By John Challen

CIHT Emerging Professionals Conference 2025 special.

Live Labs 2 is a series of projects running across the country looking at ways to make the transportation and highways sector cleaner and greener. One of the projects is the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads, a partnership between North Lanarkshire Council (NLC) and Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), supported by delivery partners Amey and Colas. 

“Recognising the wealth of best practice in material innovation and decarbonisation, NLC and TfWM have come together to focus on convening the sector and developing a central knowledge bank to support local authorities across the UK to identify, trial, evaluate and adopt leading low-carbon materials,” explains Lauren SeBlonka, Innovation Business Partner at Amey, who spoke in detail about the initiative at April’s CIHT Emerging Professionals Conference 2025.

“Within the wider Live Labs 2 programme, the centre signifies a method to disseminate and coalesce the innovation, carbon evaluations and trial case studies developed through Live Labs and the wider sector,” she says. “We are focused on demystifying carbon claims, collecting operational and technical insights on materials, and ultimately driving others to scale low-carbon innovation.”

SeBlonka believes that there are several key engineering messages that early career professionals can take from the project: “Decarbonisation cannot and should not be completed in isolation. All of us in engineering and road maintenance and construction have a collective role to play in our transition to net zero.

“Whether it is exploring increased levels of reclaimed asphalt pavement, encouraging colleagues to try new materials and methods, or considering carbon in every aspect of design, planning, delivery and/or evaluation, there is great potential to achieve the step changes required to decarbonise highways.” 

Material innovation

Delving a bit deeper into innovation with materials, SeBlonka says that it is vital if the highways industry wants to make progress with decarbonisation.

“After energy and plant/fleet, materials represent one of the largest carbon emitters of road maintenance and construction,” she reveals. “Although it is an area directly within our control, there remains a dizzying array of carbon saving claims from suppliers, an uncoordinated and disjointed market and often siloed working, with local authorities conducting trials in pockets. By adopting low-carbon materials, the sector has the opportunity to reduce thousands of tonnes of CO2e, while driving additional benefits such as improved network resiliency through longer-lasting pavement.”

Numerous trials have already taken place, such as comparative evaluations of pothole repair materials, line marking and surface treatments. The team are also planning surfacing and footway trials for Summer 2025, confirms SeBlonka.

“Through comparative and rigorous testing on the live road network, we aim to build other local authorities’ confidence in adopting materials, as proven in a live testing environment, gather carbon, technical and operational data to support evidence-based decision-making and whole life assessments, and identify barriers to change through the trial delivery process to support mitigation development [such as] procurement, production limitations and risk aversion,” she explains.

Although the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads project still has a year to run (the Live Labs programme has a three-year duration), SeBlonka already has an idea of its legacy.

“As someone who has seen the centre grow from an idea on a page to a fully-fledged programme, I hope to see the lasting impact and legacy involve the real, widespread scaling of low-carbon materials across the sector,” she concludes. “I would like individuals [to] begin to share their experiences with innovation, learn from each other and build their confidence in discussing carbon. 

“Ultimately, the true mark of success will be in shifting a risk-averse sector to a community of engineering professionals all striving to rapidly decarbonise their work through collaboration and embracing change.”

Enjoy the highlights from April’s CIHT Emerging Professionals Conference 2025.

ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads in the UK is a three-year, UK-wide £30 million programme funded by the Department for Transport that aims to decarbonise the local highway network. Seven projects with four interconnecting themes are being led by local highways authorities working alongside commercial and academic partners.

Watch now: Giles Perkins, Programme Director for the Labs 2 initiative, spoke in a CIHT webinar recently.

Newsletter image: new road materials being laid. Credit: Amey.