Civiltech: Lending a hand

Recent local government audits have highlighted several key obstacles and issues relating to the delivery and maintenance of local roads. Civiltech Solutions is aiming to curb this trend, through the application of its innovative platform.

Maintaining local roads is becoming a greater challenge by the day, with increasing financial, environmental and community expectations often straining the capabilities of local municipalities.

Reports, such as that completed by the Western Australian Government late in 2025, paint a mixed picture. As it states, the state – and by extension, nation’s – “size and scale make maintaining regional local roads a highly challenging and complex task.”

Western Australia alone consists of more than 113,000 kilometres of local roads, connecting an area of 2.5 million square kilometres, with 107 local governments bearing the monumental task of road maintenance.

One of the most prominent challenges is a lack of data.

Many local councils face gaps in their asset management plans, meaning they lack necessary information about their road networks, such as the condition of various assets, the extent of issues, and areas needing attention.

Funding and growing environmental uncertainty have emerged as major challenges for councils.

As Leigh Carnall, Founder and Chief Executive Officer – Civiltech Solutions explains, not having access to key data makes effective maintenance and long-term planning extremely difficult.

“Being able to get a whole picture of the road network, so not just the potholes, but the cracking, the lumps and the bumps, the depressions that lead to structural failure, as well as the signage and the line marking aspects is incredibly powerful,” he says.

“That’s just some examples of the key data that can feed into improved decision making and resource allocation.”

Councils currently face uncertainties and constraints around funding. Securing grants often means making tough choices to prioritise certain projects, sometimes at the expense of regular maintenance.

Having to choose between immediate repairs and longer-term strategies isn’t viable, one of the many reasons why Civiltech Solutions was founded.

Civiltech Solutions empowers councils to take a proactive, data-driven, and strategic approach to road and asset management, transforming fragmented or incomplete information into actionable plans and infrastructure improvements.

It does this by providing technology and services to help councils and local governments manage, maintain, and improve their road networks using both hardware and software.

Just some examples of the former are sensor systems and scanning technology that’s compatible with existing council vehicles and personnel, allowing flexible data collection based on specific needs.

Information gathered supports councils with day-to-day maintenance planning, forward works, and long-term financial strategies.

As Carnall explains, this solution is designed to make road asset management more data-driven, efficient, and responsive to council needs.

“We’ll sit down with our users to make sure they get the most out of their data,” he says. “Creating dashboards and specific reports, that’s what we provide as part of that service.

“We don’t just give councils a map or list of 5000 potholes and a million cracks, it’s about supporting the establishment of a targeted reseal program for example, to prevent defects like this from occurring in the first place.”

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Community and funding

Another key challenge often faced by councils is balancing community expectations and requests with financial constraints.

It’s an aspect that Carnall appreciates, as someone with 25 years’ experience in the local government segment.

“From a road user’s perspective, we may see the same pothole or same busted sign and think that council isn’t doing enough,” he says.

“When councils have thousands of kilometres to manage, what we see as users is a very isolated and very segmented focus, as opposed to a problem to the whole network.”

It’s this understanding and empathy that’s enabled Carnall to develop Civiltech Solutions as a platform designed by industry experts, for industry experts.

“By understanding what the community desires, and having the full picture thanks to data, we can begin to explore where taxpayer funds are being spent and how,” he says.

“That way, councils can introspectively assess what their residents are getting for their money, so to speak.”

Civiltech’s platform is designed to directly address pain points for municipalities.

Information and summaries are also capable of being shared with the community, helping to optimise transparency with local residents.

To support larger infrastructure works, Civiltech Solution’s platform and service is also capable of helping with funding applications, with detailed data, imagery, and reports capable of strengthening grant and funding submissions. The team can also assist directly in drafting, editing, and finalising applications to increase the likelihood of success.

Environmental pressures

Another barrier to funding, which Civiltech Solutions aims to break down, are the challenges posed by severe weather events and climate change.

Councils face increasing problems due to more frequent and unpredictable weather events that damage local roads, requiring more reactive and resilient maintenance strategies.

Carnall says councils can at times miss out on disaster relief funding simply because they lack adequate pre-event imagery or data to demonstrate need, making it difficult to secure post-disaster funding.

In regions such as the Northern Territory, gathering updated data on road conditions is particularly challenging and expensive, requiring costly travel to remote communities to document environmental impacts.

Not to mention industries such as mining or forestry that can put stress on road networks, which can potentially combine with climate challenges.

By transforming raw data into actionable dashboards and reports, Civiltech assists councils in identifying climate-vulnerable areas, planning maintenance that mitigates future damage, and prioritising work in areas at environmental risk – all factors that contribute to improved and longer-term residence of the local road network.

“This platform is about so much more than just potholes,” Carnall says. “It’s about setting up your local road network for decades to come.”