National Highways will put £1 million from its Innovation Fund into a project that will ask the industry to come up with ideas to keep roadworkers safe.
Making his first speech as Interim Chief Executive at National Highways in the Keynote Theatre on day one of Highways UK 2026, Nick Joyce said he wanted to find ways of creating a ‘step-change’ in this industry for road workers on a daily basis.
“We will be inviting innovators, suppliers, technology companies, SMEs, industry partners to bring forward new ideas and solutions to fundamentally change how we protect people working on our roads.
“It is more than about making what we do today a bit safer. It’s about finding technologies, equipment, ways of working that can enhance and eliminate exposure to risk for anyone that works on the roads. We want to create a clear route for innovative ideas to be tested, developed, and adopted at scale. Our ambition is really simple. It’s to accelerate those innovations that can help road workers from harm and create a safer future for everyone and that is because everyone who comes to work on our network deserves to go home safely at the end of each day.”
Mr Joyce also spoke about the need to be ‘bolder’ about finding routes to market for highways innovation in general in the sector, using data and other technology to improve the way the organisation monitors and manages its projects.
“I have a worry,” he added, ‘ and my worry is that we have great ideas, but they don’t always or often end up actually being implemented in practice, and we need to challenge ourselves as to why that is?”
“We have been given some really tough delivery targets and a clear focus for us in the next five years to make sure we invest in the existing network. So at the end of the current road period, we’ll have a more resilient network, less unplanned disruptions, and hopefully a better experience for users as we go,” he added.
He also admitted some improvements were needed.
“One of the first things that I’ve discovered, actually, the quality of work on our network can be quite inconsistent. Whether that’s at the small end, from actually not doing site completion properly, or aftercare, or to be blunt, some bigger things like not building to the right design or not using materials in the right way for the project, these are all things we need to better on.”
(Picture: gov.uk)
