How National Highways UK uses road network planning with AIM to drive strategic investment decisions.
Client:
National Highways
Location:
United Kingdom
Consulting Partner:
ICS Consulting, Atkins, Jacobs, supported by Probit
Asset Types:
Signage, CCTV, concrete carriageways, VRS, central reservations, bridges
AIM Version Used:
AIM 4.0
Key Outcome:
Data-driven, regulator-ready investment planning for RIS3, with improved risk visibility, faster planning cycles, and value-based decision-making.
National Highways is the government-owned company responsible for operating, maintaining, and enhancing England’s Strategic Road Network (SRN), including all motorways and major A roads.
With an infrastructure valued at £128 billion, it manages thousands of kilometres of carriageways and associated assets such as bridges, signage, drainage systems, CCTV, and complex roadside technology.
National Highways plays a central role in ensuring economic productivity, public safety, and environmental resilience through efficient infrastructure investment and long-term planning.
The challenge
• Demonstrating optimal investment – proving to government and regulators that multi-billion-pound capital expenditure is allocated optimally and transparently, particularly ahead of the critical 2025–2030 Road Investment Strategy (RIS3).
o Develop holistic, regulator-ready business cases.
• Developing a scalable, future-proof platform – requiring a robust solution capable of modelling risk, cost, and service trade-offs across the entire SRN, with asset-level precision.
Who worked on this project?
ICS Consulting acted as the strategic consulting partner alongside other framework partners Atkins and Jacobs, drawing on over a decade of experience using AIM across regulated infrastructure sectors.
Recognising AIM’s value, ICS introduced the platform to National Highways, guiding its application for road renewals and specialist roadside infrastructure.
Probit provided direct software support and technical configuration, tailoring AIM to meet the SRN’s scale, regulatory requirements, and diverse asset classes.
This collaboration ensured a smooth implementation and positioned AIM at the heart of National Highways’ transformation programme.
How was AIM used?
AIM was deployed to model a broad range of infrastructure assets and develop risk-based, scenario-driven investment plans for the SRN:
- Initial Applications – Starting in 2021, AIM was first used to manage roadside infrastructure such as signage and CCTV. It was later expanded to model vehicle restraint systems, central reservations, and concrete surfaces, eventually becoming integral to road renewals investment planning.
- Asset-Level Modelling – AIM’s granularity allowed planners to analyse individual assets (e.g. a single bridge or pavement segment), linking condition, service risk, and lifecycle cost.
- Risk Mapping & Valuation – AIM generated visual risk maps that showed how failure risk translated into financial and societal impacts, including safety, congestion, and environmental damage.
- Scenario Optimisation – AIM ran hundreds of “what-if” scenarios to test interventions against constraints such as budgets, safety targets, and maintenance windows.
- Data Integration – AIM brought together data from across the organisation, including survey results from systems like SANNER and TRACS, enabling holistic asset views and reducing siloed decision-making.
The results
By adopting AIM, National Highways achieved significant strategic and operational benefits:
- Enhanced understanding of renewal needs – detailed asset-level modelling enabled clearer insights into asset deterioration and future renewal requirements across the SRN.
- Improved alignment with road user priorities – AIM incorporated different service levels based on user expectations, ensuring investments reflected the public’s needs and priorities.
- Data-driven investment decisions – AIM’s analytics provided robust, evidence-based insights into asset performance and future outcomes, supporting more defensible and strategic investment decisions.
- Increased focus on cost efficiency and value for money – modelling potential interventions helped identify the most cost-beneficial strategies. Experience from other AIM deployments indicates potential savings of 15–40% on maintenance and rehabilitation costs.
- Robust support for strategic planning – AIM underpinned the development of a regulator-ready RIS3 plan, providing the transparency and analytical depth required by National Highways’ stakeholders.
- Scalability and adaptability – AIM’s flexibility to digitally model real-world assets at any scale proved critical for managing National Highways’ diverse and extensive network.
AIM has empowered National Highways to make more evidence-based, cost-effective investment decisions, delivering improved outcomes for both the road network and the public.
“National Highways moved onto investment planning for road renewals in May 2021 and that is where AIM came into its own. The agency was focused on enhancing their asset management maturity monitoring. Their key objective was to understand how and where to allocate funds in the most cost-effective way for road users.”
Kar Yee Dearing
Technical Director, ICS Consulting
Technical insight
The power of the AIM platform lies in its advanced analytics and industry-specific algorithms, which were leveraged to extract valuable insights from National Highways’ asset data and forecast future performance.
Each asset was meticulously modelled, taking into account its expected deterioration over time and the diverse service level requirements of different road user groups. This detailed, asset-level modelling empowered National Highways to gain a more precise understanding of renewal requirements and plan interventions in a far more informed and strategic manner.
AIM’s ability to digitally model real-world assets at any level of granularity proved invaluable for managing the SRN’s diverse infrastructure portfolio.
What follows for National Highways and AIM
National Highways successfully submitted its RIS3 investment plan, which won several asset management awards. Looking ahead, AIM will play a central role in:
- Supporting the upcoming RIS4 investment planning cycle.
- Integrating additional data sources for more sophisticated modelling.
- Extending its application to new asset types across the SRN.
- Enhancing alignment with government policy and regulatory frameworks.
AIM remains key to demonstrating value for money, boosting planning agility, and embedding long-term resilience in England’s vital road infrastructure.
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