In 1978 the Ministry of Overseas Development, now the Department of International Development, asked the University of Birmingham to host a new concept to improve the situation in developing countries — a Masters programme designed to provide a stream of well qualified engineers to fill the senior posts in their road agencies.
Two engineers were recruited to launch this work, Martin Snaith from Queen’s University of Belfast and Richard Freer-Hewish from the main roads department of Western Australia. The Highways Course, as it was known, or the Highways and Management Course as it is today, has trained over 500 engineers from 30 countries in all continents of the world and forms the nucleus of the Highways Group at Birmingham. Its graduates include Directors-General of Roads, Permanent Secretaries and Directors of major engineering consultancies. These engineers have in their turn been responsible for further training and development in their own countries, often with further help from Birmingham.
In parallel with the Masters course a research team was created by Martin Snaith, which set out to isolate and then tackle the many problems which beset the roads sector of the third world, frequently finding the solutions were equally applicable in Western Europe!
The team has always tried to work with commercial partners to ensure its work reaches out to those who need it. Working closely with John Burrows and Partners and engineers from the Northern Ireland roads service it implemented the world’s first desktop computer-based road management system for the Thailand Department of Highways. This system was so successful that it has, after some seventeen years, only now gone out of service! This was followed by a number of implementations, but probably the most far reaching was in the People’s Republic of China in 1985 which formed part of a package of “high tech” aid to China associated with the Hong Kong negotiations between the Governments of the PRC and the UK.
This fascinating work was the beginning of a sixteen-year research and development activity with their Highways Research Institute in Beijing, which led to the creation of the China pavement management system for use by all the provinces of China and the training by us of some seven of their engineers from the collaborating teams to Masters and Doctoral level. It also led to Liveryman Kerali being subjected to an earthquake in Kunming and Martin Snaith to livery mornings after enormous banquets.
More recently the team has concentrated on two major enterprises, the creation of a new world standard computer package for the economic evaluation of road projects and networks with funding over a period of ten years from a wide variety of donors ranging from the DFID, World Bank to the Swedish National Road Authority. The resultant program suite (HDM-4) has been sold to 800 users worldwide and has been passed over to the World Road Association for “safe keeping” and further development with the Birmingham team continuing in its role as Technical Secretariat and support group. The second major piece of work is the creation of another program — the Strategic Planning Model — designed specifically to assist DBFO activities. This was done in collaboration with WS Atkins with funding from them and the EPSRC. The roads service of Northern Ireland participated in this work encouraged by their Directors including Liveryman McCoubrey.
The Highways Group and their students hosted a reception and dinner last summer for Clare Short, Minister for International Development, to mark its work in alleviation of poverty in the developing world.
Much of this work has been pump primed by the Company who have been superbly supportive in so many ways since Liveryman Meighan and Past Master Dussek encouraged Martin Snaith to enter the Livery. Activities include Past Master Dussek’s excellent lectures and the provision of bursaries for research and course students.
The Highways Group owe a considerable debt to the Paviors for their support through the years both financially but, more importantly, inspirational.