It shouldn’t have passed you by that Glasgow recently hosted COP26, where world leaders converged to discuss the global carbon emergency and set out plans to achieve ‘net zero’ by 2050 to help slow global warming. Scientists have determined that there has been an increase in greenhouse-gas emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, substantially increasing in the post-war era. The increased demand for fossil fuels, travel, energy, farming, fertilisers, deforestation, and refrigerant gasses, have all been enabled by ‘innovation’ – a new method, idea, product etc. Examples include steam engines, the electricity power network, transport network, and combustion engines, to name a few. As innovation has enabled the increase in greenhouse gasses since the 17^th Century, innovation will also play a significant part in the plans emerging from COP26 to achieve ‘net zero’. Furthermore, innovations will play a significant part in enabling our highway clients to deliver other targets/priorities around: safety improvements, improving social value and increased efficiencies in highway network enhancements, operation, and maintenance.

Innovation from the Industrial Revolution transformed our cities, transportation, manufacturing, energy/power, healthcare, and several other sectors, all leading to significant economic growth allowing society to grow and prosper. Fast forward to now, and the next ‘Industrial Revolution’ is upon us through Digital. The past two decades we have seen significant advancements in digital technologies, in particular cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and internet of things that have transformed the way we live and do business. We’re reliant on mobile phones and tablets, e-commerce apps for ordering shopping and buying tickets, watching TV, connected computers – all enabled by digital innovations. The pick-up in the highway sector is also gathering pace as we see innovations in our client and design offices, construction sites, O&M depots - all enabled by digital change.

Our design teams are utilising automated design tools, cloud based common data environments and producing 3D BIM models and digital visualisations. Adding 4D and 5D layers can output cost and schedule data, with all this edited and reported real-time anywhere in the world through connected networks. There’s a drive for Design for Manufacturing Assembly (DfMA) - standardised design solutions to support off-site manufacture / on-site assembly that will increase efficiency and quality and reduce safety risk exposure on site and customer disruption. Digital is key to making DfMA work through ordering and logistics processes to ensure just-in-time delivery to the site; it connects the supply chain with the end customer. We’ve seen the increased use of Virtual Events enhancing public and stakeholder engagements during scheme development – something we’ve seen introduced during Covid-19 restrictions, enabling planning projects to maintain progress.

Construction teams are digitally enabled to interface directly with the digital design models, enabling digital rehearsals of construction methodology and autonomous plant to operate. Sites are connected to the internet allowing off-site real-time remote monitoring of works quality and progress through robotics, video cameras and laser scanning; teams no longer need to be physically on-site improving safety and wellbeing. The location and performance of site plant can be monitored remotely to improve security, efficiency, and logistics. Electric powered fleets are starting to emerge on sites, as well as exoskeleton suits to aid workers and autonomous plant. Cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and internet of things are helping our O&M teams make better informed decisions about proactive maintenance interventions for highway infrastructure, expanding their serviceable life and improving the quality of the asset database. Digital twins of our highways network, encompassing all of these digital technologies, will monitor the performance of assets and inform safer, more efficient maintenance interventions. Our diverse talented teams are encouraged to ‘think differently’ about solutions to existing and new problems – in Jacobs, we have Innovation Exchange to capture these ideas, incubate and develop them into solutions.

So, what does this mean for the future skills in the highway sector? We need to start young by investment in STEAM to capture the next generation of designers, constructors, maintainers. As our digital maturity grows, some jobs will be replaced by digital tools and applications and new jobs will be created. Our industry needs to adapt and attract people from different backgrounds such as data analysts, robotic programmers, systems engineers, software engineers, strategists etc. These will work alongside traditional skillsets (design engineers, site engineers etc.) who will need to learn and adapt new skills and ways of working. Becoming more digitally enabled and more informed about our assets will enhance our workplace and allow better decision making to accelerate delivery of our clients’ priorities and targets. Innovation and future skills are key to achieving this.

 Tim Barber, Highways Lead – Design and Build, Jacobs

This Guest Blog is proudly sponsored by Jacobs

They will be continuing the conversation at the upcoming CIHT Young Professionals Conference 2021.