This week has been a varied week, but one that really typifies the different types of meetings that my week can involve.
First up this week, our new Head of Sector Insights has started. Daniel Cullern joins us from WSP, and you can read more about him here. As we’ve started to grow, we’ve wanted to find ways to support our members and partners more, by helping disseminate knowledge and insights from our work connecting the sector.
Dan has been involved in managing large pan European Research projects in the ITS space, regularly working across devolved nations, National Highways, and other countries. Using Dan’s experience he will be helping me, and supporting Karla in my team, to respond to requests to pull together national insights. In addition to this Dan will be supporting our TTF groups and activities. In true LCRIG style we are very clear that we are not intending to repeat research work already underway through partner organisations and others – for us this is about giving our members more value in the areas we already have a footprint and where we can seek out evidence based and empirical insights.
A big part of my role is meeting with our supply chain members, civil servants, councils, and other key partners, it’s something I love doing. Confidentiality plays a huge part in what we do at LCRIG and in the meetings that we have. I like that our members understand how important this is to us. It is imperative that all our members can talk openly with us and know that we will treat what they tell us as sacrosanct.
Often my meetings with supply chain members, have to be undertaken virtually due to a pretty hectic diary on my part and those that I meet. But if planned well in advance, I like to meet people in person. This week has been a real treat with lots of face-to-face meetings and an opportunity to do a bit of blue sky thinking.
One of those face-to-face meetings this week included me and Paul Campion, CEO at TRL meeting for lunch. TRL are LCRIG members and they often ask to us contribute to TRL activities, something which we happily do so, particularly if it allows us to feed in issues from across our wider council membership of nearly 125 councils. But for Paul and I this was a great opportunity to finally get together after regularly sharing speaking platforms or conference panel sessions.
Another face-to-face meeting was with our friends at FHRG (Future Highways Research Group). FHRG are involved with ADEPT, LiveLabs2, the Carbon Calculator (used by many councils) and work with lots of councils in a range of other highways related research. FHRG came and spent time with us in Blackburn earlier this year, this was an important meeting and as I have mentioned earlier is key to ensuring we support work of others without repetition at LCRIG.
My other face-to-face meetings this week included catch-ups with DfT, attending the TTF STREETWISE meeting which includes devolved nations, national operators and ensuring a seamless environment of travel across various countries. We also took the opportunity to enjoy a meal together too, before a rather full on meeting the following day. We are looking to share more of the work across nations through the TTF STREETWISE area on the TTF website – so keep an eye out for this over the next six months or so.
Finally, if I were to sum up this week, it would be the enthusiasm (and commitment) of each of those I met (and do meet) who want to make things better in the public sector. It really makes me pinch myself, that those who join and engage in LCRIG activities don’t do it purely for commercial reasons but because they have a mindset of wanting to improve wider society! Sounds grand but it is certainly a common theme amongst our members, whether they are involved in surfacing, asset management, consultancy, or the other services that LCRIG supplier members provide to councils.
Paula Claytonsmith, CEO