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Earlier this summer the winning eight Live Labs project teams came together in WSP's offices in Birmingham for a Mobilisation Day, kicking off a two year journey of testing and introducing emerging innovations to the UK highway network. The project has been supported by the Department for Transport (DfT) who have provided £22.9m of funding and ADEPT's corporate partners - SNC-Lavalin’s Atkins business, EY, Kier, O2, Ringway and WSP.
 
Over 50 delegates attended the day, which began with a welcome from President of ADEPT, Neil Gibson, and a key note from Tony Boucher, Head of Local Transport at DfT.
 
The theme of the day was to set up a collaborative environment between the project teams, encouraging them to find and discuss synergies within their projects. This was aided by lightning presentations in the morning, in which each team presented their project ideas in eight minutes. In the afternoon a 'Speed Dating' session enabled the teams to knowledge share and to start finding overlaps in their innovations.
 
The eight Live Labs projects aim to provide innovation in areas such as; energy generation and storage, integration with 5G, predictive asset management, open approach to data sharing, providing an analytics approach to influencing travel behaviour and using recycled materials to provide a cost effective solution for local councils.
 
The programme team was also introduced to the Live Labs teams, headed up by Giles Perkins, head of Future Mobility at WSP, and supported by six graduates from the corporate partners. The team will rotate through three main functions over the two year programme; Programme Management, Innovation and Communications. There are many aims of the programme team, however some of the main ones include governing the programme and monitoring progress, encouraging, fostering and capitalising on innovation, sharing and disseminating learning, involving local communities and sharing 'Live Labs' stories.

Find out more about Live Labs.