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 wellbeing of our people through our working practices.
Collectively, we need a coherent industry-wide approach that combines our individual efforts, tackles the challenges we all face and delivers a highways sector that embraces the fourth industrial revolution. We need to learn from alternative industries away from the transport sector whose approaches are leading the way, such as Amazon’s 360 degree focus to improve technology which delivers greater customer service in a highly-competitive, rapidly-changing environment.
I want our industry to start this journey with Vision 2030. Investing in new initiatives and learning from other industry leaders, we can transform the highways sector.
We work in a people-centric business and I am passionate about the safety of my team. It cannot be right that we still ask our workforce to operate alongside a live carriageway.
For me, there are clear opportunities to remove our people from harm. We must harness the rapid advancement of technology and move quickly to use automation and digital solutions to deliver services differently. However, we must also build a supportive safety culture which enables our employees and our supply chain partners to protect themselves and others.
An engaged and empowered workforce is crucial in order to achieve Amey’s aim to create better places to live, work and travel, and Vision 2030 will achieve this.
To achieve results on a larger scale will mean breaking free from the siloes of technology to change the ‘resistance’ culture of the sector and the ways we operate. New technology is rife and right in front of us. The art of the possible is no longer the future but the here and now, and it gives us a massive opportunity to do things differently.
Across the industry, we are all working on isolated initiatives and Vision 2030 aims to join all of this good work up. The use of technology is giving us the opportunity to drive a culture shift across the sector. It is a culture shift that underpins not only greater efficiency, but also a new approach on health, safety and well-being. It also brings forward opportunities for greater diversity in our industry as the sector needs individuals with digital skills as well those with physical strength.
There is an understanding that change is needed. Vision 2030 focuses on what is required to achieve a notable shift in service delivery to engage and excite the next generation.
James Haluch is talking further about Vision 2030 on the Burges Salmon stage on Wednesday 7 November at 13.50
———————-
James Haluch – Highways Managing Director, Amey