News

Pat Musgrave: Managing Director

A well-known name in the ITS industry for 25 years, Pat Musgrave is certainly one of life’s entrepreneurs and is responsible for bringing industry firsts to the UK’s road and event markets. In just 12 short months, Pat has set up a sister company to MVIS, Bartco UK, launched a new partnership with Intellicone HRS, which has seen the introduction of the first temporary road maintenance safety solutions to combine industry-leading modular electronic perimeters and variable message signs,  and secured several large contracts.

How did you come to manage MVIS?

I took over from Tony Price in September 2013 to become MVIS’ managing director, while remaining managing director of P&D Specialist Services, a transport technology contractor. P&D’s union with MVIS (then Colour Mobile) started with its involvement in the deployment of almost 200 VMS units for the Olympic Route Network contract for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  It was believed to be the largest single deployment of solar powered VMS in the world.

In 2013 MVIS rebranded at the same time as launching a series of new ITS solutions, including a portable solar powered journey time solution and the Solar Intelligent Platform, the only product on the market facilitating the mounting of multiple products on a single, solar powered, mobile platform.

So, what’s been happening the past 12 months you’ve been at the MVIS helm?

We’ve got a great reputation in the industry for being innovative and we’ve certainly been living up to that over the past year. Most recently we have brought new solutions to road safety along with our new partner Highway Resource Solutions Ltd (HRS) which includes Safelane automated traffic management system and the Multisafe Smart VMS, which not only improves road worker safety but does so cost effectively. We’ll be demonstrating this at Seeing is Believing.

We’ve developed our temporary journey time solution (JTS) for long-term constant use, in partnership with Vysionics, throughout Costain’s two year installation of the smart motorway scheme between junctions 28 and 31 of the M1.

In March this year our sister company Bartco UK, Europe’s first manufacturer of portable, solar powered, five colour matrix VMS was launched alongside MVIS AUS, the new Australian division of MVIS Ltd. We’re already seeing the benefits of having our products manufactured in the UK and we’re growing at such a rate we’re now looking at new premises.

The past 12 months we’ve been instrumental in reducing accidents on UK roads with the installation of 10 VMS-Cs during A-Ones+’s northbound refurbishment of the A1 western bypass between Newcastle and Gateshead. Displays were remotely switched from speed roundels to three colour pictograms in the event of standing traffic ensuring there were zero standing-traffic related incidents during their six week installation. An identical project on the southbound carriageway in 2009 using fixed frame signs saw several such incidents.

So, that was the last 12 months, can you tell us more about the next 12?

We’ve always got new projects in the pipeline and MVIS is continually evolving. I’m excited about how MVIS will grow now we have manufacturing in the UK through sister company Bartco UK, which covers the Northern Hemisphere. We currently have  a new product in testing too, however my marketing company would shoot me if I let you know anything about that! Further MVIS/Intellicone solutions will be launched soon.