WDM has announced a new collaboration with SmartVision, a cutting-edge AI insight technology developed by Metricell. The partnership brings together strategic highway surveying expertise and a proprietary neural network designed to operate on real-time data, to support local authorities with PAS 2161 compliant road condition monitoring reporting.
By combining WDM’s long-established leadership in highway surveying and asset management solutions, with the pioneering SmartVision AI platform, the two organisations will deliver innovative, scalable surveying services. This collaborative solution will meet the requirements of the new PAS 2161 road condition monitoring standard, helping highway authorities transition confidently to the new national approach whilst retaining the granular objective data collected by WDM’s Road Assessment Vehicles (RAV) which operate to the SCANNER specification.
The introduction of PAS 2161 marks a significant change in how road condition data is collected and reported across English Local Authorities. Through this collaboration, WDM and SmartVision will provide customers with a comprehensive solution that combines engineering expertise with cutting-edge technology, merging detailed survey expertise with AI Innovation.
WDM demonstrates decades of experience in highway surveying and strategic road management planning. Utilising its modular software platform, Highways Infrastructure Asset Management System, the company has long supported highway authorities with data-driven insights that inform maintenance prioritisation, resource allocation and safety improvements across road networks.
SmartVision’s advanced artificial intelligence capabilities uses computer vision models to analyse road surface conditions and infrastructure assets from captured imagery, delivering the analysed data through the SmartVision platform. The system can automatically detect and classify defects and features across the highway network, providing scalable and efficient inspection capabilities.
By combining these complementary strengths, the collaboration enables an effective approach to PAS 2161 data collection, which pairs engineering principles and survey strategy with automated analytics and digital inspection tools.
As local authorities adapt to the new national standard, reliable and consistent road condition data will be essential to support decision-making and reporting requirements, as well as targeting the most essential works and justifying cost.
The WDM / SmartVision collaboration supports Local Authorities through the transition to PAS 2161 enabling access to PAS 2161 compliant survey data supported by both specialist highway engineering knowledge and advanced AI analysis. This approach helps ensure that condition assessments remain accurate, repeatable, and scalable across networks while maintaining confidence in results used to inform national statistics and maintenance planning.
Beyond compliance, the partnership reflects a wider focus, ensuring that road condition data delivers genuine value for asset management programmes, enabling highways authorities to access a wide range of additional RCM data from a single survey.
High-quality survey data provides far more than a snapshot of road condition. When collected and interpreted correctly, it becomes a foundation for wider infrastructure insight, supporting the monitoring of additional highway assets, improving maintenance planning, and enabling authorities to move towards more proactive and predictive network management.
By combining WDM’s survey expertise with SmartVision’s AI powered analytics, the collaboration aims to provide local authorities with detailed, more actionable datasets. Ultimately, it is the quality and integrity of this data that enables highway authorities to plan effective maintenance strategies, optimise budgets, and deliver safer, more resilient road networks to benefit the communities they serve.
PIC-WDM
