About CIHT CIHT Governance President's Blog Diversity & Inclusion CIHT Foundation

Beyond the Awards with Lauren SeBlonka, Innovation Business Partner, Amey

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.

In this edition we speak to Lauren SeBlonka, Innovation Business Partner, Amey on the lessons learnt from the project "Live Labs 2 Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads" shortlisted for the 2026 CIHT CIHT Collaboration Award.

Overview of shortlisted project: One of four central themes within ADEPT Live Labs 2, the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads (CEDR) is a multi‑organisation collaboration led by North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) and Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), with delivery partners Amey and Colas. The programme unites local authorities (LAs), industry, academia, and SMEs to accelerate decarbonisation of the UK’s local highways network. Through trials, research, and the Knowledge Bank, CEDR has delivered pioneering material innovation and sector‑wide toolkits. This project exemplifies how structured, cross‑sector collaboration accelerates capability, fosters trust, and delivers practical, scalable solutions for lowercarbon roads

   

How did you ensure that the project has long term use and a positive legacy?

We structured Live Labs 2 to create a legacy that is not confined to a set of trials, but translated into enduring practice across the local road network. Working with North Lanarkshire Council, Transport for West Midlands, Amey and Colas, we established a common evaluation framework and an implementation pathway so innovations could move from pilot to standard delivery with consistent, comparable measures of performance and carbon. Crucially, North Lanarkshire’s role as asset owner and Amey’s role as an operator and maintainer helped keep the programme grounded in what it takes to adopt change at pace: build it into specifications, work planning, supply chains and site delivery, not just reports. We converted learning into tangible, transferable outputs: toolkits (standardised data capture templates, trial protocols, carbon emissions guidance, calculation and reporting methods), an accessible Knowledge Bank offering a menu of material innovation and case studies, and a local authority outreach programme to build capability in whole-life carbon assessment and low-carbon materials and construction methodologies. By combining repeatable methods with strengthened competence and governance for adoption, the collaboration provides a practical route to scale that outlives the programme’s three-year duration. It enables local authorities and delivery partners to make confident low-carbon choices, embed them into procurement and design, and sustain measurable reductions in embodied and operational carbon, cost and network disruption.

   

What kind of skills are critical now for projects such as yours to succeed and why?

Projects like the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads now succeed or fail on the strength of a blended skills set that brings rigour to decarbonisation and makes adoption achievable at scale. Of course, teams need strong technical capability in whole-life carbon assessment. However, real strength came from integrating the environmental impact expertise with technical and operational expertise in materials and maintenance methods. In convening these individuals and organisations to support the project, we ensured carbon claims were evidence-based, comparable and decision-ready rather than aspirational. Equally, teams need data and systems skills: the ability to specify what must be measured, assure data quality, and translate performance, cost and carbon datasets into practical choices for asset management, across multiple organisations and platforms. This is highly complex from an innovation project perspective but also in daily operations to ensure accurate and consistent carbon reporting and subsequent decision-making. Teams need commercial and implementation skills as well, particularly in procurement, specification writing and risk management, to convert innovations into contract-ready requirements that suppliers can deliver consistently. In our case, Amey’s experience translating evidence into business-as-usual highways maintenance helped connect the carbon methodology to the practicalities of approvals, work programming, site constraints and supplier readiness. Finally, and most critically for collaborative programmes, they need partnership and change-leadership skills, underpinned by clear governance, stakeholder alignment, knowledge transfer and the confidence to challenge established standards and specifications. Decarbonising roads is as much a transformation of ways of working as it is a technical substitution of products.

   

What did you learn that you will take into the next project?

The most important lesson I will personally take into the next project is that decarbonisation only scales when evidence, delivery and governance are designed together from day one. Live Labs 2 reinforced the value of agreeing a small number of consistent, decision-relevant metrics early (whole-life carbon alongside performance, cost, durability and maintainability), and then putting in place the data architecture and evaluation needed to make results easily understandable for local authorities. We also learned that operational readiness matters as much as technical performance: low-carbon solutions are adopted faster when specifications are written with clear acceptance criteria, innovation is championed rather than feared, and when maintenance teams are involved early so usability and future requirements are understood. Ultimately, the collaboration between the four partner organisations across two nations demonstrated that pace comes from trust and transparency, sharing both what worked and what did not, and investing in capability through our toolkit, Knowledge Bank and outreach/training. This supported our partners to iterate quickly, avoid repeating mistakes and carry learning directly into business-as-usual delivery. These lessons will shape our approach in Amey by tightening how we link innovation and implementation across our Highways portfolio: setting clearer go/no-go criteria for trials, standardising carbon baselines and data capture, and translating what works into specification clauses, supplier requirements and workbank governance so it is easy for teams to deliver consistently. Just as importantly, we will keep investing in the capability and partnerships built through Live Labs 2 so that low-carbon choices become routine, evidence-led decisions in day-to-day maintenance rather than one-off pilot activity.

     

What trends should the sector be paying attention to and why?

The sector should pay closest attention to the shift from carbon ambition to carbon governance: whole-life carbon is rapidly moving from a voluntary reporting exercise to a decision and assurance requirement, meaning projects will need clear baselines, consistent methodologies, and monitoring and verification that stands up to scrutiny. For delivery partners like Amey, that means embedding assurance-grade data capture, reporting and decision trails into routine maintenance delivery, not treating carbon as a parallel reporting stream. In parallel, we will see faster adoption of performance-based specifications for low-carbon materials and treatments (including increased use of recycled materials and preventative maintenance), supported by better evidence on durability, maintenance impacts and whole-life cost and carbon. A third trend is the maturation of digital and data capabilities for highways, integrating asset, materials and carbon datasets so options can be compared early and routinely, not retrospectively, alongside an increasing focus on operational carbon from worksite logistics, traffic management and programme planning. Collaboration itself is becoming a differentiator and an imperative in combined authorities: cross-authority partnerships, shared knowledge banks and common toolkits are reducing duplication and accelerating learning, which is essential if we are to decarbonise the local road network at pace while maintaining safety, resilience and value for money.

   

Amey in their own words

Amey is a global, integrated infrastructure consultancy and operations partner, designing, delivering, protecting, and maintaining critical assets and systems.

www.amey.com/uk

  

Next steps

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.

  

CIHT Statement

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the CIHT or its members. Neither the CIHT nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein

  

Share
Email
Bookmark