Gerry Howe, Managing Director at specialist in-situ road recycling company, Stabilised Pavements Limited (SPL), speaks to the Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) about a recent addition to the SPL fleet and the importance of identifying innovative ways of reducing carbon usage within the highways sector.
Q. Tell us about the recent addition to your fleet and what this means for the business?
A. The recent addition to our fleet is a Bomag Tandem BW 174 AP -5 AM Hybrid Roller.
Q. How do you ensure your values are brought out through the company’s activities?
A. We ensure our values are being achieved by sourcing and using low carbon materials, plant and process wherever possible. We have demonstrated this by using low carbon cements along with low temperature asphalts and purchasing a hybrid roller to help reach our target of net zero.
Q. What are the biggest challenges facing the highways sector?
A. We are in a dirty industry where the materials we use create high embodied carbon values, so any reduction or alternatives by way of innovation will help reduce carbon.
Q. How are you working with councils to help them deliver highway services?
A. We are working with councils by in-situ recycling roads to help them reduce carbon by reducing lorry movements and treat tar bound roads along with trialling innovative materials and treatments.
Q. How much importance is put on innovation within your business and in what ways can it enable change?
A. Innovation is at the forefront of every decision we make. Through innovation we can achieve environmental and commercial efficiencies and we have demonstrated this by laying a grid in a one pass operation beneath our road in one pass – this is a world first.
Q. In what ways do you collaborate with local authorities and the wider supply chain?
A. Over the last three decades and a bit more we have developed and trialled new processes by way of adding new materials and using new machines and developing machines to enable us to add value and innovation to our supply chain and the local authority.
Q. How important is the role of LCRIG in driving change within the sector?
A. LCRIG is very important to us. Events organised such as Strictly Highways and the Innovation Festival have helped us drive innovation to the people within the authorities and they have helped spread the word about innovation through equipment such as JCB, Multevo and others. We should now start looking at innovation through cleaner materials and cleaner fuels to run our plant, such as HVO/ Shell GTL and others to achieve the same result.