National Highways. Touchscreen experience for stakeholder engagement

Government-owned, National Highways is the UK’s leading highways business charged with keeping England’s major roads moving. National Highways’ key focus is on operating, maintaining, and improving motorways, and major A roads in England.

National Highways has been proposing a much-needed upgrade to the heavily congested A303 which runs through the Stonehenge UNESCO World Heritage Site and is the most direct route between the southeast and southwest used by thousands of motorists daily.

With the proposed upgrade being multi-faceted and complex, highly technical information needed to be delivered in a simple, yet engaging way to an international audience, working for UNESCO, the British Embassy, and influential representatives from the global heritage sector.

POP was approached by National Highways’ IT consultancy partner, MindCraft to create an interactive touchscreen experience to showcase the proposed scheme at a UNESCO event being held in Paris.

The experience needed to be visual in presenting the current reality, of the notoriously congested single carriageway and announcing the transformational benefits that the tunnel and improved connecting road would bring (as well as, addressing some of the challenges that would need to be faced along the way) to unlock economic growth and improve journey times for millions of people between the M3 and M5.

That’s a lot of information to cover and timescales were tight!

So, we set about creating it for them…

As one of the scheme’s key objectives is to conserve and enhance the World Heritage Site, POP’s first task was to work closely with the National Highways and MindCraft team to understand the differing needs of the niche audience at the UNESCO event and the multiple stakeholders involved, from the heritage bodies, local and regional businesses to the local communities.

Once the objectives were clearly defined, we forged ahead with creating the interactive experience. The no-code user-friendly POP platform was the perfect medium to build and present this complex and sensitive proposal; built from the ground up using the latest technology to create highly visual and immersive interactive digital experiences. The proposed scheme could be engaged in a new and exciting way but most importantly the right information could be found easily.

Using an Agile methodology, we work in a considered, iterative, and efficient way, that enables customers to preview the experience as its being built; ensuring they are getting exactly what they really need to tell their story and sell their vision.

Stakeholders said they were impressed with the ease of use, exploring a wealth of content at their leisure with interactive “before” and “after” maps providing quick and accurate access to technical information, videos, and supporting imagery. With the powerful Experience Management System (EMS) in place, information could be updated immediately, which is crucial in such a highly regulated sector.

The experience facilitated productive discussions and helped National Highways to communicate its vision effectively. Welcome news arrived in July with the green light for the A303 scheme being given and the Government reinstating the planning permission, the Development Consent Order.