How Sydney Airport Solved a Long-Standing Worker Safety Problem on Steep Slopes

1. Some slopes only had one answer, and it wasn't a good one

Fulton Hogan handles grounds maintenance at Sydney Airport, including a run of embankments too steep for a ride-on to sit on safely. For years the only real option in those areas was a person with a whipper snipper, standing at an angle for hours at a time on terrain that offered no good footing and no easy way out if something went wrong.

Bruce Gray, workshop manager at Fulton Hogan with 46 years at the airport, put it plainly: some of those hills were so steep that a brush cutter was the only tool that could reach them. That's not a minor inconvenience on a site like Sydney Airport, where steep terrain sits close to active runways and restricted movement areas. Every hour a crew spent on that ground with a whipper snipper was an hour of slip and fall exposure, in a location that can't simply be closed off and revisited later.

2. What changed

Fulton Hogan approached Robot Mowers Australia around 12 months ago for a demonstration of the Raymo, a remote-controlled, battery-powered slope mower. The turnaround from demo to order was fast. Once the crew saw it handle ground they'd been fighting with whipper snippers for years, there wasn't much left to decide.

The change comes down to one thing: the operator is no longer standing on the slope. They run the mower from a safe distance on flat, solid ground instead. That's not a productivity feature, it's the entire mechanism that removes the injury risk. There's no two-stroke fuel to mix or carry, no hours spent standing at an awkward angle on uneven ground, and the mower can work inside restricted zones near aircraft movement areas without putting a person in that space, which matters as much on an active airport site as the slope itself.

Bruce Gray's assessment, on camera: it's the best piece of equipment the airport has bought.

3. The setup Fulton Hogan runs

The R48CRAFT deck is the right call for this kind of terrain specifically. It's built for rough, overgrown vegetation and municipal-grade mowing rather than fine turf. Sites dealing with maintained, established grass rather than overgrown embankments are usually better matched to the R42FLEX or R52TURF decks on the same Torpedo carrier.

4. It's not just airports

Sydney Airport is a high-stakes example because of the restricted zones and the safety scrutiny that comes with any live airport site, but the underlying problem shows up well beyond aviation. Councils run the same setup on roadside embankments and fire trails. Solar farm operators use it under and around panel arrays, where a ride-on won't fit and manual brush cutting under thousands of panels isn't realistic. Utility companies use it for vegetation management around transmission line corridors on grades a ride-on can't hold.

Anywhere the current answer is "we send someone up with a brush cutter because there's no other way," there's now another way.

5. See it on your own terrain

If your crew is still working steep ground with a brush cutter, or a ride-on that's one wet patch from a rollover, the best way to judge whether this fits your site is to see it run on your actual terrain rather than take a case study's word for it.

Watch the full Fulton Hogan testimonial, or get in touch to arrange a demonstration on your site: Fulton Hogan / Sydney Airport testimonial.

Contact Robot Mowers Australia on 1300 762 666 or info@robotmowersaustralia.com.au, or view the Raymo R48CRAFT and full Raymo range.