National Highways has launched an ‘open call’ for innovators to help tackle key challenges that range from improving safety to creating a better customer experience.
National Highways is the wholly UK government-owned company responsible for modernising, maintaining and operating England’s motorways and major A roads. The road agency said is wants “problem-solvers and creative thinkers” to contribute to the future development of England’s motorways and major A roads over the next five years.
Through National Highways Innovation and Research Designated Fund, the open call will run from today to December 8, “giving people the unique opportunity to suggest innovative solutions to five specific challenges that range from improving safety to creating a better customer experience”.
Innovators are invited to submit ideas addressing five key areas: improving customer experience of journey time, increasing safety on A-roads, reducing live traffic risks, maximising safety benefits while improving asset resilience and reducing occupational health risks for road workers.
Applications are also welcome from partnerships made up of suppliers, start-ups and small and medium enterprises. The five challenges are:
Challenge 1: Improving journey time - Smart ideas are needed to improve how information is shared about delays, roadworks and travel times. The focus is on reducing regular delays and congestion hotspots, cutting the time it takes to clear incidents, planning roadworks to cause less disruption and using customer data to make travel smoother and more predictable.
Challenge 2: Increase safety on A-roads - Reduce the number and severity of shunt collisions, cutting the risk of people being killed or seriously injured and make both single- and dual-carriageway A-roads safer for all road users.
Challenge 3: Maximise safety, improve resilience of assets - Reduce the need for frequent road renewals and keep both road users and workers safe. Better asset data is needed to plan costs and road renewal over the long term and make assets easier to access or reduce the need for on-site inspections. A clear understanding is required of how investment decisions affect safety and environmental outcomes.
Challenge 4: Reduce risks of working next to live traffic - Find solutions that remove the need for people to work in live traffic, reduce how often and how long workers are exposed to traffic, strengthen safer working practices in high-risk areas and encourage safer behaviour from both road workers and road users.
Challenge 5: Reduce occupational health risks - This is about reducing long-term health problems, cutting the number of working days lost to illness and improving the identification and management of key health risks. More use of preventative hygiene practices are needed and make sure that health risk elimination and safer alternatives are built into design and planning from the start.
More details about the challenges, their background, key statistics and expected benefits can be found here.
Following assessment of submissions, a Pre-Market Engagement (PME) Notice will be published via the Find a Tender Service. All interested parties should register via the agency’s Jaegger portal for immediate notifications of those notices, to test market interest and capability.
The procurement route will then be determined based on the responses received.
One example of how innovation is tackling key infrastructure challenges is the Structures’ Moonshot Project. This ambitious initiative is testing non-destructive technologies to inspect hidden critical components in bridges and other structures, such as post tensioned tendons and concrete half joints, without the need for disruptive physical investigations. By enabling more accurate condition assessments, these technologies help reduce unplanned road closures and improve safety.
For more information about the Structures’ Moonshot Project click here.
