A Productivity-First Equipment Architecture for Airports and Large Facility Maintenance

Airports and large facility campuses operate in some of the most demanding maintenance environments in modern infrastructure. Runways, taxiways, access roads, parking areas, logistics yards, and large operational campuses must remain functional regardless of weather conditions or seasonal changes.

Unlike smaller maintenance environments, these facilities involve extensive paved surfaces and large operational zones that require continuous maintenance. Snow events, vegetation growth, debris accumulation, and infrastructure upkeep must all be managed efficiently to maintain safe operations.

As airports and large facilities expand, maintenance teams face a structural challenge similar to many other industries: how to increase operational productivity without continuously expanding equipment fleets and staffing levels.

Industry Reality: Large-Scale Infrastructure Maintenance

Maintenance teams responsible for large facilities rarely perform a single type of task. Instead, equipment must support multiple operational roles throughout the year.

Airports and large campuses require continuous surface maintenance, vegetation control, debris management, and winter operations. Equipment must operate reliably across large open surfaces while also maneuvering efficiently around infrastructure, service roads, and operational corridors.

Because of these varied responsibilities, facility maintenance fleets often include multiple machines dedicated to specific tasks.

Operational Environments

Winter Surface Maintenance

During winter operations, crews must clear extensive paved areas quickly in order to maintain safe and operational surfaces. Snow relocation, blowing, and stacking are often necessary to maintain usable space across parking facilities, access roads, and operational corridors.

Equipment used in these environments must combine power, maneuverability, and operator visibility while operating across large surface areas.

Surface Cleaning and Debris Management

Throughout the year, large facilities must maintain paved surfaces free from debris and buildup. Sweeping operations and surface cleaning are essential for maintaining safe operational environments and protecting equipment and infrastructure.

Grounds and Perimeter Maintenance

Large campuses also require vegetation control, drainage corridor maintenance, and general grounds upkeep. Boom mowers, flail mowers, and rotary implements are often used to manage vegetation along facility perimeters, drainage channels, and access corridors.

These diverse operational environments are why many facilities operate multiple specialized machines.

The Operational Constraint

Traditional facility maintenance fleets often grow by adding machines designed for individual tasks.

• Dedicated snow clearing equipment
• Sweepers for surface maintenance
• Mowing equipment for vegetation control
• Utility tractors or loaders for general maintenance

As facilities expand, this model typically follows a predictable pattern.

• More infrastructure
• More equipment
• More operators
• Higher fleet complexity

While this approach allows individual tasks to be completed efficiently, it can also result in larger fleets, increased maintenance requirements, and equipment that remains idle outside of specific operational roles.

These conditions are causing many facility maintenance teams to reconsider how equipment productivity is evaluated.

The Architecture Solution

The Better 175 tractor was engineered around a productivity-first machine architecture designed to support demanding multi-season municipal operations.

At the center of this architecture is the tractor’s true bidirectional design. Attachments can operate from either end of the machine, and the operator station rotates 180 degrees so the operator can face the working implement directly in comfort reducing neck pain and fatigue over long shifts.

On the Better 175, the cab end is considered the primary working end. This configuration improves operator visibility, safety, and working precision when operating demanding attachments such as snow plows, blowers, mowers, mulchers, and sweepers.

The tractor incorporates four steering configurations — front, rear, crab, and four-wheel steering with a rear axle swivel — allowing the machine to maneuver safely and efficiently in tight spaces or on sloped or rugged terrain near runways, service roads, operational corridors, maintenance areas and buildings.

Power comes from a 170 HP 4.5-litre tier 5 eco-friendly diesel engine delivering 155 HP to the PTO, providing the performance required to operate demanding industrial-grade attachments while maintaining efficient fuel consumption.

A hydrostatic transmission paired with a dual-pump hydraulic system, multi-function joystick, and integrated foot pedal allows operators to transition smoothly from heavy-duty precision work to road travel speeds of up to 44 km/h without changing gears.

Quick-connect lower links, a hydraulic top link, and ground-level hydraulic controls allow a single operator to quickly change three-point hitch attachments as operational requirements change throughout the day.

Operational Outcome

When equipment architecture increases the capability of each deployed operator, the structure of an operation can begin to change.

Instead of expanding fleets simply to increase capacity, facility operators can evaluate how much work each operator can complete within the same service window.

Machines capable of supporting multiple operational roles allow maintenance teams to maintain higher equipment utilization while simplifying fleet management.

Rather than scaling operations through additional machines and operators, organizations can increase output per operator while maintaining manageable fleet sizes.

Strategic Outcome

The Better 175 represents a European-engineered approach to equipment architecture focused on operator productivity and operational efficiency.

The Better 175 is a European-engineered productivity-first tractor designed to increase output per operator, compress fleet dependency, and create scalable operations without scaling labor.

For airports and large facilities responsible for maintaining extensive infrastructure networks, this productivity-first architecture offers a different way to think about how maintenance operations scale.