The range of this week’s meetings has been a real test of my mental athletic capabilities – which I obviously relish but can also be incredibly exhausting. It certainly led to a procrastination web search of how much energy and calories is being expended. In American Scientific it says….. “It is well established that the brain uses more energy than any other human organ, accounting for up to 20 percent of the body’s total haul.” But disappointingly research elsewhere found on the BBC suggests we only burn around 5 or 6 calories, so not a viable diet option.
Enough of this divergent ramble!
To give you a sense of the range of some of this week’s meetings I thought I would give some insights to them. If you caught my 33 second “Day in the life” on LinkedIn, this View from the Top is less compressed.
At the start of this week, I was invited to an expert panel organised by the National Infrastructure Commission who are undertaking a study to explore the policy and infrastructure changes required to maximise benefits of new mobility technology. There were some familiar faces on the call including Senior colleagues at DfT from CCAV, and Traffic Technology, LCRIG members Zenzic and luminaries in the AV space. It’s the future policy landscape in the Infrastructure that I’m feeding in to and next month we will be at University of Warwick for linked work. With the AV Bill going through various stages in the House of Commons, Royal Assent isn’t too far away (relatively speaking) and the policy landscape will require some changes.
I caught up with LCRIG members AISIN with Keely Metcalfe, our Relationship Manager. Catching up with members is a great way of understanding the context they are operating in, as well as talking about the wider sector landscape.
This week was also the North West regional working group. I love attending our regional groups, they are council only groups, but the subjects and discussions can be wide ranging from the technical to best practice sharing to updates from DfT. I love listening to all the different authorities and the problems they are trying to solve. There was quite a bit of discussion around road condition, local news media, new technology and of course day to day insights.
I also looked at the Private Members bill seeking to suggest changes to Section 58. With it being a Private Members Bill I’ve just got a watching brief going on, but if agreed it could introduce interesting changes. That being said it is unlikely to be accepted.
One of my favourite meetings this week was with our LCRIG partner JAG and their CEO. We debated robustly the subject of Innovation and the public sector having foresight of solving national challenges. In fact, it was such a good discussion we are planning an exciting ground-breaking session for this year’s Innovation and Learning Festival.
Then it was back to AV discussions with a major city road operator, and another new partnership in discussion to help Councils and their needs.
For the rest of this week I’ll be dressing up for the IHE Mercia Branch Awards as a guest of IHE’s Steve Spender and celebrating the entrants to the awards. Then I’ll be rounding off the week with conversations with National Highways, and separately our partners AIA. Now that the dust is settling on the ALARM report, we’ll be analysing the additional questions with them that will give more insights.
I’ve also been very good this week, although it’s killing me not to break all the exciting news and announcements for the Festival, but we will soon!!
Finally next week is the TTF Conference, which is even bigger than last year, and then next Friday as a treat I’ll be judging a competition for another brilliant partnership we’re waiting to announce 😊
Paula Claytonsmith, CEO