Optimizing for better winter road maintenance in Sweden

Svevia is the leading road and infrastructure provider in Sweden, maintaining thousands of kilometers of roads. The organization has over 1,900 employees and is known for its excellence and sustainable practices.

Meeting the challenge

The organization’s winter road maintenance goal is clear roads at all times, but meeting this goal had become more challenging. Increasing road use, rising costs, and fewer experienced workers have put more pressure on decision-makers as they strive to keep up with demand.

With so many projects going on at once, Svevia needed a better way to pinpoint which roads need service the soonest and efficiently deploy their fleet — all while keeping costs in check.

Seeing the solution

Svevia started looking into ways to digitalize and automate parts of winter road maintenance. After evaluating several systems, the organization chose the Vaisala Winter Maintenance Decision Support System (MDSS) for the whole organization. The MDSS provides an instant visual of weather and road state conditions on the roads Svevia maintains.

The system is configured to provide decision-makers with optimal route and action suggestions, which they utilize to focus the team’s efforts on the right areas with the most appropriate treatment. Svevia has also started integrating some additional mobile sensors into the solution to take full advantage of the real-time, route-based forecasts that the MDSS provides.

A better view

With the MDSS in place, Svevia is performing winter maintenance faster, more proactively and with higher quality.

Knowing which treatment to use ahead of time enables workers to use fewer chemicals, which saves money and is better for the environment. The system enables faster decision making so they know exactly which areas to target and in the right order — saving time and costs.

Automated route planning takes pressure off of decision-makers so they can focus on core activities. In fact, integrating the MDSS as part of its digital revolution has helped Svevia streamline its winter maintenance processes, making them an even more appealing employer.