National Highways extends Amey digital lab partnership
Amey has been reappointed as the digital lab delivery partner of National Highways. The extension builds on a track record that has delivering an estimated £30 million in savings so far.
Formerly known as the Highways Agency and later Highways England, National Highways is a government-owned company charged with operating, maintaining and improving motorways and major A roads in England. It also sets highways standards used by all four UK administrations, through the design manual for bridges and roads in the country.
For almost a decade, Amey has been supporting National Highways with its remit. In 2015, for instance, the firm was named as part of a £25 million contract for what was then Highways England, to provide major traffic management improvements to a number of junctions along the M1.
Since 2020, Amey has been supporting National Highways on its digital transformation by accelerating data-driven approaches across all directorates. Central to the partnership is the development of internal decision support tools in areas such as maintenance and planning that move the organisation from reactive ways of working to predictive maintenance, improving efficiency, and saving money.
According to releases from the firm and the organisation, Amey’s work on National Highway’s Digital Lab helped to deliver roughly £30 million in savings over three years. As a result, National Highways has committed to extending this relationship.
Speaking on the announcement, National Highways Head of Digital Lab, Kamran Ashraf, said, “We are focused on optimising performance of the Strategic Road Network, our critical national infrastructure, and improving safety, saving lives, supporting the UK’s economic engine, and achieving net zero targets. Amey’s combination of digital consulting services and industry knowledge is a great fit with the Digital Lab and has enabled us to collaboratively deliver tangible value across the organisation.”
According to Amey, the previous three years have seen it boost the efficiency of the Decision Support Tools on multiple fronts. These include helping to an incident support tool for management of highways incidents by National Highways' National Traffic Operations Centre, enabling enhanced decisions in real-time to ease congestion in a safe and effective manner; and an optimised working windows tool, which has been adopted for forward-planning of roadworks. It predicts traffic features affecting road access, presenting results for decision support so that schemes across the network can be delivered safely with reduced disruption and costs to road users.
Alex Gilbert, managing director in consulting at Amey, added, “We are delighted our established partnership with National Highways will continue with this recent contract award, embracing data-driven decision-making and fostering a data-centric culture for England’s strategic roads network. By optimising decision making, we can move from being reactive, to holistic approaches, predictive and targeted planning, improving efficiency, saving money and ultimately providing a more sustainable road network for the travelling public”.
Amey is a global engineering consultancy, and is no stranger to collaborating with technology firms and transport networks to boost the efficiency and security. The firm collaborated withFinboot earlier in 2023, working to produce what they believe is the first use of blockchain in UK rail.
In 2023, Amey also refreshed its visual identity, as the firm sought to show how its offering to clients across the UK was evolving. According to CEO Andy Milner, the new look will help reflect the firm’s “unique strength and breadth” of expertise to clients looking to accelerate their sustainability journeys.