Amey and the North Lanarkshire Council in England will receive around €5.2 million to set up the centre, according to a press release from Amey. It will “break down siloed working practices, review and trial leading innovation”.
ADEPT Live Labs 2 is being run over three years and is funded by the UK Department for Transport with up to €35 million. Following the success of the ADEPT SMART Places Live Labs programme (Live Labs 1), Live Labs 2 will run until March 2026, with a with a five-year subsequent, extended monitoring and evaluation period.
ADEPT – Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport – represents local authority, county, unitary and metropolitan Place Directors. Members deliver public services that primarily relate to the physical environment and the economy.
Live Labs 1 focused on adoption of digital technology across the local roads sector in England. For Live Labs 2, Amey and North Lanarkshire Council will with their project partners identify road materials innovations, provide a centralised hub for live trialling and evaluation, develop a knowledge bank and virtual collaboration environment and enable a process to quickly share and disseminate learnings.
“With the mobilisation of Live Labs 2 underway, we are kickstarting an evidence-based debate around how the local highways sector needs to reduce the carbon impacts of its construction, maintenance and operational activities,” said Giles Perkins, prorgamme director for Live Labs 2.
“With billions being invested annually in local highways, activity across our seven Live Labs will demonstrate new solutions and techniques while measuring the carbon benefits and sharing information across industry.”
“The industry as a whole has a plethora of low carbon solutions,” said Andy Denman, highways sector director at Amey. “The challenge for local authorities is deciphering the potential impact, quality of the material and evaluating whole life carbon to filter out the high quantity of the proposed solutions.
For more information about Live Labs 2, visit www.adeptnet.org.uk/livelabs2.
