Construction

Five trends impacting the future of highways – Andy Theobald, Mott MacDonald
If we want our road infrastructure to be fit for the long term, we must keep pace with the key drivers affecting the highways industry, says Andy Theobald. Providing our clients with long-term solutions means looking ahead, taking a 10 to 20-year time horizon to...

Roadways can handle extreme weather – Jose Javier García Pardenilla, Ferrovial
Jose Javier García Pardenilla, Project Lead at Ferrovial, argues that roads are durable to extreme weather conditions, we just have to redesign how we formulate asphalt pavement. This year, we have seen surprising images from around the world, from airports forced to...

Making connections happen – Duncan Reed and Stuart Campbell, Trimble
Trimble’s Duncan Reed, Business Development Manager, and Stuart Campbell, Head of Sales and Business Development, explores the value of connected technology for civil infrastructure, ahead of Highways UK 2022 Our nation’s civil infrastructure is a critical part of the...

More zero, less net – Adam Crossley, Skanska
Adam Crossley, Director of Environment at Skanska UK, explains how we need to get back to basics when tackling net-zero challenges in the highways sector. Don’t over-complicate the journey to achieving net-zero carbon emissions. We’re living through a period of...

Transforming lives through Social Value – Andrew Stephenson, National Highways
Andrew Stephenson, procurement director at National Highways, reflects on how road schemes can add value to society through economic prosperity and improving community wellbeing. At National Highways, we’re well positioned to transform our customer’s lives through...

Innovative and sustainable approaches to concrete road refurbishment – Martyn Sherwood, Metrail Construction
Martyn Sherwood, managing director at Metrail Construction, talks through sustainable methods to road maintenance taken from Germany's Autobahn now being used in the UK. Innovation, sustainability and technology — three things that we at Metrail are proud to be at the...

Hitting the bridge deck running as the new kid on the National Highways block – Rob Cook, Winvic
Rob Cook, Civils & Infrastructure Director at Winvic, talks about their delivery strategy and projects ahead of exhibiting at Highways UK this year. Since I was appointed by Winvic in the brand-new role of Director for Civils and Infrastructure, it has been a...

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...