assisting over 1,300 organisations.

Working with us since 2019, we have a transparent and open relationship with Altus. They rely on us to problem solve and provide solutions so that they can deliver their work safely and efficiently.

“Having worked with 4mation since 2019, we’ve been able to utilise 4mation across a variety of projects and disciplines – everything from database management, mobile app integration, and development of our core systems. We have always been impressed by their ability to solve any issue we throw at them.”

Michael Dipietro IT Operations Systems Engineer

The challenge

Over 1600+ staff use the core business system we maintain, and with a fleet of over 1000 vehicles, it must be operational at all times. The core system feeds information to all of Altus’s users, including customer service, planners, allocators and traffic controllers who depend on the system to effectively do their jobs.

Real-time data to ensure the safety of their staff

The safety of Altus’ staff depends on the data entered into the system. The correct data must be given to the traffic controllers so that they do not:

1. Put themselves in danger
2. Stop traffic in the wrong spot.

With traffic controllers using the system onsite to get the latest news, including safety alerts and traffic notifications, we are Altus’s go-to experts to ensure the system is functioning correctly.

If this system goes down, the implications range from the inconvenient and expensive i.e causing a massive traffic jam, through to the life-threatening and critical i.e people getting injured or killed.

We are on-call 24/7. If the system has an issue, we resolve bugs and problem solve effectively. SQL databases have daily and weekly maintenance plans set up not only to increase throughput but also to ensure that we always have fail safes to rely on. With alerts set up with levels of impact, we monitor for problems proactively and address them accordingly.

Enabling Altus to make data-driven decisions

Internal reports are generated to help facilitate safe and effective service delivery, including ‘near misses’ and performance KPIs.

Our expertise in collaborating with multiple third parties gives Altus the ability to see status updates and a snapshot overview of their infrastructure. Such snapshots could include analysis of recurring failures of assets, maintenance of vehicles, and compliance checks. Through their core business application, Altus improves processes and delivers better service.

Integrations with third-parties

We are the critical link integrating their mobile application, Alloc8 and their checklist and inspection platform, iAuditor to Altus’s core business application.

What do we integrate?	What does the integration do?
Alloc8 assigns people to their shift with notifications, ensuring that workers get their destinations at the right time and have the correct information to prepare for it.	Altus’s field services and schedulers use Alloc8, ensuring there are enough traffic controllers, vehicles and equipment to perform the job, plus all of the essential information such as plans, permits and documents are shared.
iAuditor is a checklist and inspection platform from Safety Culture to prove compliance with the latest industry guidelines.	Altus’s management and administration staff use iAuditor, to perform routine inspections on depots and equipment. This data is collected within iAuditor and can then be communicated to Branch Managers to action if needed.
Google Maps is used to determine Turn-by-turn and radial distance calculations from depot to worksite travel.	Altus uses Google Maps to show live traffic data and sits on monitors in depots to provide real-time information to site workers.
Apple, Android, Mailjet and Esendex are used to send important information between staff.	Altus uses push notifications (Apple and Android) to notify staff of job shifts. They also use emails (Mailjet) and SMS notifications (Essendex) to communicate with staff.

These applications feed information to the core system so that work carried out can be monitored. The integrations provide a better experience for their traffic controllers and managers, as the alternative is manually compiling paper reports.

The integrations we developed give Altus the data it needs to be operational through cloud solutions and database enhancements. We sync over 5000 reports per week from Alloc8, allowing management to analyse real-time data, from pre-start checklists, timesheets and job reports.

Having several third-party platforms can slow the core system down, so to combat this we archive data, optimise queries, and add indexes to help their core platforms remain stable. Remaining flexible is essential as we have to problem-solve and manage the limitations of third-party providers as they evolve.

Technologies

We manage multiple repositories for Altus and provide access to critical data to other platforms.

Technology	How was the technology used?
C#/.Net	The .NET infrastructure of the Altus Intranet allows a scalable, fast and secure system that is able to grow and expand with the changing needs of the business.
Xamarin	The Windows mobile development suite Xamarin enables the Altus team to provide onsite job conditions reports from mobile devices seamlessly. This ease of use app provides a key line of communication between the onsite team and head office.
ASP.NET	The ASP.NET front end environment allows the Altus team to quickly analyse reporting data from onsite inspections, staff eLearning modules and general company management.
Microsoft SQL server	Microsoft SQL Server has been used to manage and scale the database requirements of Altus. Microsoft SQL Server is able to deliver a scalable environment while also maintaining a high level of performance.
Microsoft Azure	Microsoft Azure Cloud storage has allowed for a seamless cloud-hosted environment with integrated CI/CD pipelines which allows for quick deployment.

The result

We act as the conduit between all applications, enabling Altus to make better-informed, data-driven decisions.

We know their system inside out, and they can turn to us whenever a challenge arises. “We ensure that their systems are robust, and Altus can rely on us to find and deliver solutions. We are their special forces team that solve their challenges,” says 4mation Business Analyst James Prijatna.

Ultimately our expert advice and ability to work with multiple third parties enable Altus to adopt new technologies, improve processes and create a safe environment for their staff.

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