The impact that restrictive contracts are having on the highways sector is a controversial topic. Andy Hutt, CEO of Triopsis, argues that long term contracts that restrict innovation are one of the main causes for spiraling costs and deteriorating road quality. 

“Imagine this scenario: a local highways authority is struggling with pothole repairs after a harsh winter. Citizens are complaining, repair crews are stretched thin, and costs are spiralling.

Meanwhile, across the country, another authority has implemented an AI system that predicts road deterioration before it happens, optimises crew scheduling, and has reduced repair costs by 30%. Yet despite having the budget, the first authority cannot adopt this solution.

Why? Because five years ago, they signed a restrictive software contract that prevents integration with new technologies.

This scenario isn’t hypothetical. It’s happening across Britain today.

The invisible barrier to highway innovation

When local authorities sign long-term contracts with software providers that restrict API access or external integrations, they unwittingly build barriers to innovation that can last a decade or more. In highways maintenance—where every pound saved could mean another pothole fixed—this technological paralysis has real-world consequences:

• Critical repair decisions made without the benefit of predictive analytics that could prevent deterioration before it occurs
• Crews dispatched inefficiently when AI routing could reduce fuel costs and increase repairs completed per day
• Emergency response slowed because legacy systems can’t integrate with real-time traffic and weather data
• Taxpayer money wasted maintaining outdated systems rather than investing in transformative technologies

The false economy of closed contracts

What appears cost-effective in year one of a contract becomes increasingly expensive over time. The highways sector faces unprecedented challenges with climate change increasing weather extremes and budgets under constant pressure. Yet at this critical moment, many authorities find themselves unable to adapt.

When procurement teams evaluate software contracts, they rarely calculate the innovation opportunity cost. A system that costs £500,000 but prevents £2 million in efficiency gains through blocked innovation is actually the more expensive option.

Breaking the cycle of innovation suppression

Forward-thinking highways authorities must demand contracts that safeguard their future flexibility. This means insisting on guaranteed free API access with unlimited calls and integrations, coupled with robust data sovereignty clauses that ensure authorities retain ownership and export rights to their own data. Contracts should require open standards compliance for seamless interoperability with future systems and explicitly prohibit penalties when integrating third-party AI or optimisation tools. Essential too are modular design principles allowing individual components to be replaced without scraping entire systems. This approach keeps the door open for innovation rather than slamming it shut for a decade at a time.

The democratic dimension

There’s also a democratic accountability question here: when elected officials promise better services but delivery is hamstrung by contractual limitations signed years earlier, who truly governs our public services—the people we elect or the contracts we sign?

The National AI Strategy and the AI Opportunities Action Plan both emphasise scaling AI across public services. Local authorities are encouraged to open data via APIs and embrace innovation. Yet in practice, many find themselves unable to act on these directives because of restrictive contractual terms.

The crossroads ahead

Currently we have at our feet an unprecedented technological opportunity for change and improvement.  However, one question keeps arising – can we afford to keep rejecting innovation for the sake of contractual inertia?

For every month that innovation is blocked, more potholes go unfixed, more payouts due to driver claims, and more public money is wasted. The true cost of closed software contracts isn’t only measured in pounds and pence, and we need to consider all the public services that could have been delivered, but weren’t.

The future of the UK’s roads and highways depends not just on asphalt and concrete, but on the invisible infrastructure of data, software and contractual frameworks that either enable or disable innovation. The choice should be ours, but the consequences belong to anyone who uses our roads.”

(Pics: Triopsis/LinkedIn)