ADEPT Live Labs 2 is a three-year, UK-wide £30 million programme, funded by the Department for Transport, aimed at decarbonising the local highway network. It includes seven projects, grouped by four interconnected themes, led by local authorities working alongside commercial and academic partners.

North Lanarkshire Council, with support from Amey, leads the north campus for the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads, while Transport for West Midlands, with support from Colas, leads the south campus, creating a national framework for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

The sandbox provides a dedicated testing ground for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to trial cutting-edge low-carbon road solutions providing a safe space for businesses to test their innovations, reducing risks and overcoming barriers to national adoption. The eight participating SMEs; PRG, Sima, Green Carbon Industries, Uberbinder, Biozeroc, DMAT, C-Twelve, and Ecopals, will receive expert mentorship, access to workshops, and direct engagement with public sector stakeholders. Their innovations will be assessed on performance, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and long-term environmental impact.

This unique collaboration between the private and public sectors, industry bodies, and SMEs, including Safetytech Accelerator, the appointed delivery partner for the sandbox, thought leaders from Transport Scotland and National Highways enables a deep analysis of existing barriers and leverages insights to develop solutions. By informing the wider industry and driving future progress, it marks a significant step towards more sustainable roads.

Scott Walker, asset services manager at North Lanarkshire Council, said: “Through the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads, we have trialled innovative products that will help reduce the high levels of carbon emissions created by roads maintenance activities. Through a private and public sector partnership, the Innovation Sandbox will identify and seek to remove the barriers currently preventing the scaling of innovative materials for road maintenance activities and offer the UK roads industry certainty of their quality and effectiveness for use on the roads network.”

Highways sector director at Amey, Kyle Clough, commented: “Our latest collaboration with North Lanarkshire Council is a pioneering initiative to create a safe environment for SMEs to trial low-carbon materials and develop new solutions to benefit the highways sector. I’m delighted by the support we have from a wide variety of industry mentors from Transport Scotland, National Highways and Safetytech Accelerator, and other leading minds from the sector. We are dedicated to helping uncover and overcome the barriers to mainstream adoption, supporting SMEs with their revolutionary low-carbon innovations. Together, we aim to accelerate the transition towards a resilient and low-carbon future for road infrastructure.”

Seb Corby, principal consultant at Safetytech Accelerator, added: “There’s a lot of groundbreaking new innovation in the pipeline, but adoption lags behind and new players are struggling to get traction. This programme is about breaking through the barriers that keep promising materials from reaching the roads. By bringing together top innovators from around the world, industry mentors, and public sector leaders, we’re exploring the practicalities of what it takes to introduce a high performance, low carbon material innovations into the UK’s local roads.”

Supported by the Department for Transport through ADEPT Live Labs 2, the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads has already trialled several innovative low-carbon materials and techniques in road construction and maintenance and aims to advance these materials and techniques within the industry.

As one of the four Live Labs 2 themes, the Centre of Excellence for Decarbonising Roads identifies leading road materials innovations, provides a centralised hub for live trialling and evaluation, develops a knowledge bank and virtual collaboration environment, and enables a process to share and disseminate learnings at pace.