Live Labs 2 blog - Year 4: reflections on the year so far
From innovation to information sharing to business as usual; in this month’s blog, Programme Director, Giles Perkins discusses what’s been happening for the Live Labs 2 programme and projects since the deployment period wrapped up earlier this year.
Traditionally, innovation programmes conclude with the publication of the outputs and learnings, often with little else thereafter. We’re very fortunate that the ADEPT Live Labs 2 programme was awarded an additional £300k by the Department for Transport (DfT) to help communicate our learnings to a wider audience.
Aimed at benefitting the industry and with a view to local highway authorities (LHAs) embracing these new approaches as their new business as usual, we’ve seen some excellent engagement recently across the sector.
We began Year 4 by developing a programme of activity for 2026 to 2027 focused on sharing, explaining and exploring the programme's findings with organisations across the UK.
Our aim has always been to make it as straightforward as possible for LHAs to adopt and scale the methodologies, products and services that have emerged from Live Labs 2.
To do that, we have organised our work into three broad areas:
- To many – broader audiences such as at events and conferences to raise the profile of the programme.
- To few – workshopping Live Labs content and concepts with groups of practitioners within and beyond the immediate sphere of the highways sector and using the authentic voices of our Live Labs leads.
- In triage – monthly on-line sessions where challenges and opportunities arising from the programme can be discussed with and between practitioners across the public sector in a safe space.
All of these activities are now underway.
The team presented at the SCOTS conference in Pitlochry and at the LCRIG conference in June. We’ve run two collaborative workshops in Northern Ireland and in North Wales and hosted three well attended online triage sessions.
Alongside this outward-facing activity we have also been presenting to various ADEPT boards, the Local Government Association (LGA), sub-national bodies and other industry organisations.
At this stage in our crucial Yr 4 activity, nearly 500 people have been briefed on the programme, its outcomes and most importantly, how these lessons can be readily applied.
These are critical activities. The recently updated Local Transport Plan guidance requires the consideration of carbon from the very start of schemes. Local highways transparency reporting also asks authorities to report on carbon baselining and engagement with the Live Labs 2 programme.
One of the strongest messages coming back from these conversations is the level of enthusiasm for what the programme has achieved. There is genuine interest in the ways our projects have reduced carbon, cut costs and saved time, and how those approaches could be adopted by local highway authorities across the UK.
At the same time, we are hearing about the very real barriers that make innovation difficult to scale. Limited resources, competing priorities and understandable concerns about taking risks within established ways of working all make change harder to deliver.
These are all legitimate concerns and resonate with work that the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) did part way through the programme.
As local highway authorities continue to face financial and political pressures, the sector needs practical tools that make it easier to reduce carbon, lower costs and improve efficiency while maintaining resilient highway networks.
That is why we are developing our own implementation guide. As well as documenting what the programme delivered and what it achieved, it will provide practical guidance to help the sector make the most of our output and findings.
The guide will be published in early September, alongside the start of a new series of collaborative workshops taking place around the UK.
These sessions will take a deeper look at the Live Labs 2 learnings and help local highway authorities put them into practice as quickly as possible. We will also be speaking at CIPFA conferences during the Autumn to explore how these approaches can support authorities across the country.
If you would like to find out more, please get in touch. We can deliver bespoke sessions for public bodies, as well as knowledge sharing events with industry, academic and sector organisations.
The programme team is here to help ensure that the £30 million investment in Live Labs 2 delivers lasting benefits for local highway networks across the UK.
Further information
- The ADEPT website features a new, AI-powered large language search model, making it easier for local authorities and industry professionals to quickly access reports, toolkits, project blogs, evidence and resources from across the Live Labs 2 programme. Simply navigate to the top right-hand corner of the ADEPT website to find the Ask AI function and use it to search for what you need from the Live Labs 2 projects.
- For more information on ADEPT Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads in the UK, please look at the Live Labs 2 section on the website
- The next Triage session will take place on Tuesday 11th August between 14:00-16:00 - find out more and register for a future session
- You can discover more about the Live Labs 2 Decarbonisation of Highways Pledge here and the launch event at Westminster here
Author
Giles Perkins is Programme Director for Live Labs 2
