Driving smart parking solutions

Finding one of the few remaining parking spaces at the shopping mall on a busy Saturday morning can be a thankless task. The sign at the entrance to the car park may have claimed there are 40 free bays, but it hasn’t revealed where exactly they are, so the next 15 minutes will likely be spent crawling around the multiple stories in search of that elusive spot.

It’s a familiar story for shoppers worldwide, but new parking technologies being pioneered by Sydney-based Park Agility are already easing the pain for thousands of drivers and providing significant benefits to car park operators.

Its advanced parking guidance systems use smart sensors to help drivers track down spaces more quickly, easing congestion and reducing the volume of carbon emissions belched out by lines of frustrated motorists endlessly circling instead of getting on with their day.

“It’s about using integrated digital technology to become faster, smarter and greener.”

“From the moment you drive in to when you actually get out of your car can be a very long time,” says Brad Burrows, Co-Founder and CEO of Park Agility. “So our goal has always been to reduce that inconvenience at peak times of day and improve the experience for every user.”

His company provides highly reliable and customized solutions including parking guidance systems, smart signage and sophisticated customer data management.

“It’s about using integrated digital technology to become faster, smarter and greener,” Burrows says. “Our cost-effective systems vastly improve traffic flow and maximize revenue.”

Winning business

Park Agility is one of the few Australian-based parking management providers. Most of its rivals hail from Europe or the United States.

“It’s a highly competitive industry with some major international players. But last year, we had a 51 percent win rate on all the proposals and tenders we submitted, which is an extraordinary achievement,” he says.

“We have a very successful track record in winning and delivering very significant projects in iconic sites like Bondi Beach, where we operate the precinct signage, West Point in Blacktown, which is one of the largest shopping centers in New South Wales with 4,500 bays, and Sydney’s International Convention Centre.”

“Last year, we had a 51 percent win rate on all the proposals and tenders we submitted.”

The company manages sites in cities all over Australia, including Darwin, Cairns, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Launceston.

Few Australians have more expertise or experience in the field than Burrows, who started his working life with 11 years in the Australian Navy and then went on to become an IT specialist.

“My background is basically 30-too-many years in the IT industry,” he says with a smile. “I completed an IT degree and MBA and have since been very entrepreneurial in the IT space. I founded Park Agility with a colleague just over a decade ago and previous to that, spent six years as CIO for Secure Parking.”

Rapid growth

As CIO for Secure Parking, Burrows developed a strategic plan to employ cutting-edge automated ticketing machines, entry gates and pay stations to replace manual cash handling.

“At the end of the first five or six years, we’d invested tens of millions of dollars. At that point in time, we’d just increased the facilities under our management from 140 to 260 while at the same time reducing staff numbers from 1,200 to 900, which probably tripled our profitability.”

“I completed an IT degree and MBA and have since been very entrepreneurial in the IT space.”

But when Burrows began formulating a second five-year plan for Secure Parking, he had a light bulb moment, which spurred him to co-found Park Agility.

“I realized that what we had was a decentralized model of automation. Our access control technologies knew when a vehicle arrived, how long it stayed and how much it should be charged, but there was no insight into where it went within the car park or what it did,” he says.

“We also didn’t know whether the driver had misbehaved in any way like leaving a petrol car in an EV charging bay or parking in a disabled space without a badge. And our auditing revealed that such behaviors can cost each premises many tens of thousands of dollars.”

Capturing insights

He could also see the critical importance of capturing data on the different categories of parkers such as early birds, one-hour stays, four-hour stays and those with reserved spaces.

“You obviously want to fill up the car park, but you don’t want every space filled with discounted tickets. And you don’t want people who’ve paid a lower price for a reserved spot on the fourth or fifth story parking in premium priced areas designed for short-term, casual shoppers.”

“It’s a highly competitive industry with some major international players.”

Park Agility has now devised enhanced foundational capabilities with state-of-the-art sensors, signage and tracking solutions that achieve even greater efficiencies while maximizing yield for asset owners. They now feed into a product portfolio that serves customers better and will attract the capital needed to scale up the business both in Australian and overseas markets.

And for millions of drivers, it will also mean less of their precious weekend spent doing laps of a multi-story car park.