Colas uses AI on unified Databricks data platform to assess road maintenance needs from video footage
Colas Group
Colas Group worked with Databricks and OpenValue to unify data from hundreds of subsidiaries across 50 countries onto a single cloud platform combining Databricks, Microsoft Azure and open source technologies. Beyond helping reduce energy consumption and optimize industrial equipment efficiency, Colas is piloting a tool that uses AI to assess video footage of roads and determine maintenance requirements.
Overview
Colas Group worked with Databricks and OpenValue to unify data from hundreds of subsidiaries across 50 countries onto a single cloud platform combining Databricks, Microsoft Azure and open source technologies. Beyond helping reduce energy consumption and optimize industrial equipment efficiency, Colas is piloting a tool that uses AI to assess video footage of roads and determine maintenance requirements.
The challenge
Colas Group is a highly decentralized organization with hundreds of legal entities across 50 countries that were not sharing data, creating and gathering it in diverse sources, methods, formats and applications; for example, 54 separate HR systems meant Colas could not accurately or quickly report its total headcount, and sensor data from industrial equipment was too voluminous to aggregate into insight.
The solution
Colas worked with Databricks and its SI partner OpenValue to build a 100% cloud infrastructure combining Databricks, Microsoft Azure and open source technologies that unifies data from every subsidiary and source, on-premises and cloud-based, with 24/7 availability across time zones. The team used the platform to help the Materials and Equipment department monitor asset usage and energy consumption by overlaying variables like weather, location and legislation. Colas is also piloting a tool that uses AI to assess video footage of roads and determine maintenance requirements.
Reported business value
The Materials and Equipment department used the platform to reduce energy consumption and increase efficiency of Colas' energy-intensive industrial equipment fleet, with up-to-date visibility of the entire fleet, all equipment and usage rates. During COVID-19, the team built an app in just two weeks using Databricks Notebooks and Scheduler to automate collection of site-reopening data across Colas' 15,000 sites. Colas has also reduced the time to market for its data science initiatives, enabling faster testing and deployment of new use cases.
Sources
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