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Jake Harrison

Why a Centre of Excellence and Why Now?

Project Director for the North Campus, Jake Harrison, interrogates why the Centre of Excellence model will help the highways industry decarbonise its road materials.

Collaboration has become a buzzword across roads sector, but its importance cannot be overstated. All too often, duplication of efforts leads to wasted resources, frustrated stakeholders and minimal progress. While the word collaboration may have lost some of its momentum, the English language offers us various ways to convey the same message. In this blog, we will explore the significance of a Centre of Excellence (CofE) model and why its implementation, especially in the materials market, is crucial on our road to net zero.  

From our collective experience delivering Live Labs 1 and other innovations project across the sector, we have gained invaluable insights. We know that the challenges in the industry lie not in the absence of materials testing facilities, ideas or skills, but in industry trust, willingness to adopt innovations, and readiness of the technology for their implementation at scale. We do not have a common approach to testing, especially from a carbon perspective. Therefore, when reviewing material innovations, there are no baselines, no common standards and this has allowed “greenwash” to blend with genuinely disruptive innovation. This makes decision- making harder, and we continue to do what we have always done.  

This understanding led us to establish the UK Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads. 

A Centre of Excellence serves as a centralised hub for collaboration, harnessing the collective power of our industry and sector. Rather than duplicating existing testing facilities or building new test sites, our purpose is three-fold; 

1. Develop a trusted testing methodology and process.  
2. Source and test leading innovations from across the globe and share these across the with the UK Roads Sector.  
3. Overcome the barriers to innovation adoption:  Innovation often faces barriers such as stringent specifications, lack of standards, organisational resistance, and perceived risks. Through the CoE, we strive to provide a blueprint and tools to overcome these obstacles. 

With increasing budget constraints, widening skills gaps, and other factors, our collective strength has never been more vital. Working together enables us to tackle these challenges more effectively and empowers us to control the direction of travel for the sector. Doing nothing poses a significant risk to ourselves and the global community. For a long time, we have treated safety technology and ideas as open, free to access and knowledge is openly shared as nothing is more important than the safety of our workforce and communities we serve. We must now consider the carbon and sustainability ideas and knowledge in the same category and take responsibility to lead our community towards net zero. 

Collaboration and the establishment of a Centre of Excellence are paramount in driving progress in the local authority roads sector. By prioritising collaboration, developing a trusted testing methodology, and overcoming barriers to innovation, we can shape the future of our industry. The time is ripe for a Centre of Excellence to unite the industry, let us seize this opportunity to work together, leverage our collective power, and ensure a sustainable and innovative future for the local authority roads sector.