Customer
Roma Capitale
Areas of Intervention
Subject Matter of the Contract
- 800 kilometres of roads
- 11 million sqm of surface areas
- 2,2 million sqm of sidewalks
- 600 Main Roads
Assets Under Management
The Municipality of Rome is as large as nine major cities. Indeed, with its 129,000 hectares, it extends over an area as large as that of Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Bari, Catania, and Palermo combined. The total combined length of its roads is approximately 5,500 kilometres, outclassing any other Italian city (Bari 550 Km, Bologna 770 Km, Catania 600 Km, Florence 750 Km, Genoa 1,400 Km, Milan 1,500 Km, Naples 1,090 Km, Turin 1,300 Km, Trieste 380 Km) or European city (the Centre of Paris measures approximately 1,880 Km). More than 6 million trips on average are made every day within the Municipality of Rome. During the morning peak hour (from 7:30 am to 8:30 am), approximately 600 thousands trips are commute trips, i.e., trips for work, school or business purposes.
Business Sectors and Results
A complicated asset to manage
The existence of an efficient road network is obviously crucial for cities, to ensure both adequate levels of mobility and accessibility to the entire municipal area and a level of security and safety in compliance with the regulations in force.
The significant urban transformation that all cities underwent in the last few years have predominantly concerned the buildings, and no substantial changes were made to the roads, except for isolated cases.
Often, roads built a long time ago, and mainly for local use, have also become urban expressways, even of considerable importance.
This has caused maintenance and upgrade work on the road network to account for an increasing share of the budgets of the main cities, both in technical and financial terms, and at a time when finding economic and human resources is becoming harder and harder.
Management objectives
The goal is to manage Rome's Major Roads in an integrated and rational manner to achieve and ensure the following main objectives:
Usability and safety – Make the road network more usable and safer for the users, including by rehabilitating, managing and promoting the roads. Indeed:
- The city's development over the centuries, and its expansion along the ancient consular roads, caused the existing road network to be continuously used without making any structural and organic innovations
- Maintenance work in the past decades consisted only in repairs and servicing, without any proper medium- and long-term planning
Rationalisation of expenses – Outsourcing maintenance activities under concession arrangements allows the Public Administration to determine a fixed, constant annual expense that is lower than the cost incurred when they were performed in-house for the entire term of the concession, initially set at nine years.
Improved organisation, continuity and innovation – Managing the road network, in terms of both maintenance and safety, is complex and requires significant organisational and operating efforts, specialist resources and “extraordinary” funds. A structured and purposeful approach saves the Administration technical, legal, and operational problems. In the case of the Municipality of Rome, Romeo Gestioni implemented the following measures:
- It set up a Control Room managing all aspects of the road network in an integrated manner
- It planned ordinary maintenance and upgrade work in an integrated manner
- It centralized the management, supervision, and coordination of the works
- It performed the works using state-of-the-art technologies
- It carried out surveillance, supervision, emergency response, and continuous monitoring of the roads (qualifying under art. 112 of the Consolidation Law on Local Government, local public services)
- It rehabilitated, managed and promoted the road network
Services provided
Romeo Gestioni set up a Control Room to manage in an integrated manner all the aspects of the road network under concession. The Control Room performed call centre activities using an operations control centre available 24/7.
The purpose of the Control Room is to perform the following activities:
- managing the reports necessary to provide emergency responses: more than 1,500 responses per month
- carrying out continuous surveillance: more than 900 Km covered every day
- managing claims: 50 per month and falling
- managing the operational teams: approximately 50 teams are sent out on the road every day
- surveying the road network: more than 50 million data items
- updating the IT system: more than 2,000 new data items per day
- monitoring the roads: 100 Km monitored every night
- planning and coordinating the works: 101 projects carried out
The innovative model and the methodological approach
The methodological approach adopted consists in the adaptation of the classic principle of quality management manuals, "plan, do, check, act", updated by introducing planning techniques based on historical data about the length of interventions, swift execution causing minimal disruption to the citizens, and innovative techniques for measuring results (not just the tangible ones) based on objective measurements, and therefore on verifiable parameters, such as the traction coefficient and carrying capacity.
The continuous measurement of the overall characteristics of the roads' surface and structure following the interventions ensures the network remains in good working order, and generally prevent driving comfort from deteriorating—including by means of appropriate corrective actions—, thus improving safety.
Innovative techniques and instruments supporting the model
The integration between data management and planned interventions are two sides of the same activity: only by combining management and interventions is it possible to create an analytical model for planning and monitoring interventions as well as assessing them for the purpose of managing and promoting the roads under concession.
Indeed, knowing the characteristics of the roads’ surface and structure represents the basis for planning any maintenance work to be carried out on the road network.
Managing the roads effectively requires to assess these characteristics using equipment that allows to continuously collect sensitive data, necessary to identify statistically significant values for each road section.
The monitoring of the road network's status using "TigerCar", the special vehicle developed by Romeo Gestioni, allows to assess its deterioration and prepare technical reports.
The digital images collected in this way are post-processed everyday using the dedicated software module of Sistema Tiger Viabile, allowing to identify and classify in a data base the different instances of road deterioration found (holes, cuts, road deformations such as longitudinal and/or reticular cracks, etc.) in a fully automated manner.
The results of Romeo Gestioni's integrated management model
The first result of this process is the opportunity to provide more information to the citizens, therefore making them more aware of changes as they occur.
In detail, the data available are: the risk map of the road assets under concession and the map of their deterioration, condition, or working order.
The above data are necessary for:
- Planning interventions to reduce risks and road deterioration rates
- Restoring the efficiency and functionality of the roads
- Managing and promoting the main arteries
- Restructuring the foundations of the most deteriorated arteries
- Planning the interventions on the roads together with public sub-contractors and in coordination with the Concessionaire’s work plans
- Coordinating the administrative, authorisation, and legal procedures for all events affecting the roads
Indeed, the statistical data acquired from the Municipal Police’s data base show a reduction in road accidents.
Moreover, claims for damages (vehicles and pedestrians) brought against the Concessionaire fell sharply.