As they head toward the Breakthru finals on Wednesday, brothers Drew and Coady Cameron are working on the branding and algorithms for their nascent product, TotalPave.

TotalPave is a Fredericton startup that aims to revolutionize the way cities and towns assess which roads need to be paved. The idea is so impressive that the Cameron brothers won the national Nicol Entrepreneurial Award for a new technology coming from a Canadian university last year.

Now they are one of five finalists in the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s Breakthru competition, and will find out Wednesday night whether they will win the $192,000 first prize, which would help finance the development of the product. The $177,000 second prize or $77,000 third prize wouldn’t hurt either.

“Other than legal fees for the patent and paying someone to develop the software, we don’t have a lot of costs, though I’m sure that will change,” said Drew in an interview.

TotalPave promises to save municipalities money by helping them to assess whether a road needs maintenance. Drew Cameron said cities and towns now contract the task out to engineering firms, which have “expensive equipment” in vans and drive over roads to determine whether they’re in need of repair.

Total Pave is a smart phone app so phones are strapped to standard municipal vehicles and collect data on road sufaces as these cars and trucks drive around on their customary routes. They relay this data to a central facility that automatically assesses it and reports on what roads need repair most acutely.

Getting such data is critical because a typical road will maintain its surface for several years, but once the roadway starts to break down it will do so quickly and dramatically. If a municipality detects the deterioration at the right time, it can make minor, inexpensive repairs promptly rather than paying a lot of money to repave the road.

The latest Canadian infrastructure report card said 52 percent of Canadian roads are in bad repair and estimated it would cost $92 billion to repair them all.

Both Camerons are still students at the University of New Brunswick and plan to hone the project in the coming year and launch it within 18 months.

Drew said Coady is working on the algorithms that will be used to collect data with the app, and they will hire a software developer from their network of friends at UNB to write the software for the analytics centre.

They hope to talk to a lawyer soon about the best way to protect their intellectual property, which may require a patent application. They’ve also been working lately on branding their product, so their website, and all material is in sync and looks professional.

Drew said they have contacted a few municipalities in New Brunswick but are waiting until they have a working prototype before they really market it. They presented their idea to the Transportation Association of Canada when it met in Fredericton last year, and generally received good feedback.