Safety
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...
The future of mobility is safer (and how we get there) – Jillian Kowalchuk, Safe and the City
Jillian Kowalchuk, Founder of Safe and the City explains how software and AI can help people feel safer when using the transport network Most people think of Safe & the City as just an app, but that isn’t the full picture. There’s more behind our technologies,...
Could 5G connectivity be the changemaker technology for road safety? – Dr Dimitrios Kaltakis, WSP
Dr Dimitrios Kaltakis, 5G and connectivity lead at WSP, outlines how network operators, vehicle manufacturers, and road operators must work together to achieve Vision Zero. As digital connectivity becomes increasingly vital – not just for the smooth but for the safe...
Do standards stifle innovation? – Andy Fish, 3M
Andy Fish, technical specialist for 3M's Transportation Safety Division, looks at how to encourage innovation in a regulated market. As someone who has sat on many standard setting committees and industry bodies, across several industries, I have often pondered why...
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...
How vehicle sensor data is underpinning a revolution in road safety
Steve Birdsall, CEO of Gaist, provider of roadscape insight and intelligence services, explains the very real possibility of a revolution in road safety In the past decade, the role of data within the built environment has changed dramatically. An explosion in the...
The hidden pandemic – workplace health risks in highways
Covid-19 has thrown the issue of workplace health into the spotlight. But in the highways sector, which has a heady cocktail of exposure hazards from manual handling to bitumen fumes, the control of workplace health risks has long been the Cinderella to accident...
UK Connected and Automated Mobility Roadmap to 2030
Author: Mark Cracknell - Head of Technology, Zenzic What is the roadmap? Roadmaps provide a blueprint of the future. They offer an idea of what the future will hold, creating valuable insight into what different capabilities are on the horizon, and indeed when they...
Why language matters in the self-driving revolution
Author: Daniel Ruiz - Chief Executive, Zenzic Hopefully you've picked up on the relaunch at the beginning of this month (May) of Meridian Mobility as Zenzic. Set up in 2017 with its roots in both the Departments for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and for...
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...
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...
Listening to the road user
Adopting the maxim "what gets measured gets managed" implies by association that what hasn't been tracked or measured properly is missed and consequently doesn't get managed effectively. In the transport sector, listening to the views of passengers and other road...
Do you want to challenge the highways sector to change?
Talking Heads template This is an incredible time to work in the UK highways sector. Across the country organisations are investing at record levels in innovative approaches to ensure the nation's roads networks meet the demands of a growing travelling public. But we...
Integrating technology solutions into an ageing infrastructure
Technology is changing the world we live in.... how many times have you heard that said recently? I don't know about you, but I think by now we are all very aware that this is the case! I'm interested in how people respond to technology changes: they tend either to...
Improving road safety for both road workers and road users
Highways England invests a great deal of effort and resource into ensuring the operatives that work for the contractors and service providers in its supply chain do so safely. Safety is the primary business imperative for all Highways England operations with various...
Are you really listening?
"Are you listening, I mean, are you really listening". Being listened to and feeling that you are being heard is of huge importance to all of us. Why then should it be any different for our stakeholders when our organisations deliver a project? When we consider the...
‘Autopilot’ Tesla fatality is a reminder to pace and structure autonomous car development
In late May of this year, Tesla announced that some 70,000 of its cars utilising its "Autopilot" assisted driving feature had driven 100 million miles on the road. This milestone was notable not only because it by far exceeded any competitors' record but also because,...
