Highways Awards 2024 Winners Announced

THE GREENWAY: a 3-metre-wide shared-use path creating an active travel route spanning 3-kilometres through residential suburbs. It serves as a clean and accessible pathway for pedestrians and cyclists, improving connections between residential neighbourhoods and Willenhall town centre and Memorial Park and supporting modal shift. This £1.2 million Walsall Council scheme, delivered by Crown Highways through Tarmac Walsall Highways framework, ran from July to November 2023, completing one month early. Crown Highways ensured that the whole team maintained a strong customer focus and commitment to quality, resulting in an outstanding thoroughfare that was warmly received by the local community. Government investment through the Levelling Up Fund has realised significant local improvements. Safer routes for walking and cycling were established and benefit dog-walkers and children. The scheme links to other active-travel investment projects and supports the wider Walsall Council vision to develop a safer, more inclusive environment for residents. “The Greenway looks fantastic and will give Willenhall residents a much better and more accessible route to walk and cycle. It’s great to see so many people out and about on the Greenway, it’s already well used, and we’ve had lots of really positive feedback.” Councillor Adrian Andrew, Deputy Leader of Walsall Council. “I just wanted to say a huge thank you for the additional complementary work you have undertaken at County Bridge Primary School. The children use the netball court regularly and it has even motivated one of our staff members to introduce a netball club after school." Rabia Patel, Headteacher

Despite facing significant challenges in her past, Poppy’s apprenticeship experience at Marlborough has been remarkable. Not only has she personally grown and developed beyond expectations, but her learning, enthusiasm, and hard work has brought significant benefits to her team, the company, and the industry. Joining Marlborough in April 2023 as a Social Value & Sustainability Apprentice, Poppy is studying for a Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability qualification. While her writing, presenting and problem-solving capabilities are second to none, it is Poppy’s interpersonal skills that make her excel. Her warmth, confidence and ability to nurture relationships with colleagues and industry partners ensures she is a real asset to Marlborough’s growing and diverse team. Trusted with the freedom to define and develop her role, Poppy is passionate about the environment and social value, believing that opportunities should be available to all. She delivers a range of initiatives, particularly in support of those from marginalised communities, with the beneficiaries including NEETS and veterans. But it is Poppy’s commitment to helping young people, particularly young women, that has defined her first year in the role, by delivering inspirational talks at schools, exhibiting at college careers events, and taking a lead in the company’s apprenticeship forum, in which she supports fellow apprentices. In an industry short on young people and women, Poppy stands as a shining example, demonstrating the transformative power of apprenticeships. Her journey is a testament to resilience, dedication, and the positive impact one person can have when empowered to make a difference.

With road network operators being challenged to improve the operation, safety and whole-life performance of assets at a time of budgetary constraints, the need to fully exploit the value of data has never been more significant. Data is arguably the most precious commodity available to us, but it is how we interpret, filter and act upon it that ultimately determines its true value. Working collaboratively with Wiltshire Council (WC), AtkinsRéalis has developed The Insights Engine – an automated, map-based data analysis tool that presents highways engineers with an easily accessible web-based platform that shows how the roads of Wiltshire are behaving - all at the touch of button. WC manage 4,500km of pavement using a mix of traditional asset survey and management techniques. Legacy approaches to the capture and analysis of asset data meant they were finding it increasingly difficult to understand what their data was telling them, and almost impossible to garner insight from it. The Insights Engine is delivering significant benefits for Wiltshire Council. It is improving access to data, increasing engineers understanding of how their roads are performing, and helping them plan treatments and maintain service levels. It is helping engineers focus on whole asset lifecycle value to understand asset conditional change over time, predicting when the asset is likely to fail. This delivers improved decision making, timely intervention planning and a move to proactive asset management which, in turn, gives greater control of capital investment and more accurate budget planning.

