Highways Drone Services and Kier win CECA Midlands Innovation Award for Birmingham street lighting surveys

Highways Drone Services (HDS), together with Kier Infrastructure, has won the Innovation Award at the CECA Midlands Awards 2026 for the use of drone technology to deliver street lighting surveys for Birmingham City Council.

The award recognises the development and successful implementation of a new approach to inspecting street lighting assets, using drones to improve safety, increase productivity and significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with traditional inspection methods.

The project began with Kier giving HDS the opportunity to trial drone-based inspections as an alternative method of surveying street lighting columns across Birmingham.

Following the results of the initial work, the technology has progressed beyond the trial stage and is now being used as part of business-as-usual delivery.

Results from the project demonstrated a 5.18x increase in productivity compared with the traditional inspection method, alongside a 93.5% reduction in CO₂ emissions.

Safety has also been a major driver behind the approach.

Traditional street lighting inspections can require operatives to work at height and may involve specialist access equipment and traffic management. Using drones allows detailed visual inspection and data capture to be completed remotely, helping to reduce exposure to live traffic and working-at-height risks.

The ability to inspect more assets within a working day can also reduce the time teams spend on the network, minimise disruption to road users and lower the resources required to complete large-scale inspection programmes.

Marc Hobbins, Director of Highways Drone Services, said:

“Winning this award is something we are extremely proud of. Drone technology has taken time to gain traction within the highways sector, so seeing a project like this recognised by CECA is a significant moment for us.

“Kier gave us the opportunity to demonstrate what the technology could do in a real highways environment. More importantly, they worked with us to develop the approach and have taken it from an initial trial into business-as-usual delivery.

“The results speak for themselves. We have been able to demonstrate improvements in productivity, significant reductions in carbon emissions and, most importantly, a method that can reduce the amount of time people need to spend working at height or within live highway environments.

“This is where we believe drone technology can make a real difference. It is no longer simply about capturing impressive aerial imagery. We are increasingly using drones as practical inspection and data-capture tools that can help highways organisations deliver work more safely and efficiently.”

The Birmingham project forms part of a growing use of unmanned aerial technology across the highways sector.

HDS is currently applying drone technology across a range of applications including street lighting inspections, asset inspections, corridor surveys, topographical surveys, photogrammetry, construction monitoring, earthworks, drainage, thermal inspection and infrastructure data capture.

For asset owners and contractors, the technology offers the potential to collect detailed information across large areas while reducing the requirement for physical access to infrastructure.

The CECA Midlands Innovation Award adds further industry recognition for the Birmingham street lighting project and highlights the results that can be achieved when contractors, technology providers and local authorities work together to test new approaches and move successful trials into everyday delivery.

For HDS, the award also represents another step in demonstrating how drone technology can become a practical part of highways inspection and asset management.

Hobbins added:

“We are incredibly grateful to Kier for having the confidence to trial the technology and to Birmingham City Council for supporting its use on the network.

“There are still many applications for drones across highways that have yet to be fully explored. As an industry, we are beginning to see what is possible when the technology is applied to genuine operational challenges rather than simply being treated as something new.

“We are excited about what comes next.”