CPEGC 5 Cambridge PBA Peter Brett Digital Centre Built Britain

Savings of £30bn could be achieved within the next ten years through greater digitalisation of the construction process.

Alexandra Bolton, Deputy Director of the Centre for Digital Built Britain, told delegates that massive savings can be delivered through more widespread take-up of digitalisation: “It depends on the extent that people will adapt digital, but the savings are huge which is why Government is so keen to incorporate digital innovation.”

She added that infrastructure projects would take time and they would move at a much slower pace than the technological innovations that have transformed daily life in recent years: “This isn’t a five-year project but a 50-year project. If you look at huge infrastructure projects coming to an end they started before Ipads. It shows how quickly things move on.”

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Digital technology is already transforming the work of Highways England, said Mike Evans, a Senior Project Manager at the agency. He said that diversion signs are becoming increasingly redundant: “When we put in diversion routes drivers are increasingly ignoring signs and using satnavs: we won’t need lots of signs when we put in diversions.”

Outlining progress on the agency’s major projects in the East of England, he said it will be applying in early 2019 to the Planning Inspectorate for an amendment to the development consent order for the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme. The scheme to widen parts of the A14 and A1, the county’s biggest road construction project, will facilitate the delivery of 7,000 homes at the county’s new settlement of Northstowe.

Subject to approval by the Secretary of State next summer, the A14 scheme is scheduled to open in December 2020: “We’re pushing to get it done earlier because we want to get on with the next project.”

He said that a preferred route for improvements to the A428 between Caxton Gibbet and the Black Cat junction which was expected to be announced by the end of 2018 has been held up – largely due to the Department for Transport reviewing its road investment programme.

Further afield, he said Highways England will be submitting a DCO for the new £6.4bn Lower Thames Crossing scheme to relieve the Dartford bridge in the spring. An examination has been timetabled for the summer of 2020, which would permit work to start in the following year.

Richard Taylor, Growth Lead at the Environment Agency, said that planner need to think longer term than they normally do when dealing with flood risk issues: “The planning cycle lasts 15-20 years and need to be revised regularly, but we need to think beyond that to 50.”

Water management also requires co-operation across political boundaries, and he pointed to how the sluices that protect Cambridge are located in a neighbouring local authority.

Taylor said infrastructure planners should examine the role that lakes could play in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, pointing to how Milton Keynes’ network of large lakes has opened up development land around the new town while performing other functions like promoting biodiversity and recreation.

But Mark Adolphus, Director of Connections at UK Power Networks, flagged up the risks of putting in infrastructure too early, referring to his experience of working in London in the Noughties: “There are many examples where anticipated development has not manifested itself. We saw a tidal wave of growth in east London which would involve building six new sub stations, however only two came forward. If we had made that investment, they would have been stranded assets that would have to be borne by London bill payers.”

But Adolphus said that energy network operators, like UK Power, must engage early with developers to establish the electricity needs entailed by their plans, while also factoring in the consequences of new technologies like electric vehicles (EVs).

Pointing to how the upper end forecast of EVs in 2030 have increased rapidly from 1.8m to 4.1m, he said: “The challenge is to identify the point of inflexion where penetration of EVs becomes genuinely mainstream.”
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