The CIHT East Midlands committee of volunteers look forward to welcoming you to their Annual Conference 2023: Lean, Green and Mean - Resilient Road Infrastructure.
Important notice: bookings are now closed.
The aim of this conference is to provide insight into the challenges and opportunities that the highways and transportation industry in the East Midlands, and wider afield, faces and will face over the next decade, particularly with adapting our design, monitoring and maintenance strategies, to make highways future-proof, in a safe and sustainable way. For this, we will be joined by a mix of experts, from industry and academia, who will present to us a broad range of solutions and inspiring subjects. More details about the event speakers will be shared soon.
This promises to be a thought-provoking day of learning as well as an opportunity to reconnect with old friends and link with new colleagues in the sector. Aston Court Hotel (Derby) is looking forward to welcome us at their top-class facilities. Tea, coffee, biscuits, refreshments and lunch will be served throughout the day.
9:00 - Arrival: Meet and greet with the CIHT committee volunteers and refreshments
9:30 - Introduction: Lucy Nightingale, CIHT East Midlands Chair
10:00 - Future specifications for pavements: Dr Jonathan P Edwards, National Highways
10:30 - Keeping our roads safe: David Bill, Metrail Constructing Ltd
11:00 - Break: Comfort break
11:05 - Cold in-situ recycling: Paul Acock and Joseph Kimberley, Colas
11:35 - Panel questions: Dr Jonathan P Edwards, David Bill & Paul Acock
12:00 - Lunch & networking
12:50 - Data-driven decision making: Steve Birdsall, Gaist
13:20 - Future-proof asset management systems: Peter Wells, Via East Midlands
13:50 - Break: Afternoon refreshments
14:05 - DRIMS: On-demand maintenance data: John Swift, Waterman Group
14:35 - Not-so-mythical digital twins: Jonathan Corker, University of Nottingham
15:05 - Panel questions: Steve Birdsall, Peter Wells, John Swift & Jonathan Corker
15:30 - Closing remarks: Thanks from the CIHT East Midlands committee
Full detailed information about the event can be found in the conference booklet here.
David H Bill BSc. - Business Development Director for Metrail Construction Ltd
After graduating in civil engineering David joined Balfour Beatty as a site engineer working on railway electrification. He went on to complete his career with the company working primarily in the rail sector on the delivery and development of international rail infrastructure projects, becoming International Development Director for Balfour Beatty Rail.
David held a number of senior positions in the company including international assignments in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Dubai and Sweden.
Post Balfour Beatty David joined the UK Railway Industry Association as International Development Director where he was responsible for leading UK trade missions delivered in partnership with the Department for International Trade. This included trade missions to the Middle East, Far East, Australia, Canada and others.
He is now providing business development and marketing support to Metrail Construction Limited, a dynamic and growing business in the infrastructure maintenance and renewal sector. David is a member of the Philippine Britain Business Council.
John K Swift - DRIMS Associate Director for Waterman Group
John started his technical career in electronics with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers gaining a lot of “break fix” and maintenance experience. After 7 years moved into an IT career involving UK firsts deploying internal and external wi-fi solutions in the 90s. Two decades later after helping Public and Private Sectors from SME to FTSE with business changing technology, a new challenge in “Intelligent Roads” presented itself and the passion for Roads was developed over the last 15 years...
New, business changing, technology was key with UK firsts in LED Road Safety and Wireless Vehicle Detection involving trials, DfT approvals and industry awards. Some international success in Ireland, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan and technology partner engagements across Europe providing an alternative perspective of roads administration and agendas.
Recently gaining an Asset Management certification John is now sharing his passion with Waterman Group and more, but not new, business changing technology.
Peter Wells - Highway Asset Manager, Via East Midlands Ltd
Pete has over 12 years of experience in highway asset management as a manager within a Local Highway Authority. Generally associated with Highway Condition Surveys (UKPMS, AEI surveys), Highway Management Systems, planned capital works and general operation and maintenance within the highways sector.
He joined Via East Midlands in 2020. Since joining Via, he has been closely involved in the decision to migrate their Highway Management System from an on-premises system to a Software as a Service (Saas) system. My presentation will focus on the journey taken to reach this point and lessons learned.
Dr J Paul Edwards - Team leader in the Safety Engineering and Standards Pavements team, National Highways
Paul has over 25 years of experience having worked in the highway supply chain, consultancy and now at National Highways. The current role at National Highways includes Technical Committee chair for pavement content within the Manual of Contract Documents for Highways Works (MCHW) and the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB), and supporting the development and implementation of the Asset Class Strategy for pavements, with specific focus on the legacy concrete road pavement assets.
Joseph Kimberley, Innovation Manager and Paul Acock, National Technical Manager at Colas
Paul has over 30 years' experience in Highways materials and Joe project manages the rollout of the Recycol project in the UK. Recycol is a sustainable and innovative asphalt resurfacing technique that achieves significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all stages of its value chain. The solution, not seen in the UK before, is expected to result in a total CO2e saving of 71% over traditional HMA, resulting from reductions in:
• Materials extraction & upstream transportation
• Freight entering and leaving site
• Processing of waste from site
Recycol is an emulsion-based, cold-applied, in-situ recycling process, that recycles 100% of the binder course back into the new road. This process has been used in France for over twenty years and has been used in Canada, Germany and Denmark but is only making its way to the UK now. This approach attempts to unlock a market that hasn’t changed markedly in the last few decades. We aim to open this solution up to the sector and encourage other adjacent organisations to adopt such approaches to enable the whole of the UK to meet our national net-zero targets.
Jonathan Corker, Doctoral researcher at University of Nottingham and University of Birmingham (formerly senior analyst and solutions architect at Atkins)
Jonathan has worked at both ends of the engineering discipline, spending 10 years as a geotechnical engineer before moving into data and systems, first at a UK Local Authority, and then at Atkins where he won the Institute of Asset Management global innovation award for his work with Network Rail. He is currently researching digital twins for roads at Birmingham and Nottingham Universities. He will clarify what a digital twin is and present the historical and current context for digital twins in civil engineering across the asset lifecycle. Presenting some current examples of digital twinning and smart infrastructure from industry and academia, along with some challenges for implementation, Jonathan will close with his own research to demonstrating the value of holistic models with a common structure for breaking regional and cross asset silos.
Any questions or queries please get in touch at eastmidlands@ciht.org.uk
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