Highways England has agreed on a contract with IBI Group for an overhaul of its Electronic Service Delivery for Abnormal Loads (ESDAL) system.
Under a five-year, £3.6 million deal the Canadian based professional services company will upgrade the system originally developed by Serco in the early 2000s.
It provides an online platform for hauliers to provide legally required notifications on abnormal indivisible loads (AILs) on their vehicles, and to apply for special orders for the heaviest and largest loads. AILs cannot, without undue expense or risk, be divided or carried by normal vehicles.
The system also includes portals for road owners and the police, and a special order routing tool. It is based on an Oracle database and a configured Navteq mapping solution.
The contract notice from Highways England says the new ESDAL 4 will run as a cloud service with a workflow configuration separated from the software, thereby reducing the intellectual property rights held by the supplier.
It will also provide scope for the mapping to change in line with changes road layouts, and include standardised interfaces for the development of third party services such as a mobile phone app for making applications and informing police of AIL movements.
Image from iStock, Photon-Photos
