Smart Roads, Smarter Future: Altus at Mobility Live 2025

This week Altus were pleased to join a panel of industry specialists at Highways AU to discuss the ways in which digital tools, automation and real time reporting promised to transform industry. The panel covered a wide range of topics including where technology was leading industry, what were the most common barriers to adoption and what industry may look like in a decade if we handle this transformation well.

L to R: James Pennings - Chief Commercial Officer, Altus Group. Matthew Burns - Director, Statewide Maintenance & Delivery, Transport for NSW. Matty Maher - Owner & Managing Director, MIEPOL. Kris Sharkey - Senior Account Executive, Webfleet. Thomas Morrissy - TMAA Advocacy and Policy Strategist.

Our Chief Commercial Officer, James Pennings spoke to the Workzone Digitisation solution being employed among Altus Group customers and how this was leading to new standards in safety, operational efficiency & transparency, sustainability and access to empirical data. "We've taken a sizeable bet that workzone digitisation will be the most impactful innovation our industry will see over the coming years, given it's ability to address problems that are very difficult or otherwise impossible to solve in an analogue environment. Specifically, our conviction is in a platform that can accommodate multiple sensor inputs and multiple data streams in order to liberate new highly valuable use cases not previously available, both now and into the future."

There was plenty of discussion on how technology adoption is likely to occur and what role regulators and asset owners could play in fast tracking innovation so that it may have lasting impact. Various barriers to adoption were acknowledged including frameworks for decision making, commercial models, access to technology and understanding who could best drive execution in an efficient way. What was clear however, was the need to remove barriers that industry and customers could benefit from.

The panel concluded with a thought experiment on what the industry may look like in 10 years and what may surprise us the most. Key themes included the developments being seen in autonomous vehicles, robotics, telematics and camera's and the overall evolution occurring in data collection and reporting, leading some to conclude that the traffic management companies of the next decade may look more like advanced technology companies. While we can often overestimate the change that can occur in the short term, we can similarly underestimate the change that can happen over longer time frames.

Thanks to the TMAA's Thomas Morrisy for moderating and each of the panel members for an informative and insightful discussion.