The Asset Management Performance System (AMPS) is a completely new integrated highway asset management system, which has been developed in-house by Transport Scotland’s Asset Management team. The system supports Transport Scotland and its agents in undertaking their various asset management responsibilities in relation to managing and maintaining the Scottish trunk road network. AMPS employs a brand new asset management system architecture which has been developed from scratch to serve Transport Scotland’s ambitious requirements. It employs an innovative “Everything is an Asset” approach, thereby avoiding the silos often found in similar systems. A guiding principle in the development of AMPS has been to provide asset managers with all the information they need to make better-informed decisions. This typically includes providing information on adjacent asset classes, as well details of historical asset performance and any operational considerations. These approaches are implemented throughout the system but are particularly evident in areas such as: cross-asset decision-support tools, contractual compliance monitoring, performance management reporting, and the ‘InSite’ site investigation tool. The in-house development of AMPS has allowed Transport Scotland to make improved and innovative use of its rich asset data, and to ensure that the system continues to serve its future (and emerging) asset management needs. Since its go-live in 2022, AMPS has already been instrumental in delivering a number of tangible benefits to Transport Scotland, including: securing increased budget for climate change adaptation works, securing an increased maintenance budget, expediting inventory validation and achieving reductions in network disruption by co-ordinating and reducing site visits.

The scheme addresses significant historical safety and congestion problems on one of the UK’s busiest junctions. It is within a highly sensitive environment with the surrounding land designated as Special Protection Area (SPA) and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Innovative design work found a solution delivering the necessary improvements to congestion and safety but with the least permanent land take from the SPA and SSSI. These designated sites support some of the rarest habitat and species in England and the ambitious compensation strategy pulled in expertise from nature conservation organisations. Alongside the main scheme, we successfully applied for funding to build the UK’s first heathland green bridge. At 63m long and 30m wide, spanning the A3, with a dedicated wildlife corridor landscaped using translocated heathland turfs, it is a structure with sustainability at its heart. It will address the historic severance of internationally precious habitat and reconnect rare heathland at a landscape scale. The design also delivers wider local environmental benefits through better protection from pollution and flooding for local rivers, lakes and ponds and new environmental barriers along the M25. The local community will be able to cross all four corners of the junction for the first time since the M25 was built, improving accessibility and encouraging active travel. Users will have an exciting new cycleway/bridleway and footpath winding through attractive common land, separated from the busy A3 and giving immersion in the special landscape of the heathland, restoring a wilderness experience in the heart of Surrey.

Milestone Infrastructure provides Highways Maintenance Services to local authorities across the UK. In 2021, 11 years into a 15-year-contract with Oxfordshire County Council (OCC), Milestone and OCC established the Framework Alliance Contract (FAC), a new approach to contract management focusing on supply chain inclusion. The closer collaboration fostered via the FAC highlighted the potential for supply chain SMEs to benefit from focused support from Milestone, leading to the creation of the SME Development Programme in April 2023. The Programme’s goals are: to support OCC to achieve its social value, economic development, efficiency and carbon reduction goals; to develop local supply chain capability and capacity; and to increase collaboration and trust, creating a shared vision for delivering an excellent service to the people of Oxfordshire. There are currently three SMEs on the Programme: Drayton Construction, Hazell & Jefferies and MJ Titchmarsh Construction. Each has created development plans covering Social Value, Carbon Reduction, Quality Management, Website Improvements and Tendering Practices. They have access to Milestone and McLellan Ferguson experts, funded by Milestone, enabling them to improve competitive advantage. The Programme has made significant achievements within its first year including cost savings of £1.028m, carbon savings of 3,706 tCO2e, as well as charitable donations of £39,000 and £7.34m of social value benefits, generated by the SMEs. Milestone has delivered around £50,000 support investment in the supply chain, demonstrating a commitment to partnership working and helping our supply chain to thrive while value to the highways service to better serve the people of Oxfordshire.

Gerard is everything that an aspiring engineer would want or need to be; knowledgeable, collaborative, resilient, inspiring, genuine, hard-working - and the infrastructure that he has shaped over his 43 career is testament to this. The testimonials from colleagues, contemporaries and industry leaders further supports this. Over the years he has been involved in numerous vital highway schemes in Ireland and the rest of the UK from designing, to managing and ultimately supervising on site and all the while building and cultivating relationships with colleagues and clients alike. His mentorship is second to none and his knowledge and unwavering work ethic is unparalleled. He has a passion for teaching and mentoring others to realise their full potential, not only developing great engineers but also great people. Whilst Gerard has helped shape local infrastructure on some groundbreaking projects, his greatest achievement must surely be his recovery from Covid, shown by his desire and determination to get to back to full health and get back into the industry he loves. He is a man who leaves his mark, not only on the infrastructure legacy that surrounds us, but also on us personally, as was evident from well-wishers on his recovery from Covid. He represents the values that every Chartered Engineer should have and this coupled with his extensive knowledge of highway design, project and people management make him a worthy winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Named Herring Bridge following a public vote, Great Yarmouth’s third river crossing is a £121m project to build a dual carriageway lifting bridge that solves traffic problems, enhances the area and opens significant development and employment opportunities. The bridge improves connectivity between the A47 strategic road network and Great Yarmouth’s Port and the Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft (New Anglia) Enterprise Zone. The port is a hub for the growing offshore wind industry. The scheme acted as a catalyst for a new £24.9 million purpose-built Operations and Maintenance Campus being constructed to service the sector. By improving access and reducing town centre congestion, Herring Bridge is supporting efforts to enhance the town’s tourist industry, which has received recent key investments. NCC and their partners worked together, securing funding and taking the project from concept and preliminary design, through consultation, providing the planning and environmental work for a DCO. This was informed by the D&B contractor team following an innovative procurement approach. The team developed and delivered a "fast track" programme resulting in bridge opening in 2024. For a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) to progress from inception to completion in eight years demonstrates remarkable success. In creating a bridge for current and future generations, a multi-disciplinary team was formed that worked with communities, understood client needs, and enabled delivery of an exceptional project that gives far reaching benefits, changing lives for whole communities in a region that is amongst the lowest in the country in terms of unemployment and social deprivation.

