Speaker biographies

prominent Place leader and former President of ADEPT, Neil advises the public and private sectors on strategies that will improve collaboration and drive better business outcomes.

In 2021 Neil was appointed Highways Commissioner by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities as part of the current government intervention in Liverpool City Council.

Passionate about nurturing talent Neil supports leaders in the public and private sectors to thrive and realise their potential through action learning and mentoring. He facilitated the ADEPT/Amey Excellence in Place Leadership Programme 2020-22 and the successor PACE Programme from 2023.

Neil remains a member of ADEPT’s Leadership Team, promoting ‘Live Labs’ as a model to test innovation, and chairs ADEPT’s public/private sector ‘Decarbonising Local Roads’ Live Labs Commissioning Board.

Jane Anderson has been working with life cycle assessment within the construction industry since 1998, where she worked on the development of the BRE Environmental Profiles EPD Programme and co-authored various editions of the BRE Green Guide to Specification. She was responsible for one of first web-based building LCA tools, Envest 2, and provided guidance on the development of an embodied carbon tool for the Hong Kong Housing Authority. She worked on the embodied impact materials database for the EDGE Buildings tool developed by IFC World Bank.

She was a co-author of the updated RICS Professional Statement on Whole Life Carbon and is on the Technical Steering Group of the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard.  She is involved in the development of European and International Standards for building level LCA and construction product EPD and works as a verifier for a number of EPD Programmes. Jane has recently completed a PhD looking at the role of EPD in reducing embodied carbon. 

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Matt has been working in and around local government and municipal engineering for all his career.  He is currently assistant director for highways, transport and planning at West Sussex County Council. In his current role he has been leading on a number of carbon reduction initiatives including the council’s live labs project.

This project (funded by DfT) is looking at how we can reduce the carbon emissions associated with verge maintenance.

David Riley is the Head of Carbon Neutrality within Anglian Water responsible for developing and implementing energy and carbon strategies for one of the largest water companies in the UK. He is co-chair of the Water UK carbon network and also a member of the Green Construction Board Infrastructure Working Group.

In 2013 he chaired the steering group that developed the HM Treasury Infrastructure Carbon Review and more recently was part of the steering group that delivered PAS 2080:2023 Carbon Management in Buildings and Infrastructure.

David is a graduate from the University of Bath with a Master of Science in Integrated Environmental Management. Having worked in both finance and the manufacturing sectors, David joined the water industry in 2000 focussing on both energy and carbon management.

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Jean-Christophe is the director of Urban Movements & Spaces consultancy and has extensive experience in project and portfolio management within the transportation and infrastructure sectors. Currently commissioned as the Project Manager for the LiveLabs2 Greenprint project at West Sussex County Council, Jean-Christophe is spearheading initiatives aimed at decarbonising the UK's highways. Through this role, Jean-Christophe is leading the strategic and operational delivery of cutting-edge national trials, bringing together local authorities, academics and businesses to explore innovative solutions at scale.

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Prior to this role, Jean-Christophe served as the Portfolio Delivery Manager for Go Cycle, London's Mayor vision for cycling (one of the three Mini Holland project), where he was responsible for overseeing a complex portfolio of landmark projects totalling £34.5M. Notable achievements include leading the delivery of public realm improvements, cycle hubs, bridges, and high-specification cycle routes, garnering recognition through awards such as the New London Architecture award and the CIHT Creating Better Places award.

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With a career spanning over two decades, Jean-Christophe has held various managerial positions, including Programme Manager for Tramway and Bus Rapid Transit projects in Switzerland and Borough Manager for Transport for London's Road Network Development. He has consistently demonstrated strong leadership skills, technical acumen, and the ability to navigate complex political and technical landscapes to deliver successful projects.

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Jean-Christophe holds the French equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree in Highways Engineering and has pursued additional qualifications in Project and Portfolio management from the Project Management Institute (PMI). Fluent in both English and French, Jean-Christophe brings a wealth of experience, expertise, and a proven track record of delivering transformative infrastructure projects.

Mike is Service Director for Infrastructure and Transport at Somerset Council responsible for delivering £46m of services and circa £76m capital programme including responsibility for highway maintenance services.  Mike has worked for Somerset for most of his career, with career highlights including making a successful case to Government to resurrect proposals to invest in improving the A303 from London to the South West, and overseeing the approval of the highways and transport matters for Hinkley Point C Nuclear Power Station. 

Mike is currently involved in progressing a new gigafactory at Bridgwater which is a key investment in UK EV manufacturing. Mike is a strong advocate for decarbonisation of the highways and transport sector having led successful bus service improvement plan proposals, zero emission bus bid and the live labs 2 Net Zero Roads programme. Mike is a member of the CIHT Learned Society and Technical Strategy Board and chaired a recent policy review into how to better embed carbon reduction into major procurement processes.

With her extensive experience in public sector transformation, Helen focusses on technological advancements, improving efficiency, commissioning, and demand management to improve public services for citizens.

She is working on early intervention and prevention models, predictive analytics, and social care reform to transform and deliver sustainable approaches to public sector service delivery.

