Announcement of the winners of our competition to ease the pain of roadworks

Ten winners of a National Highways innovation competition launched to help improve people’s experiences of roadworks have been revealed.

Each of the winners will now get £15,000 to develop their ideas which will help take the sting out of roadworks for drivers, local businesses and communities.

The winning ideas will deliver a variety of benefits from improving the planning of roadworks, enabling more efficient road maintenance and providing real-time data to help people better plan their journeys.

The projects range from a digital twin system to a centralised hub for engagement with road users and video analytics software for insight on roadwork experiences.

Working in collaboration with Connected Places Catapult, we launched the competition last year to find new or existing technology, products or solutions that can make a positive difference to people’s experience of roadworks whether they are driving through them or living nearby.

Our Customer Service Director Laura Baker-Lacey said:

“We wanted to find ideas that we hadn’t trialled, tested or even thought of ourselves – and we haven’t been disappointed. We have chosen 10 very exciting projects that could really help reduce the impact of roadworks on road users."

“We hope these ideas will make the experience of roadworks a kinder one and look forward to seeing how the projects develop.”

One of the goals of the competition was to allow smaller enterprises, which haven’t traditionally had the opportunity to work directly with us, to showcase their ideas and win the chance to take it out on the road network.

The winners are:

• Immense AI (London)
• Alchera Technology (Cambridge)
• Innovation Factory (Birmingham)
• Robok (Cambridge)
• Fewzed (Castle Cary)
• Emu Analytics (London)
• Colas (Birmingham team)
• Lokulus (Macclesfield)
• Nerds with Words (Gateshead)
• Be Mobile (Melle, Belgium)

Find out more about the winners on the Connected Places Catapult website.

As well as the £15,000 funding to explore the feasibility of using their projects on our roads, they'll also get technical and commercial support from experts at Connected Places Catapult and National Highways to help develop and scale-up their innovations.

The winners with the most successful ideas will have the opportunity to trial them on our roads.

The competition is funded through our Designated Funds programme. This is ring-fenced funding dedicated to investing in and supporting initiatives that deliver lasting benefits for road users, the environment and communities across England.