Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads now open

The Centre of Excellence will be "a single source of truth" for materials innovation and testing within the highways sector

The Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads – part of the ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme, a three-year £30million UK-wide initiative funded by the Department for Transport that aims to decarbonise the local highway network – is now open and looking for collaborators and innovators.

The Centre, which is led by North Lanarkshire Council and Transport for West Midlands, supported by Amey and Colas, is a collection of forward-thinking sector organisations who, they say, “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.”

The Centre has a North campus – led by North Lanarkshire Council and Amey, and a South Campus led by Transport for West Midlands and Colas.

Elaine Nicol, Roads Maintenance Manager at North Lanarkshire Council, says: “As the North Campus for the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads, the North Lanarkshire Council Live Labs 2 project aims to accelerate the sector’s transition to net zero through collaboration across local authorities and the wider industry.

“Historically, local authorities have not been particularly good at collaboration and somewhat guarded over their areas, remit, resources, and budgets, which has often hampered collaborative efforts. That is why it is more important than ever to work together as a sector to achieve decarbonisation.”

The Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads comes six months into the Live Labs 2 project and, says Elaine, is “going extremely well”.

The Centre’s next stages include expanding the collaboration and information-sharing between local authorities across the UK, trialling innovation on live local authority network, building an industry-trusted review process and adapting standards and specification to promote low carbon options.