Gateway Motorway Services (GMS) is responsible for the operations and maintenance of one of Brisbane’s largest iconic pieces of infrastructure – the Gateway Bridge and Motorway. An icon of Brisbane which up to recently held two world records in construction. GMS must manage 64km of motorway including 88 bridges, responsible for the safe passage of over 320,000 Brisbane motorists per day. It possessed the largest single concrete girder span of 260m and the largest single boxed precast concrete block in the world. It is GMS goal to connect communities of Brisbane with confidence. Confidence that they will reach their destination safely, confidence they will reach their destination timely, and confidence they receive value for money for their toll journey. To achieve business excellence GMS introduced Australia’s first Motorcycle Traffic Response Unit. An innovation in “congestion busting” leaving an ongoing legacy for the travelling community.

GMS is a disruptor in the Traffic Incident Management Service (TIMS) industry and maintains the motorway in such a way that it is statistically one of the safest travel routes in Australia. The business is customer focused by ensuring the road users safety is it’s first, second and third priority. So much so that GMS provide free services for the Brisbane community without any expectations of returned gratuity. For example, GMS will provide the road user with 10 litres of fuel for free if they run out of fuel. They will tow the driver off the network for free if they breakdown. GMS introduced an innovative business model integrating road maintenance with incident response. No other provider in the industry has such a model. GMS adopts a recruiting strategy that targets ex-military and exemergency services personnel which possess a skill set that is marketable and transferrable to the industry resulting in industry leading levels of customer care and satisfaction.

The most important contributing factor that contributed to the success of the MTRU initiative was was the project management functionality of the business. The team was full of motivated, inspired and capable staff. The business drove these qualities and set a fine example throughout the life of the project. This was necessary as one of the key risks identified to the project was staff dynamics and poor behaviour. All milestone and review meetings were created to be lean and useful. The team created concise agendas for meetings and distribute it in advance. The successful implementation of MTRU was solely attributed to the excellent business skills of the team.

Providing first response to serious motor vehicle accidents, grass fires, medical episodes and saving people at risk of self-harm is a daily core service provision that suits veterans within GMS. They possess the demeanour and temperament to manage critical incident and deescalate events quickly and efficiently.  The operating conditions of the project eliminated current practices of stopping in a live lane when providing first response to a traffic incident. It also eliminated in lane work activity for the first responder. Since the culture change in the business and deep dive self-reflection which fostered new business models such as MTRU, GMS now possesses an enviable staff retention rate of 100% in 2019. Customer satisfaction rate is 96% and staff satisfaction rate at 83%. GMS has been awarded three new contracts in the last 12 months due to their improved performance and innovations.