EastLink toll road maintenance
The paperless route
Nearmap supports ConnectEast in managing their assets and ensuring the road’s long-term viability.
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“With new developments, we can view Nearmap to see change over time and make sure developers are adhering to requirements outlined in development plans.”
Simon Campbell, Program Management Office Controller, ConnectEastThe challenge
EastLink connects four freeways and links the major activity centres of Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston to the rest of Melbourne. The EastLink corridor is a rapidly growing area with extensive commercial, industrial, and residential development. The addition of thousands of properties and the associated population growth impacts how ConnectEast plans, manages, and maintains its assets, including slip roads, sound barriers, vegetation cover, and water drainage.
The solution
Proactive asset maintenance and management
ConnectEast, the operator of a 39km EastLink toll road in Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, uses Nearmap high-resolution imagery to monitor current conditions along the EastLink corridor, identify areas of change, and take accurate remote measurements of assets. This allows for quick and easy gathering of information on distances, widths, and volumes along the network. Nearmap Oblique imagery below shows a section of the Monash Freeway Interchange.
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The frequency of Nearmap captures helps the ConnectEast team monitor new developments and keep track of asset conditions, reducing the cost and time spent on site visits. With this level of imagery intelligence, the team can stay in the know about variations in construction activity, while also monitoring the effectiveness and longevity of previous maintenance work.
When new construction occurs alongside the toll road, EastLink closely monitors changes in the surrounding environment.
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The Nearmap Oblique image above shows a steel sculpture alongside EastLink titled ‘Public Art Strategy’, which features a 13-metre high bird contemplating a yellow worm. The artwork was renovated in 2021.
ConnectEast uses Nearmap to assist in maintaining various assets and managing vegetation. Nearmap is ideal in assisting to identify changes over time, providing a useful tool to help prioritise in-person inspections.
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Data-backed refurbishment and revegetation
ConnectEast is responsible for ongoing maintenance of all assets associated with the EastLink Motorway. Nearmap content plays a key supporting role in the Asset Management Strategy and decision making on the timing of refurbishment or replacement of various components.
The Nearmap Vertical image below (with ‘roads’ layer selected) shows an ex-quarry site alongside EastLink, currently being reinstated for residential development.
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Seventeen years into the life of EastLink, ConnectEast is replenishing plants and replacing mulch, along with other periodic maintenance activities, part of its overall agreement with the Victorian government. Nearmap imagery helps identify priority areas for revegetation, and shows the development of previous plantings, reducing the need for in-person vegetation inspections.
Maintenance teams also use Nearmap to remotely measure areas of garden beds and calculate the corresponding quantities of mulch required.
“When we’re ordering hundreds of cubic metres of mulch at a time for just one garden bed, using Nearmap we get a much more accurate estimation of the area and the cost of work, whilst also assessing the safest and most efficient access points for the various plant that may be required,” said Simon Campbell.
ConnectEast is responsible for 63 wetlands along the EastLink corridor, where water runs through ponds and reservoirs to be naturally treated by reeds and micro-organisms. The treated water flows into arable creeks or wetlands managed by Melbourne Water. Nearmap imagery helps the maintenance teams monitor wetland health and vegetation density around the water bodies along the road.
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Increased collaboration and streamlined operations
The ConnectEast team accesses and collaborates on Nearmap content through MapBrowser, working with Maximo as their asset work management platform to coordinate job requests, incorporating core information including GPS coordinates, asset numbers and QR codes – centralised and accessible via mobile tablets for a paperless digitised workflow.
When major transport infrastructure like EastLink is constructed, its ongoing daily maintenance ensures long-term viability.
Nearmap is part of the wider technology ecosystem that provides the ConnectEast team with up-to-date, clear location intelligence, helping streamline asset maintenance to manage costs and maintain efficient operations.
Gain inspection-level property intelligence that reduces field dependency
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