As the dust has settled after a week of chatting to delegates on our stand and walking the halls of the vast exhibition venue at Intertraffic Amsterdam, our commercial manager, Phil Luke, has reflected on the show. He talks about what it brings both to our mission to develop innovative solutions for a safer future, and for partners, colleagues and customers from around the world as we all look for ways of making roads safer and more efficient.
He outlines his thoughts in our latest article which you can read here:
As a UK-based company with a global reach and partnerships with specialists from around the world, it’s not often Highway Care gets the chance to catch up with so many contacts in one place. The Intertraffic Amsterdam exhibition last week gave us just such an opportunity, and we definitely made the most of it!
The logistics were considerable, involving not just transportation of the stand and equipment, including our HighwayGuard™ steel barrier demo unit, but also all our brochures and giveaways, and, of course, the team. But the road trip from Kent to Amsterdam with myself, our Applications and Innovations Manager, Ollie Pulling, and our Head of Communications and Marketing, Hayley Terrell, in the car meant that we were able to maximise the learning opportunity from door to door, as well as at the show. Imagine the conversation on route as we passed mile after mile of barriers, crash cushions and safety features – it was a form of travelling continuous professional development as we noted differences and similarities in approaches to road safety and road worker safety during our journey.
Once the stand build was complete, our focus turned to connecting with our partners, customers and friends from around the world during the four-day exhibition. And it was busy! Many of our partners were also exhibiting, including Valtir and G Giffin Al Jazira Metal Industries, two of our partners for HighwayGuard™, Versilis, our partner for SwiftGate, Tertu, the company behind our TimberRail guardrail range, and SMA Road Safety, manufacturers of our crash cushions. It was fantastic that so many of our contacts took time out to come and find our stand (it’s large and bright blue and yellow, so easy to spot!). And it was great to have the opportunity to showcase not just the diverse product range we offer, but also our innovative approach to supporting customers with the right solution, and our ability to take insights from best practice from around the world, adapting solutions to meet the safety, operational and compliance needs of each market.
There was a lot of interest in our HighwayGuard™ demo unit on our stand, as we explained how the robust yet simple steel barrier system enables compliant installation to three different standards of deflection using the same barrier and T-connector components, along with the correct anchoring. We were able to talk through the varied approvals the system has achieved, and it was brilliant to have such positive feedback, both on the Highway Care stand, and on our partner, G Giffin Al Jazira Metal Industries’ stand. The fact that our Middle East distributor is gaining so much traction for this innovative safety system is particularly encouraging, because it demonstrates increased awareness of road safety issues in the region, along with an appetite to adopt solutions that can keep people and places safer.
For me, this was one of the key highlights and take homes of the Intertraffic show. Throughout the year, I do a lot of work to educate people around the world on the importance of work zone safety and the need for innovative safety solutions to tackle the risk to workers. The interest in HighwayGuard™ at Intertraffic was a clear indicator that there is a developing safety culture in other markets, with an interest in protection that is flexible enough to adapt to varied locations and conditions, while robust enough to deliver tangible safety benefits for projects and people.
And, of course, the knowledge sharing traffic was not one way! As we were sharing insights with other delegates, we were also learning from others too. Exhibitions are a vital forum for cross-market learning and we were able to share UK best practice with colleagues from other countries, as well as bringing home some interesting observations from them.
Ultimately, all of those conversations will feed into both commercial strategy and innovation at Highway Care as we continue to develop innovative solutions for a safer future on a global scale. Understanding the challenges faced by highways authorities and contractors around the world, as well as market-specific safety issues and regulation helps us develop meaningful solutions that make a difference.