Our objectives:
- Identify local and global innovations that contribute to decarbonising roads.
- Develop an industry-approved review process for roads materials.
- Share knowledge and best practice on the evaluation, testing, trialling and adoption of innovative materials.
- Breakdown barriers to adopting innovation within local authorities.
- Live trial innovative, low-carbon materials.
- Breakdown siloed working across the highways industry.
What is the Centre of Excellence?
The Centre is a collection of forward-thinking sector organisations who understand the scale of the challenges we face, who want to lead the change required, and have the collective capability to make a difference. To make this vision a reality, we are establishing a digital knowledge bank and environment for material innovation to flourish. The Centre of Excellence will be a single source of truth for materials testing within the highways sector, developed with a structured and considered approach to innovation, and brought to life with game-changing innovations from an established, global partnership network.
We are drawing on all corners of the local authority highways sector, industry and beyond to harness the best from a network of advisors, industry experts, suppliers, innovators and academic partners. As a collective, we will ensure innovation knowledge, case studies, and key data are shared through our open access platform for local authorities and innovators, to be launched in 2024.
What is the Materials Testing Programme?
In order to guide our material testing programme, the Centre utilises an agile innovation funnel that identifies, develops and tests cutting-edge innovation from around the world. North Lanarkshire, Transport for West Midlands and our project partners are assessing the materials market in detail to fully understand our current and future capabilities. We’re leveraging our global partnership network to generate and pull through innovations that have the potential to drastically lower the carbon lifecycle of our materials and assets.
Our Expert Advisory Panel and Expert Research Group, representing regulators, academic partners and thought leaders from across the sector, are developing an industry-trusted process for evaluating materials from a carbon, technical and scalability perspective, empowering local authorities to have confidence in their innovation adoption decision-making.