Beyond the Awards: Lessons from the Shortlist distils sharp, real-world insight from projects recognised in the CIHT Awards 2026. We ask shortlisted entrants four focused questions on legacy, skills, key learning, and future trends to discover what’s working now and what’s coming next. It’s essential reading for sector professionals looking to benchmark their work, apply lessons learnt now and stay ahead of change.
Overview of shortlisted project: The Tees Valley Traffic Digital Twin is the UK’s first live, region-wide, AI-enabled digital twin operating within UTMC and at the heart of day-to-day traffic and bus network management. Led by the Tees Valley Combined Authority, it transforms transport operations from reactive management to proactive, predictive control across five local authorities. By integrating real-time data, predictive simulation and automated signal optimisation, the Digital Twin is already delivering measurable improvements in journey reliability, congestion reduction and bus performance. Live since June 2025, it demonstrates how strategic public-sector leadership and digital innovation can deliver realworld benefits at a regional scale.
Long-term value was secured by designing the Tees Valley Traffic Digital Twin as an operational system embedded within business-as-usual, rather than a time limited pilot or analytical tool. The Digital Twin was built to address a clearly defined operational need enabling a regional control centre to proactively manage a large, complex multi authority network with constrained resources. By integrating directly with existing traffic control systems, and complementing the established traffic control platform provided by Yunex, the solution enhances rather than replaces current capabilities. This has ensured immediate credibility with operator adoption. A modular, standards-based architecture using industry standard data formats, interfaces and APIs minimises maintenance overhead and future-proofs the system. The platform enables automation, predictive decision support, and measurable performance management, with clear monitoring and evaluation against agreed KPIs such as congestion, bus reliability and incident response times. Crucially, the Digital Twin is scalable and designed to evolve. It provides a foundation for future integration of additional modes, environmental data and advanced analytics, ensuring a lasting operational legacy and a transferable model for wider regional and national adoption.
Projects of this nature require a blend of traditional transport expertise and advanced digital capability. The shift from reactive traffic management to predictive, AI enabled operations demands new skills and new ways of working. On the delivery side, traditional transport modellers are increasingly working alongside data scientists, traffic control experts, software engineers and systems integration specialists. Skills in data quality management, real time analytics, simulation, AI and systems interoperability are now essential to deliver reliable, operational digital twins at scale. Equally important are skills on the client side. UTMC operators and local authority teams need the confidence and capability to adopt new tools, interpret predictive insights and embed them into daily decision making. This requires investment in training, change management and organisational learning as systems evolve. As digital twins expand beyond traffic control into the full transport lifecycle from planning through to operations cross disciplinary skills and a shared understanding of how high quality data can create value across multiple stakeholders will become increasingly critical.
Collaboration, commitment and trust are fundamental to the successful implementation of new operational technologies. The Tees Valley project demonstrated the importance of close, continuous collaboration between the Combined Authority, UTMC operators and delivery partners. Joint definition of requirements, phased deployment, and transparent management of risk enabled the system to be integrated safely into live operations while still delivering innovation. Embedding operators throughout the process rather than introducing technology in isolation was critical to adoption and long term success. This experience reinforces that technical capability alone is not enough, sustained engagement, shared ownership and operational credibility are essential for transformational digital projects.
Aimsun is a global leader in technology for transport planning and operations.
For almost 30 years, our Aimsun Next software has helped cities, road operators and consultancies understand how their networks behave and how to make them work better.
Today, Aimsun combines simulation, real-time data and predictive AI in a single platform, giving agencies the tools to plan resilient infrastructure, manage daily operations and respond to disruption as it happens.
The company is headquartered in Barcelona with teams across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the Americas.
If you work in highways and transportation, keep an eye out for Beyond the Awards: Lessons from the Shortlist overview (Coming soon) — your single go-to source for sharp, practical insight drawn from standout projects and the people behind them. By bringing together key takeaways from award entries and candid interviews with leading contributors, this feature turns real-world experience into real-world learning that you can apply today to your projects while helping you stay prepared for what’s coming next.
2026 CIHT Award Winners
The results for the 2026 CIHT Awards will be announced at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London on 17 June 2026. To find out more about the Awards Ceremony visit here.
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