Construction
Investing in digitisation offers great added value – Thomas Leopoldseder, Q Point
Thomas Leopoldseder, CEO of Q Point, unpacks the potential of digital solutions within the road construction process. Through the digitalization of business processes, internally or together with business partners, decisive competitive advantages can be achieved -...
Inclusive Infrastructure Solutions – Mathew Haslam, Hardscapes
Mathew Haslam, managing director at Hardscape outlines their extensive product range with the UK’s largest selection of Connectivity Solutions Products. Proudly independent and with over 25 years of expertise in pushing the boundaries of hard landscaping, Hardscape is...
Attracting new labour into highways – Ben Rawding, JCB
Ben Rawding from JCB stresses the importance of new technologies to tackle the labour shortages and attract new talent to the sector. Today the highways teams within British local authorities face a number of challenges, and as an industry we must do more to support...
Urban Trees, Highways and Utilities – Hannah Cook, GreenBlue Urban
Hannah Cook at GreenBlue Urban emphasises the importance of green infrastructure within the road network as towns and cities across the UK expand. With increasing urbanisation of our towns and cities, the pressure to plant trees is huge. Priorities are under...
“Bringing the environment into the picture” – How local authorities can add a new dimension to highways asset management – Andy Peart, Yotta
Andy Peart outlines how local authorities can utilise tech and data to inform their highways asset management decisions and bring in a new environmental dimension. The science of strategic highways asset management is going through seismic change. Historically,...
Questions about the value of investment in roads – David Metz, UCL Centre for Transport Studies
David Metz, honorary professor at the UCL Centre for Transport Studies, outlines his suggested actions to inform future investment decisions when looking ahead to Road Investment Strategy (RIS3) The Department for Transport has begun to plan its third Road Investment...
Delivering 21st century roads – Marie-Claude Hemming, The Civil Engineering Contractors Association
From the cost of materials to the impact of legislation and foreign tensions, Marie-Claude Hemming, director of operations at The Civil Engineering Contractors Association, outlines what the future holds for contractors. The Government’s radical proposals for...
Accelerating delivery of big infrastructure
National Highways has been working with the government’s Project Speed infrastructure taskforce to develop ways of accelerating the delivery of major road schemes, making it says National Highways’ director David Haimes, “an exciting and challenging opportunity for us...
Why National Pothole Day matters in the age of Covid-19
This year’s National Pothole Day secured coverage across national print and broadcast media, putting a much-needed spotlight on the worsening pothole funding crisis. Paul Fleetham, Managing Director of Tarmac Contracting argues that even in the throes of Covid-19,...
Using AI to monitor the impact of Covid-19 on our Highways
Author: Peter Mildon - COO and Co-Founder, Vivacity Labs Peter Mildon, COO and Co-Founder of Vivacity Labs, has been reviewing data from Vivacity’s national network of AI-based video road sensors to assess the impact of Covid-19 on our highways networks on a daily...
Creating a legacy of continuous improvement
Author: Jon Cole, Head of Pavement Efficiency and Productivity, Highways England Our pavement efficiency journey started with a workshop in September 2015 in recognition that the way we delivered pavement needed to contribute significantly to the RIS1 capital...
A new source of road construction data
Author: Tony Gosling - Chief Digital Officer, Pell Frischmann The design of highway schemes would be improved if designers and decision makers could easily understand the cost, time, risk and disruption impacts of individual design choices The traditional process...
Never, never, never give up
Author: Karla Wakeman, Innovation Lead for Connected Transport, Innovate UK Winston Churchill once said "never, never, never give up". A good moto for us all and often applies to finding funding for your projects and innovations. We witness this often at Innovate UK...
Connecting the Constructors
Author: Neil Williams - Engineering & Infrastructure Segment Manger, Leica Geosystems Despite the current political uncertainty, we are seeing record investment from Highways England channelled through initiatives such as the Regional Development Partnership...
It’s time to get to grips with digital
Author: Lesley Waud - Transport Design Development Director, SNC-Lavalin Atkins By people, I really mean a culture and a mindset: a perception by many that doing things 'digitally' is a threat to long-held technical specialism or expertise. But I don't see it in those...
The role of roads on the road to net-zero carbon emissions
Author: Adam Crossley - Adam Crossley, head of environment and strategy, Skanska UK Even if you are not a big advocate of fighting climate change you can't help but notice how it is increasingly on the agenda everywhere - whether it's protests in Parliament, the Prime...
You can’t do Big Data if you can’t do Small Data
Author: Brian Fitzpatrick - Brian Fitzpatrick, Founder, Fitzpatrick Advisory The future of our infrastructure is digital, but just who is best placed to build the local authority capability to manage this revolution? Who will look after the impact of decisions made by...
Invest today to deliver the highway infrastructure of tomorrow
The UK's strategic road network is one of its most valuable national assets, key to our economic growth. Four million people use Highways England's strategic road network each day, and this is forecast to grow by over 40% by 2040. Just as an effective roads network is...
The vital ingredients for successful asset management
The challenges facing highway authorities seem to amount to an almost impossible conundrum. Peaks in public expectation are matched by troughs in central government funding for local infrastructure. As recently highlighted in a letter by a group of industry bodies to...
Joining up the good work
The highways sector has so far failed to move on from its traditional, largely manual ways of working. We have seen productivity flatline for over 20 years, struggled to deliver better customer service and communications and still impact the health, safety and...
