Highways UK is always a litmus paper to see how our industry is developing, and it's truely gratifying to see how much digital is changing how we approach construction, maintenance, and management of our roads. Must be why Digital Roads feels so at home there!
This feeling was validated by hearing from National Highways' Interim Chief Exec, Nick Joyce, talk about his support for innovation with his 'Chief Execs Challenge' on reducing road worker risk exposure, committing £1M of funding to create 'a clear route for innovative ideas to be tested, developed, and adopted at scale'.
National Highways stand at Highways UK 2026
We also caught up with the folks at the Roads Research Alliance (RRA); Phillip Proctor, Digital Roads Industry Principal Investigator and Head of Research for National Highways, Matt Peck, Future Roads Steering Committee and Director of Innovation at Akins Realis, Gordon Airey Digital Roads Steering Board, Director of the Nottingham Transportation Engineering Centre (NTEC) and Professor of Pavement Engineering Materials at the University of Nottingham, Mike Pittman, Head of Transport Research and Innovation Board, Department for Transport (DfT), and Steve Phillips, Secretary-General at Conference of European Directors of Roads (CEDR), in their session on Thursday afternoon.
As the University of Cambridge's Future Roads Fellowship Programme draws to a close, the RRA is looking to the next phase. The session discussed how the RRA have established a valuable forum for collaborative research, and how its next challenge is to turn that research into demonstrable, widespread and lasting improvements in how roads are designed, built, maintained and operated.
This speaks loudly to us at Digital Roads as we too work to maximise the future impact and desired outcomes for our research.
The Roads Research Alliance session at Highways UK.