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Rupert Furness is the head of the Local Highways and Active Travel Division in the Roads Transport Group of the UK Department for Transport. His teams are responsible for:

• allocating £1 billion a year or so of highway maintenance funding to local highway authorities across England;

• advising Ministers on policies to promote walking and cycling;

• the statutory Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy; and

• sponsoring the Department’s executive agency Active Travel England.

He has been in the Department for Transport for over 20 years, and his previous posts in the Department for Transport have included heading the London Transport team; heading the Environment Strategy team; and managing the implementation of the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.  Before joining the DfT in 2003, he worked for a number of other Government Departments including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Cabinet Office.

Outside work, he is also a keen cyclist and walker, and at weekends can generally be found on long bike rides or walks across the Kent countryside. He is married with two almost-grown-up children.

Jason leads Atkins Operations and Maintenance business across UK&Ireland.  Jason has over 30 years’ experience in the transport sector and has successfully supported the delivery of a range of multimodal transport solutions, spanning major projects, new build, refurbishment and operations and maintenance.  He has experience across a range of contractual models including alliancing, frameworks, design and build through to PFI/PPP arrangements.

As a Chartered Engineer, Jason is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT), a founding member and Director of the Highway Sector Council and a member of the Commissioning Board for the ADEPT/Department for Transport Live Labs programme focussed on Net Zero and Digital Services.

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As Service Manager for East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Street Lighting, Traffic Signals and CCTV department I am responsible for an overall revenue, capital and energy budget of £6m.

I joined the East Riding of Yorkshire Council as Street Lighting Engineer 14 years ago and have been Service Manager for 3 years now. In that time I have overseen a £12m column replacement programme, £10m energy reduction investment and energy reduction of 17m units.

I have now also taken on the role of Project Manager for our Live Labs 2 project, Decarbonising the Highway, looking at decarbonising and rationalising street lighting and lit sign provision.

Email Details:

Karl.rourke@eastriding.gov.uk

Livelabs2er@eastriding.gov.uk

Beth is a chartered civil engineer and principal engineer at Devon County Council where she is currently managing the design of the A382 scheme and the Live Labs 2 project

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Pam has been supporting Liverpool City Council with the Live Labs research project since Summer 2023. With a keen interest in transport innovation research, Live Labs has offered an opportunity to explore how by collaboration between public and private sector partners, alongside academia and industry specialists, we can begin to develop new thinking, materials, tools, products, and services.

Pam has experience within the transportation sector and has worked across a range of modes including highways, rail, public transportation, and aviation surface access. In the past she has led on decarbonisation projects including electric fleet infrastructure, active travel proposals as well as modal shift behaviour change projects. Liverpool Live Labs has presented an interesting opportunity to consider how local roads infrastructure and maintenance activities can make a contribution to carbon reduction, climate change impacts and future resilience.

Miranda Sharp, founder of Metis Digital, connects data and organisations to value, working with teams who are seeking to realise efficiency and growth gains from improving the usefulness and uses of data.  Her interest lies in the new business models and governance regimes that will be required when data is used and treated an asset.   As an associate of the ODI (Open Data institute) she is working on the value of sharing data to the economy and individual enterprises as well as the interventions required to make the value created sustainable.  Miranda acts as a NED at TRL (the Transport Research Laboratory) and trustee to the Centre for Cities think tank alongside a number of other advisory roles focused on placed based decision making and the non-technical challenges of sharing data, value exchange and making evidence-based decisions. 

Previously at the National Digital Twin programme, Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and the award-winning SME See.Sense, she has worked with data as infrastructure and the challenge of securing a sustainable funding mechanism for over 15 years.  

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Mark Corbin has over 25 years’ experience working in the Automotive and Highways sectors.  He is the Director of Network Resilience at Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), and chair of the Adept National Traffic Managers Forum. He leads a team within TfWM collaborating and working with multiple organisations including the seven local authorities in the West Midlands, Department for Transport, National Highways, HS2, Network Rail and others keeping residents, businesses and visitors informed of transport disruption helping them to plan journeys and keep moving as well.  He is recognised nationally by his colleagues as an innovator and a genuine collaborator, seeking to make things happen with a holistic approach.  

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Carol is an experienced local government manager working for Kent County Council, with a background in change management, diversity, economic development, and highways. Carol is currently the Head of Business Innovation and Technology  in the Highways and Transportation Department (H&T) From 2019 to early 2022 Carol programme managed a successful innovation project, Live Labs, in partnership with Amey plc and funded by the Department for Transport and ADEPT. The project supported the use of digital technology in H&T and developed a wide range of innovation trials in highways service delivery including the development of an insight’s digital platform, materials testing graphene in asphalt and the deployment of sensor and drone technology. Carol is now leading on digital and innovation projects across the highways department and more widely across KCC. She sits on the LCRIG board and is Chair of the National Winter Research Group (NWSRG).

 John Ashcroft is a Highway and Asset Services Manager for North Lanarkshire Council.  He has over 30 years’ experience in Highway Engineering across transportation, project delivery and maintenance disciplines.  He has delivered town centre action plans, highway improvements, electric vehicle infrastructure and maintenance projects.   He has an interest in how technology will shape the future of highways and transportation and considers collaboration to be key to continuous improvement and reaching our net zero goals.

He has an honours degree in Environmental Civil Engineering and a master’s degree in Civil Engineering and Construction Management.

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