At Colas, we decided it was about time we drop the shame and start talking openly about periods. Women, especially those in our industry, can find what should be an incredibly normal monthly experience, very alienating. Considering the scale of our industry, it’s shocking to think language like ‘aunt flo’ and ‘on the blob’ is still used to hide normal bodily functions. According to a study carried out by Initial Washroom Hygiene, 32% of those identifying as male said they think it’s unprofessional to talk about periods at work. For these reasons, our Area 9 team launched its ‘Women’s Wellness Campaign’ to end the stigma surrounding periods, and other women’s physical and mental health, in a highway’s workplace. In addition to providing free sanitary products, we aimed to overcome the barriers that prevent women from openly discussing their periods in a typically male dominated industry. By placing the voice of our female workforce at the front and centre of this strategy, we readdressed the adequacy of our facilities, redesigned PPE, implemented new policies, and improved the working culture across our depots and workplaces. We educated our staff and supply chain to normalise the conversation and acknowledge that gender-based health disparities exist and that women experience different health issues than men, which may require women to take on different tasks on-site. As a result of our campaign, we have heard from our female workforce that they feel more empowered to talk freely about their periods.

Richard Hayes provided great community leadership in his brilliant public sector career which lasted over 40 years and saw him rise through the ranks to become and an area manager for neighbourhood and highways services. He then went on to play a leadership role for the entire sector as past president and chief executive of the Institute of Highway Engineers. In this role, he liaised with MPs, the DfT, educational establishments, the media, and third parties such as associations and other professional bodies connected to highways, always representing the sector with dedication, expertise and a willingness to collaborate. He was a key author of national guidance, reports and reviews, and has sat on boards and committees to boost standards and expand training and knowledge across the sector. he has written training courses and personally delivered them. There are few people who have done more to train and educate the sector and on a personal level he is very well liked and admired by all who have worked with him. His expertise is only matched by his dedication and willingness to share. He leaves behind a legacy in terms of physical engineering, written theory and in the knowledge he has passed on to hundreds, probably thousands, of younger engineers.

Bringing Foamix ECOTM to the market required a change of thought in both approach and technique. Considering the difficulties faced when bringing new, innovative products to the industry, and the technical challenges of achieving longevity and compliance to standards, our Foamix ECOTM product development is a great example of overcoming obstacles through collaboration between client, contractor and key supply chain partners who shared our/government priorities. Our client (LCC) were already housing our local, in-situ Sitebatch Technologies® plant to replace conventional asphalts with Cold Recycled Bound Material (Foamix®); contributing to reduction of vehicle-movement emissions by re-processing all network arisings (including hazardous waste) and reducing embodied carbon to 20kgCO2e/t across the A1-A3 scope. The next logical step was to establish how to further reduce the carbon footprint to zero. Our change in technique was to redesign Foamix® into a carbon-neutral Foamix ECO™ base/binder. Our in-house R&D facility worked closely with Nottingham University to undertake intensive studies on the mix-design during ECI. Another challenge was to achieve negative EPD and refine the manufacturing process; seeking recycled aggregates from our specialist supply chain; Zero carbon bitumen Aggregates with carbon-negative impact. Working closely with LCC, we identified a section of the M65 and used traditional paving plant to lay Foamix ECO™. The outcome of our collaboration exceeded all expectations; we’d achieved carbon neutrality (without offsetting); -0.39kgco2e/t achieved (Scope A1 – A3) 3,308 vehicle miles saved = 483kg carbon Foamix ECO™ is a truly revolutionary carbon-neutral asphalt that contributes to sustainability, efficiency and cost savings.

