Andrew Hugill, Director of Policy and Technical affairs, CIHT, said:

“CIHT champions innovation in the sector. The DIB approach encourages SME involvement from the early stages of the project driving innovation and creative solutions. If the pilot scheme in Wiltshire is successful, the DIB approach has the potential to become an invaluable tool for innovation in the sector.”

The Digital Intelligent Brokerage (DIB) opportunity gateway is a free to access portal that captures interest from specialist organisations looking to work with local authorities: to explore new methods, technologies and innovations to tackle specific challenges.

The collaboration with the DfT is being used to address potholes, an issue facing local authorities across the country. During a pilot phase with Wiltshire Council, participating SMEs will propose ideas via the portal, these are screened using algorithms before being accessed by experts from Atkins.

Peter Binley, Head of Highways Asset Management, Wiltshire Council, said:

“Wiltshire, like many other areas across the UK, faces a pothole challenge which needs to be addressed. By using the DIB, we believe we can get access to a wider pool of suppliers who offer unique solutions and different insights as we look to tackle a well documented problem.”

The DIB approach allows Wiltshire council to identify challenge areas for addressing potholes and SME engagement is based around the challenges. The challenges are then refined based on feedback, information is then utilised to identify communities of SMEs around the particular issues. The next phase of DIB develops the SME communities into actionable groups: these will work collaboratively to address the refined challenges and develop novel and innovative solutions. The last step seeks to trial and test developed solutions to prepare for commercial integration.

A Government response to a recent Transport Committee report on Local Roads Funding and Maintenance described DIB as, “a new and innovative approach to accelerate research and development by encouraging SME involvement in the highways sector.”

The DIB approach was initially developed by Atkins and Scottish Water to identify new ideas to help address water supply, quality and pollution challenges affecting rural communities in Scotland. Over 50,000 SMEs were invited to participate, this resulted in 500 direct interactions, and led to 49 opportunities for Scottish Water to work with SMEs (77% of whom had never previously worked in the water sector). This demonstrates the capability of the DIB approach to encourage and facilitate high levels of SME engagement. The approach has the versatility to be used on a large range of challenge across highways sector. CIHT will publish, in 2020, their review: Improving Local Highways which will highlight the need for innovation in the local highway sector.