Long before the dust settles in on the Highways UK 2022, we thought we would share our experiences from this year’s mega event. Highways UK is a special event that brings together the people responsible for planning, developing, managing, maintaining, and future-proofing the UK’s road networks. Constructed around four network owner hubs – Highways England, The Regions, Local Authorities and Cities, Highways UK has, in the seven years since its launch in 2015, become the most popular annual event in the industry’s calendar.
The event and the discussions
Highways UK 2022 is the ultimate place for market knowledge, innovation, and new business for the entire value chain. As always, thought leaders of the industry, national transport organisations, regional transport bodies and local authorities and innovators took part in the event. Discussions on technology, efficiency, sustainability and automation took the central stage at the two-day event. National Highways, a major participant, outlined their expectations when looking for collaboration and debated the key infrastructure challenges within the road network supply chain including efficiency, sustainability and automation. The event was a showcase for technological innovations and sustainability, the two major talking points in the industry now. The key speakers included the who’s who in the construction and National Highways sector.
VisiLean’s connection with Highways
Innovation and sustainability – are two pillars of VisiLean’s product and service offering that have made a tremendous difference in terms of time saved and costs minimised across Highway projects in the UK. Ever since the first VisiLean prototype was successfully implemented on a National Highways (then Highways England) project about a decade ago, this is a sector we have held close to our hearts. It is this continuous relationship that led us to exhibit at this mega event, where we ended up meeting a number of familiar faces.
Making connections happen
This year our Customer Success Manager, Darren Saffer and our Head of Sales, James Ellis attended the Highways UK event. We had a steady stream of visitors. The fact that our existing clients were at the event helped us leverage the connection and discuss new opportunities with prospective clients too. We are positive about entering 2023 with some successful new deals. James Ellis says, “We also had quality interests from key people from the exhibiting Main Contractors and several attendees in the Tier- 1 space. While the number of leads was low, we were one of the only software companies in this space. This allowed us to get genuine leads from visitors. Several councils showed interest from a client’s perspective as well. The key feature most prospects saw was the fact that it gave them the ability to manage the Contractors better.”
What made Highways UK an amazing experience
James Ellis also happens to be our lucky mascot at almost all conferences and events! Continuing our conversation on his experience, he said; “Highways UK stood out as an event not focused on software companies. The stands at the event were main contractors with just a handful of new technology and services companies. The attendees were mainly councils, suppliers, or contractors who were not exhibiting. This made VisiLean see a lot of inquisitive and interesting footfalls.”
Our Takeaway
For VisiLean, our deep involvement in the sector made it completely worthwhile to be a part of this event, despite the minimal focus on technology. Seeing familiar faces and meeting people that we are actively working with made the whole experience rich with conversations that help us grow better every single day both as a company, and a product!
We are excited to head over to our next destination – We are gearing up for the Big 5 in Dubai now and we hope to see a number of you at the event to have some of these interesting conversations in person!
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