Case Studies

Glasgow City Council

Glasgow City Council, Scotland’s largest local authority, has quadrupled productivity in its carriageway permanent patching programme since it took delivery of an MH90 Multihog multipurpose tractor fitted with a patch planer attachment. It has also improved operational health and safety by reducing the exposure of its workforce to the risks of hand-arm vibration.

A spell of harsh winters has made efficient patch planing more of a priority in recent years, and Road Operations Manager David Russell and his team were keen to investigate alternatives to traditional methods as he explains: “With a road network of 1,750 km to maintain, manual operations with a five man squad using a team of jackhammers were quite slow and laborious. Depending on the size of potholes and their proximity to each other we could expect to cover around 50 to 100 m² a day. We were very impressed when we saw a demo of the Multihog / patch planer combination and realised it could help us to speed up repair work.”

The Multihog patch planer was developed to offer faster, cleaner and quieter planing compared to other machines on the market. It enables road surfaces to be planed to a width of 400mm and a depth of 125mm and saves on the costs of infill materials by accurately removing only what is necessary. This produces a sound base for reinstatement and helps to reduce transport and recycling costs by creating a re-usable material.

The Multihog has definitely proved its worth at Glasgow as the impressive statistics demonstrate: the five man team can now reinstate between 200 and 400 m² a day, so is at least four times more productive. Repairs are finished much more quickly, reducing the disruption to traffic flow in the very busy city. David’s previous experience with other planers was that they were too lightweight for this very heavy duty application, but his verdict is that “the Multihog’s solid construction and powerful hydraulics make it more than up to the job. Its road speed of 40km/h also enables it to travel independently around the city from one job to the next rather than having to be loaded on and off a trailer and this manoeuvrability is much more convenient. Like every other local authority in the UK we had a huge problem with potholes mainly due to the recent extreme winters. Our programme of permanent patching repairs using the Multihog has made a great contribution towards rectifying the situation.”

  • Glasgow City Council
  • MH

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