CDO Technologies has announced that the city and county of Denver, Colo., has purchased its rugged RFID-enabled RoadTag solution to track information on street cuts—openings in roads that are typically made by utility companies to repair cables and pipes underground—on more than 6,100 lane-miles of roadway.

The ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) passive RFID tags, compliant with the EPC Gen 2 and ISO/IEC 18000-6C specifications, can be programmed with specific information about a street cut—such as the contractor name and permit number—and placed beneath the final layer of pavement. If a defect occurs in a patched street cut, CDO Technologies reports, engineers using an off-the-shelf, handheld device running CDO's RoadTag software can access the information encoded to the embedded tag and take immediate action. The implementation includes an Alien Technology ALR-9650 reader for programming tags, the Zebra Technologies MC-9190-Z handheld for reading tags in the field, Technologies ROI (TROI) embeddable tags for placement in patched pavement, and CDO's RoadTag handheld and desktop software, according to Robert Zielinski, CDO Technologies' director of commercial marketing.

During the next few months, CDO Technologies says, Denver's Department of Public Workswill evaluate the technology, adjust business processes, communicate with contractors, and calculate the total expected savings. With approximately 8,000 street-cut permits issued annually, the department expects the RoadTag solution to play an important role in the city's efforts to better serve constituents, the firm adds.

RoadTag was born two years ago, in response to a need by city engineers in Dayton, Ohio, to access real-time information regarding street cuts while they were on the road (see RFID Speeds Up Roadway Repairs). Thanks to the RFID solution, CDO reports, Dayton saved $60,000 in labor that was repurposed due to efficiencies in the first year of implementation.