As an engineer, it is easy to think of roads as a challenge to be solved. Many of the innovations we will discuss in this mini-series will have a real impact on the safety, efficiency, and environmental impact of roads. But roads should be thought of as a service, not as an end in themselves.

Today, National Highways is committed to only build new roads where strictly necessary. The future focus for the strategic highways network is to make road transport safer, more efficient, and more reliable. Data will be vital to delivering roads as a service, ensuring that maintenance is timely and efficient, and new roads and road assets are installed with minimal disruption or environmental impact.

To collect and share data from an increasingly wide range of sources—vehicles, highway assets, and even the road itself, as well as external sources—it will be necessary for roads to become ‘a computer wrapped in asphalt’. Some of this work will be performed by telephony companies, but the road industry must develop new skills, to help ensure data and vehicles all flow smoothly and safely throughout the network.

Guests

Andrew Page-Dove, Operational Control Director, National Highways

Andrew Dodsworth, Programme Director, BalfourBeatty

Matt Peck, Director of Innovation, AtkinsRealis

Partners

Balfour Beatty is a leading international infrastructure group. With 26,000 employees across the UK, US and Hong Kong, Balfour Beatty is leading the transformation of the industry to meet the challenges of the future.

AtkinsRéalis is a world-leading professional services and project management company dedicated to engineering a better future for our planet and its people. Employing over 37,000 people across Canada, the US and Latin America, the UK and Ireland, and Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, AtkinsRéalis creates sustainable solutions that connect people, data and technology to transform the world’s infrastructure and energy systems.