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This month’s blog is from Giles Perkins, Programme Director for Live Labs 2. Giles talks about key takeaways from Highways UK 2024 and how these align with progress made by Live Labs 2 as it reaches the halfway mark.

We are now halfway through the Live Labs 2 programme - attending Highways UK 2024 offered a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the progress of Live Labs 2 and the broader decarbonisation of infrastructure journey.

The carbon agenda is embedding

Our main takeaway from this year’s Highways UK was that the carbon agenda seems to be embedding in industry discussions around protecting and enhancing the environment and providing resilient networks in the context of climate change. When we started on the journey for Live Labs 2, there weren't many people talking about it. Eighteen months later, we are seeing much more discussion around it as a as a primary issue right across the narrative which is really exciting - however there is still lots of work to be done.

We need to be getting into the evidential side of things and continuing to ask questions such as ‘What can be done?’, ‘What makes a difference?’ and ‘Where should we be investing our scarce resources to make the difference?’.  

It’s very notable and heartening that we were recognised for our efforts by North Lanarkshire Live Labs 2’s Net Zero Award win – recognising their sterling work and efforts to date in finding sustainable materials and focussing on carbon footprint reduction in the highways sector, paving the way for a greener future.

Live Labs 2 Expo 2025

The discussions we have at Highways UK and elsewhere with everyone from Ministers, to the DfT, are an integral part of stitching conversations together, rather than being focused solely on the technical side.

Given the interest and enthusiasm in industry on how we can decarbonise our networks, we are already looking forward to our Expo 2025 in Liverpool in March 2025. We will be doing a deep dive into what the Live Labs programme as a whole has learned to date and the challenges that have been overcome. Attendees will also hear about work that we've done in how we address behavioural and institutional barriers to the acceleration of capital decarbonisation.  We look forward to raising awareness of this open source sharing approach, which is an integral part of Live Labs.

Behaviour change is the key

In the Live Labs 2 programme, how we empower people to develop change is as important as the technical developments. 

The programme is as much about changing the behaviours of decision makers and practitioners at all levels across the sector, as it is about proving the efficacy of innovations, solutions and interventions.

Tackling all parts of the local highway system is imperative to reducing carbon overall. Behavioural change and how we provide the necessary evidence to decision makers is the key to unlocking innovation in carbon reduction and accelerating change within the different areas of responsibility.

Taking stock halfway through the Live Labs 2 programme

Given that we are now halfway through the three year phase of delivery for Live Labs 2, it is interesting that the programme is now delivering solutions down on the ground, across all three dimensions of Highways – from fence to fence, from surfacing to foundations.  At the same time, the decarbonisation conversation is becoming more widespread – so we are delivering solutions at the same time as having conversations.

Once we move into the monitoring and evaluation phase, we will show longevity, long term benefits and lifecycle. The lifecycle aspect is crucially important in any innovation programme – it helps us to understand the downstream challenges and opportunities that flow from doing things differently. We continue to implement, assess and gather even more evidence that helps with the overall acceleration of the conversation within industry. 

Our work to date has helped clearly define interventions that we hope will make significant differences to maintenance renewals and highways assets.

 What’s next? Plans for the second half of the programme

As a decarbonisation innovation programme, Live Labs 2 sits alongside many other programmes in a similar space - we need to understand other programmes, so that we can deliver better innovations together. This is the only way in which we can truly enable wider learning and effect real change.

Our work to date has helped clearly define interventions which we hope will make a significant difference to the carbon impacts of maintenance renewals and indeed the construction of new highways assets. 

We've been on a long journey in terms of understanding how we measure the baseline and the carbon benefits of using those products and services. And it doesn’t stop here! Moving into the second half of the programme we look forward to sharing more details and evidence with industry and engaging in more collaborative conversations about how we can accelerate and multiply the progress of Live Labs 2.

We will be amalgamating and publishing this information so that we can move towards taking a more standardised approach across the UK local highway sector and consider how, as an industry, we can make decarbonisation of assets ‘business as usual’.

Further information

• For more information on ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads in the UK, please look at the Live Labs 2 section of the website.

Author

• Giles Perkins, Programme Director for Live Labs 2