We’ve created the CIHT Transport Decarbonisation Pathway because we want to help CIHT members respond to the climate crisis. The net zero target is written into law in the UK, seeking a 60% reduction in carbon emissions between now and 2035. That implies an enormous change for all our members, whether they're transport planners, thinking strategically about mobility, or engineers thinking about alternative materials or designing out waste. It's an enormous change in a short space of time and, as a professional institution, it's our duty to support members responding to a challenge of that scale and pace.

At the same time, CIHT wants to show leadership and responding to the climate crisis is one of our strategic priorities. There is a transport sector leadership role for the institution, supporting members in dealing with what's probably the biggest challenge of their career. 

Version 1.0

The decarbonisation pathway is a combination of guidance and learning materials, and is currently version 1.0. What we want now is feedback from members, to tell us what's good and bad about it, because we’re committed to making it better. Is this advice useful? Is it helping you identify and meet CPD objectives?

The advice covers everything from construction and maintenance issues to transport planning topics, such as place-based decarbonisation. It also collates everything that is on the CIHT website relating to those themes. For example, if you look under place-based decarbonisation, you get all the webinars, blogs and podcasts that we've produced on that theme in one place.

We've also been working with our partnership network over the last six months to pull together a set of a case studies around what has worked in terms of driving down emissions – and, to a lesser extent, what hasn't. We’re publishing that snapshot of practice from the last year to 18 months in September.

Organisation first

At the start of the project, I thought the case studies would show a lot of technical innovations – which they have. Some of the bigger lessons, however, are more about how you organise yourself as a project or an authority to drive down carbon. How you set the project up, so you get information from right down the supply chain about what is possible. These process and governance issues are just as important as the technologies themselves.

It's great to see that members are buying into the pathway. In some ways, that's not surprising because decarbonisation is being driven by the organisations they work for and their clients. But from feedback, members appreciate the fact that we've put it together in a structured way.

One of the things that people have said to us is that they would really appreciate relating this decarbonisation challenge to their job role. To an extent, we try to do that by organising the material of the different headings, but that's still a bit I think that can still be quite difficult to navigate. Over the next year we want to create a series of profiles of individuals at different ages and stages of their career, and in different parts of the industry, to understand the impact of the decarbonisation agenda on their work – and what they are doing to support their own upskilling. Please contact me if you’d like to contribute with your own experiences.

Andrew Crudgington was in conversation with Craig Thomas

Next Steps

Contact Andrew by clicking here to contribute to the CIHT Transport Decarbonisation Pathway.

Andrew Crudgington
Climate Change Associate • Policy and Technical Affairs