Case Study: Tidal Flow Lane – VVB Engineering

An Introduction to VVB Engineering and the Project

VVB Engineering offers Mechanical, Electrical, and Telecom engineering expertise and services for UK infrastructure projects. They design, install, commission, and maintain various projects, including supporting multiple Highways programmes – to help keep the UK moving.

The team at Messagemaker Displays was contacted to provide a new tidal flow solution along the A470 North Road in Cardiff. Our signs were reverse-engineered to replace the old Thermotor Lane Control Signs whilst maintaining integration with the existing UTC control system.

The original signs at the site on North Road were regularly failing due to water ingress issues. The system that these signs relied on consisted of 3 separate gantries with 6 signs on each gantry (3 primary and 3 secondary signs).

The main issue is that all 18 signs needed to be functional at all times for the whole system to be operational – so when one or more signs failed, the system would be forced into failsafe mode. This meant that for safety reasons limits were imposed on the operators in the control room for setting different modes until the issue is fixed.

Due to the age of the existing signs, it was becoming very difficult and costly for VVB to repair failed signs to maintain the system. Every time a sign failed, either a lane closure or complete road closure had to be set up to access and remove the failed signs.

The Product

Lane Control Signs