AI: let’s get learning!
- robball6
- Sep 2
- 3 min read
What is the biggest change coming to the highways industry? According to both local authorities and suppliers, it’s AI.
We all know it’s coming. But the question for most companies is: where do we start?
The Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) is looking to give its members a helping hand, with plans for a series of guides and webinars all about AI. It has just published the first of these, Demystifying AI, which explains in simple language what all the different types of AI do, reports on how it is already being used in the highways sector and provides some case studies.
The LCRIG initiative follows on from the publication of its 2025 Innovation Report on 1 August, which is based around surveys of its local authority and supplier members. When it comes to emerging innovation themes, AI was the top one with 83% of both local authorities and suppliers identifying it as a key trend. The next two most popular were connected data from cars and then sustainable materials.
The survey also identified the top three areas requiring innovation. These are potholes and maintenance (57%), materials (51%) and skills and workforce development (35%).
It’s not too hard to think about ways that AI could help in these areas. Indeed, one of the case studies in the Demystifying AI guide is Blackpool Council which has used high-definition cameras and AI to identify road damage early, which the council says has reduced its pothole compensation claims from £1.5 million to just £42,000 in 2023.
Big players push ahead
Some of the big players in the market are already pushing ahead with AI. At the end of July Balfour Beatty announced that it is investing a whopping £7.2 million in its own internal version of Microsoft 365 Copilot which it has already been trialling on its A9 project in Scotland, to carry out early reviews on inspection and test plans.
Balfour Beatty has big plans for the use of AI in the future. For example, using AI to help optimise planning of road maintenance operations and deploying AI agents to help it with all sorts of tasks such as estimating, planning and assurance.
AI agents are software systems that can perform tasks on behalf of users and even interact with other agents. They have been around for some time, but the development of large language models (LLMs) now means they can understand and search through natural language, which is accelerating their use.
Other big companies are also making strides with AI. Skanska in the US is using a Chat-GPT-type tool called Sidekick to give its employees instant access to safety resources and best practice.
Some of HS2’s contractors are using it to optioneer different scheduling routes for complex pieces of work, reportedly shaving time from their programmes.
Clearly, smaller companies don’t have the same resource or budgets as major contractors. However, we have perhaps the most opportunity to benefit; we can potentially use AI to help us do more with the resource we have.
The LCRIG guides and webinars will be a good place to start educating ourselves. LCRIG is also planning to cover how AI can be used in road conditioning and maintenance, severe weather and resilience, road safety, cyber security, road signals and connected data from vehicles.
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