HTM – HTM Hosts Staying Streets Ahead Event Focusing on Technology, Innovation and Collaboration.

Highway Traffic Management (HTM) hosted its first Staying Streets Ahead event on Wednesday 22nd July at Birmingham City University’s innovative STEAMhouse venue, a social enterprise hub in Aston.

The day centred around HTM’s overarching vision, ‘Streets Ahead,’ with a clear focus on technology, innovation, and collaboration across the temporary traffic management sector.

To encourage hands-on engagement, the venue was split into 5 themed activity zones where attendees could ask questions, test products, and complete an event challenge card.

Suppliers Roadside Technologies (RTS), Traffic Group Signals (TGS), Highway Resource Solutions (HRS) and Snapshot all had products available to demonstrate to attendees and to highlight how these add value to sites through safety, compliance and commercial benefits, with HTM bringing some concept products to get feedback from attendees.

Danny Thorn, Head of Business Development, said,

“Today is an opportunity for clients and local authority attendees to understand how we can add value and get the most out of these products and services on their contracts, plus discuss what the barriers are that we need to overcome to enable this.”

He continued, “We’ve also had some prototypes of some of our own products in the pipeline, so it’s exciting to get some initial reactions and feedback on these with key clients and industry experts.”

Supporting and attending the event were two of HTM’s XII Alliance ISO 44001 accredited collaborative partners Consilium Technical Services (CTS) and Up to Speed Training (UTS) and Assessments, showcasing some of the exciting services that are adding value within the industry, such as CTS’s 3D traffic management plans and traffic modelling,  and UTS’s newly in-house developed and approved electronic sector scheme training and assessment paperwork process.

Alongside all the fantastic technology and product innovations, the event gave HTM the platform to show how it has innovated in other ways such as its approach to wellbeing, including the My Working Day app, Soother opt-out therapy and HTM’s award-winning Talk More campaign, all designed to engage with employees about their mental and physical wellbeing so that this can be proactively supported.

“Bringing clients and suppliers together and helping bring everyone’s knowledge to the same level was a key part of today – innovation and technology can only go so far without collaboration from across the industry, which we hope we’ve shown today,” commented Greg Baldwin, Managing Director at HTM.

Throughout the day, expert-led theatre sessions gave attendees deeper visibility into site safety, behavioural design, and company culture.

• Designing in Safety (Tom Miles, Traffic Group Signals): Focused on reducing risk on site by selecting signals tailored to specific junction challenges, highlighting where their portable and temporary traffic signals offer distinct advantages with features such as staging and walk-with traffic to reduce wait times and improve throughput for traffic and pedestrians.
• Cultural & Behavioural Shifts (Ian Davies, Kier): Examined traffic management planning in Birmingham, showcasing how design has shifted toward proactively managing human behaviour, focusing on eliminating risk proactively (by removing operatives from harm’s way) as opposed to dealing with it reactively, noting that, “Some of the most important innovations have been cultural.”
  
• Innovation Mindset (Greg Baldwin, HTM): Detailed how HTM’s 30-year history has been built on continuous innovation and improvement, including a shift in core values from basic mental health awareness to holistic wellbeing, plus a video from Soother therapy founder, George Stevens.

Completed event cards were handed in at the end of the event, with a live prize draw at the end of the day.

Grand Prize Winner: Arron Roberts from R&C Williams won a £500 Prezzee gift card.

Social Media Winner: Highway Care’s Adam Thompson won a £25 Prezzee gift card.

Every attendee also departed with an HTM goodie bag filled with company merchandise, marking a successful end to an event designed to drive the traffic management industry forward together.