Westcotec technology eliminates collisions and injuries and high-risk Durham site. Trouts Lane is a busy road located just north of Durham. It’s a popular route close to Lanchester Road Hospital that connects the A691 with the B6532 towards the nearby town of Sacriston. For Durham County Council traffic engineer Paul Storey it had long been a high-risk location. Since the technology was installed in 2017, the site has had no personal injury collisions, compared with 10 incidents in the six previous years. The system only activates if there are turning vehicles ahead, so regular users of the road pay more attention. The risk of getting used to the warning is also greatly reduced. The technology works conveniently via thermal detection cameras and is solar powered, meaning no requirement to dig up the road at time of installation.

SwiftGate is a first-of-a-kind automated taper system for the UK, that enhances the safety, speed and flexibility of regular lane closures. The SwiftGate team identified the Versilis SwiftGate Horizontal Gate system, which is used internationally, when it was at prototype stage in 2016, modifying the MASH TL-3 tested mark 2 version to meet the safety, operational and visual language requirements of the UK highways industry, in line with modifications suggested by the DfT. SwiftGate’s technology and approach to using automation to take boots off the ground offers safety and efficiency improvements for road closures. Knowledge of UK roads, traffic patterns, maintenance operations and compliance have all been critical success factors and, together, Highway Care, Versilis, Kier Transportation and National Highways have developed a system suitable for UK road layouts, traffic volumes and operational requirements. This has included refinement based on user and road user feedback, with modifications made, including additional lighting. Arcadis IBI have also carried out GG104 safety assessments and independent performance reviews to allow us to refine our approach. As part of an integrated solution, combined with Highway Care’s Falcon ACLM and adopted VMS alerts, this technology has the potential to enable lane closures as a completely no-boots-on-the-ground operation, as well as improving operational efficiency.

The Met Police Commercial Vehicle Unit, Toolbox Talk is a ground breaking innovation that cements the partnership with transport professionals across the UK and commercial vehicle policing officers. By building trust through an innovative, emotive and hard hitting presentation the Met CVU have launch one of the largest engagement programs in policing. Delivered to over 55,000 drivers nationally within 2 years the commercial vehicle involved road deaths have reduced by over 60% in London and 12% nationally. The toolbox talk has been acclaimed in the transport industry media and operators alike. It supports drivers in a pre-enforcement engagement the like of which has never been seen in roads policing. As well as the reduction in preventable road death, the support offered to drivers has been documented in a number of suicide interventions. The CVU officers delivering this package are passionate about the engagement with the industry to promote mutual road space respect and protect vulnerable road users and drivers alike.

Multevo’s dedicated client support function team has revolutionised road maintenance in Shropshire, demonstrating exceptional innovation and collaboration. By introducing hybrid work methodologies and assuming comprehensive responsibilities, our team has significantly reduced costs, improved public satisfaction, and set new industry standards. The success of our client support function team exemplifies the potential of SME contractors to deliver tier 1 services, fostering local economic growth and improving infrastructure. This award would recognise the remarkable achievements of a team that has truly transformed highway maintenance in Shropshire and beyond.

As part of the “City in the East Bus Priority” scheme, Transport for London commissioned a study which identified the Prince Regent Lane/Tollgate Road junction as a traffic bottleneck. Project Centre, in partnership with Newham Council, prepared proposals for improving Prince Regent Lane, particularly between Burley Road and Greenway. Buses play a vital role for Newham residents and workers, as over half of the borough’s residents do not have access to a car. The implemented measures aim to improve bus journey times and reliability for all bus routes, making public transport journeys more pleasant, as well as enhancing road safety, and cycling and pedestrian links for all road users. Here is a summary of our proposals: -Provide new bus lanes on Prince Regent Lane northbound and southbound at specific locations -Improve bus stop location and accessibility -Enhance pedestrian crossings and reduce crossing distances at junctions -Repave footways to make it safer and more accessible -Relocate some parking spaces on Prince Regent Lane so that road traffic is not obstructed by parked vehicles. -Implement a new Advanced Stop Line (ASL) to improve visibility and safety for cyclists at junctions and widen of existing northbound cycle lane between Botha Road and Glen Road.