A brief account of Highways England’s recent lecture (ICE)

Highways England is responsible for managing the motorways and major A roads. In terms of statistics, 60% of congestion is caused by a lack of road capacity and 25% of congestion is a result of incidents in the network. In order to tackle congestion, Highways England is making England’s motorways “SMART”.

On 17th of January, Andy Jinks and Barry O’Driscoll, both from Highways England presented the 2017 Management, Procurement and Law lecture at the ICE HQ. Established in 2014, this annual lecture promotes the work carried out in the construction industry and provides a platform for discussion of the challenges and opportunities within the industry.

Andy Jinks, the development and sponsorship director with Highways England opened with a safety statement that “no one should be harmed when travelling or working on the strategic road network”. In addition to Remotely Operable Temporary Traffic Management (ROTTM) systems and CCTV networks, the company is developing a stationary vehicle detection system using RADAR technology to improve response to incidents on the network. The capacity of the network of motorways connecting the North, Midlands and the South is increased by converting the hard shoulder to a live lane and with smart technology, the need to grow the physical infrastructure can be reduced whilst maintaining traffic flow along the major economic arteries.

The Highways England refer to BIM in the context of Better Information Management and Barry O’Driscoll, the design and engineering director, highlighted that technology should be used as a managerial tool for the community. Safety is improved through a 3D environmental digital tool that identifies hazards and flags significant issues related to construction, environment and operation. He focused on how the customer perceives the journey. Traffic modelling is key to satisfy the customer and this can be achieved by anonymised mobile phone data of journeys. Technology leads to faster decisions, visualisation improves operation, there is significant saving in time and cost without loss in quality and finally technology satisfied demands for operation. The future aspiration in highways technology is the introduction of vehicle to vehicle communication and a system that detects lane lines and steers when needed.

As a conclusion of the lecture, Andy made a very good point and said that technology isn’t always straight forward. In large organisations keeping contingency in technology tools is difficult and small organisations may not have sufficient finance. On the other hand, technology integrates people and IT into new processes. It also empowers the people to take ownership of technology and process adjustment in a new way on working.

Today people perceive technology as something reliable, repeatable, confusing, process reliable, secure and cost efficient. Despite on whether organisations have a positive or negative direction towards technology there will come a day at which everyone will be pushed in using technologies as economic needs and competition will demand it. Sustainability can also be addressed through technology and can lead to a positive legacy across the lifecycle of every project.

It is clear that ignoring digitalisation is a mistake as it boots productivity and reduce accidents at work. The image of building workers organizing their work with tablets even if it’s far from reality on today’s construction sites will be eventually the future, as cost, time pressures are rising and quality expectations increasing. Also, drones and collaborative robots (COBOTs) should move out of the fiction books and embed themselves at the future of construction. On top of them, 3D lasers technology opens new opportunities as it does not only allow for surveying the land, but also identifies water pipes, sewers, phone lines, fibre optic cables and power lines.

HSE and other responsible bodies should accept the challenge and review the current legislation in order to catch up with the introduction of technology in construction. For example, POWER regulations will need to be reviewed.

So, are we ready for such changes and is technology always the answer?

The lecture is available to watch online here: https://www.ice.org.uk/eventarchive/management-procurement-and-law-lecture-2017-london