The £23m ADEPT SMART Places Live Labs Programme has published the first of a series of White Papers with an invitation to other sectors to share in its findings.
The council directors’ body said the two-year DfT-funded initiative grew out of a desire to accelerate innovation in the local roads sector and rapidly developed to encompass a range of areas including the use of data, SMART materials and energy.
The programme resulted in 'innovative pilots ranging from using drones to identify potholes and recycled plastic in road surfacing, to installing geo-thermal probes to de-ice carparks and heat buildings’.
The paper, Mobilising an Innovation Programme (During the Covid-19 Pandemic), focuses on findings from the programme launch through to the start of the delivery phase.
It was developed through a series of one-to-one discussions with local authority Live Lab project leads.
Neil Gibson, chair of the Live Labs Commissioning Board, said the innovations coming out of the programme ‘will not only be transformational for the highways industry, but also provide a platform for which the Live Labs concept can be developed and implemented in other sectors’.
He said: ‘This first White Paper really captures the flexibility and agility required to get a multi-million pound innovation programme like Live Labs off the ground. It demonstrates how local authorities – with resourceful teams and partnerships – can move swiftly and innovate when given the space and resources, even under the most complex circumstances.’
Live Labs programme director Giles Perkins said: ‘At the heart of the Live Labs programme is our commitment to take an open approach to our insights and findings. This will allow others to develop business cases that adopt similar innovations built on a proven evidence base.’
ADEPT said that ongoing internal communications have been key to bringing senior officers and members ‘on the journey in this different cultural environment’, through both pan-programme knowledge sharing and across other services within the authorities.
It said a case-in-point has been the inclusion of adult social care outcomes within two of the Live Labs, capitalising upon highways infrastructure investment to deliver wider social benefits.
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