Highways

Increasing resilience in road networks.

Highway network operators face multiple competing priorities, including maintenance to keep roads safe for users and investment to enhance capacity and increase connectivity between communities.

Population growth, urbanisation and changing travel habits are placing strain on our road networks. With higher temperatures and more intense storms becoming more frequent, the resilience of our road infrastructure is under extreme pressure.

A systematic approach to operating and managing assets is essential to tackle this, making full use of existing and emerging digital technology. Enhancing and renewing the network should be done in a collaborative environment, gaining public and stakeholder support by maximising social, environmental and economic value while delivering with certainty of schedule and cost.

What can we do for you?

We work with policymakers, government agencies, road agencies and authorities, statutory and regulatory bodies, private owners and operators, and other stakeholder groups to plan, design and deliver a wide range of highways projects and programmes.

We can help you:

Explore a collaborative and innovative approach

We create solutions that fit the specific needs and context of the most complex challenges, deploying innovation and a breadth of specialist expertise to develop projects that work for all road users.

Implement data driven asset management

We can help make sense of data to prioritise the necessary interventions and focus investment where it is most needed across the road network.

Cut carbon

From strategic advice to on-the-ground know-how, we are market leaders in reducing carbon in highways projects. We are also co-authors of PAS 2080, the international specification for managing infrastructure carbon.

Deliver excellent value

We retain a focus on value for money at every stage of a project, with significant expertise in contractual assurance, schedule certainty and risk mitigation, while still delivering transformative client outcomes.

Torrens Road to River Torrens, Adelaide, Australia. Working closely with the South Australian Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, we provided design services for this complex 4km section of motorway that provides a vital link in the North-South Corridor, one of Adelaide’s primary road transport routes.

Services we provide

Smart highway design for efficient transportation

We have a multidisciplinary skill set and work across the entire lifecycle of highways projects. We use our broad technical expertise, analytical thinking and collaborative problem solving approach to give you an end-to-end service and deliver well designed, efficient and sustainable roads and assets.

We can:

Help you conduct transport planning for a country, region or city, taking a joined-up view of how public and private transport can interact to provide people with mobility and access to employment and opportunity.
Help you formulate a decarbonisation plan for your network, with achievable targets and milestones, and a set of programmes and projects to achieve this vision.
Advise on the safety of your highways network and help you explore systemic ways to improve safety performance.
Advise on the use of digital technologies and data to achieve transformational improvements for your road network.
Carry out scenario planning and strategic foresighting to understand how transport policies, as well as technology developments such as autonomous vehicles, might affect your network.

We can:

Help you draw up options, conduct demand analysis and economic evaluation and frame business cases to fully consider benefits and costs, as an aid to decision making.
Advise you on procurement and contractual approaches to achieve your aims – we have particular expertise in NEC contract management for sharing and handling risk.
Provide permitting, planning and regulatory support to help you get the go-ahead from the authorities for your projects.

We can:

Carry out feasibility studies, environmental assessments, site and geotechnical investigations to reveal the potential of sites and identify possible risks.
Design road infrastructure – including bridges, tunnels, carriageways, embankments, drainage, barriers, signage and information systems – that are suitably sized and positioned, safe, resilient and make efficient use of resources.
Use carbon modelling and digital tools to reduce carbon emissions in design and operation.
Apply regenerative design principles and landscaping to promote biodiversity net gain and mitigate the impact of projects on air quality, flood risk and other environmental factors.
Apply digital traffic modelling techniques to design highways that fully consider road user behaviour, improving safety and reducing congestion.
Carry out systematic safety auditing to check the road safety implications of your highway improvement or new road scheme.
Use industrialised construction solutions, including design for manufacture and assembly, to create assets that are higher quality, more resource efficient and require less labour than using conventional onsite construction processes.

We can:

Manage your project or programme from start to finish, carrying out reviews at key project milestones to drive delivery against time and budget.
Estimate and manage costs and risks and implement robust project controls to keep your project on track.
Use a common data environment to share documents and data with project partners and stakeholders, building trust and collaboration.
Manage procurement, administer contracts and supervise construction for an efficient supply chain, with appropriate risk allocation and incentives.
Incentivise and manage innovation in the supply chain, finding creative solutions to reduce carbon and cost and to achieve better outcomes.

We can:

Produce a functioning digital twin of your network that will help you make the most of data to manage ongoing operation and maintenance.
Develop asset management strategies and plans, in line with PAS 55 standards, that enable you to better manage risk and prioritise investment.
Operate road networks under contract, managing planned maintenance activities and responding to incidents, to enable safe and efficient operation.
Develop bespoke software and technology solutions to help with day-to-day management and operation of road networks.
Carry out condition assessments to give you a rounded view of the condition of your assets and enable you to plan future work.
Design and manage safety enhancements, including junction remodelling, to improve the safety performance of the network.
Apply our technical expertise to maintenance, repair and enhancement work that extends the life and improves the performance of your assets.

Our people

Meet the team

Our experience

Our heritage in the highways sector stretches over a century: we were involved in major UK projects such as the Tyne Bridge in the 1920s. Today, we work on complex projects in North America, Australasia, the Middle East and Asia as well as UK and Europe.

Some highlights of our recent work include:

A303, Somerset, UK

As part of a joint venture with Sweco, we provided design services to help develop this new 5km section of dual carriageway to alleviate congestion between Sparkford and Podimore on this trunk road in Somerset. We were involved in this nationally significant infrastructure project from options identification and assessment through to development consent order submission and examination.
Area 10 asset support, UK

In joint venture with Balfour Beatty and on behalf of Highways England, we helped operate 570km of strategic road network covering Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. Under a contract that ran between 2012 and 2019, we carried out asset management, renewals and network enhancement – including 24/7 incident response – to ensure safe operation.
Lower Thames Crossing, UK

We’re part of a joint venture working for National Highways to deliver this new 23km road and tunnel linking Essex and Kent which is planned to relieve pressure on the M25 and Dartford Crossing; we’re working with Skanska on designing and building the Kent section of the project south of the River Thames.
National Highways net zero plan, UK

As part of a consortium of partners we helped National Highways form a plan to achieve net zero by 2050, encompassing corporate, supply chain and road user emissions, and also to achieve accreditation to PAS 2080, the international standard for the management of infrastructure carbon. National Highways was the first highways owner-operator in the world to achieve this standard.
North-South Corridor, Singapore

Our involvement in this major road tunnel in Singapore – which connects the north and south of Singapore beneath the city centre – dates back to the original feasibility study in 2008. We’re now providing design services to the consortium of contractors delivering the project, including detailed design for five of the ten project sections.
North Union Street Transformation, New York, USA

The city of Olean set out to convert the four-lane car-oriented commercial district of North Union Street to a two-lane ‘complete street’ that would revitalise the neighbourhood. Our design encourages pedestrian and bicycle use, calms traffic, and spurs economic activity.
Rome-Cartersville development corridor, Georgia, USA

We’re acting as design consultant to the Georgia Department of Transportation in developing the plans for this four-lane, 9km road linking the US411 and I-75 highways, with construction due to start in 2026.
Torrens Road to River Torrens, Adelaide, Australia

Working closely with the South Australian Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, we provided design services for this complex 4km section of motorway that provides a vital link in the North-South Corridor, one of Adelaide’s primary road transport routes.