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The IHE Southern Branch held its first in-person event of the year at Messagemaker Displays’ Factory in Redhill, Surrey. The branch was excited to meet face-to-face, with the opportunity to also have CPD-accredited talks and a tour of the factory. The event itself highlighted the importance and value of meeting in person and networking with fellow members.

The event included speakers from multiple organisations from the Intelligent Transport Systems industry including Messagemaker Displays, Yunex Traffic and ITS Now.

The hosts started the CPD talks with Daniella de Nobrega talking about the mission and values of Messagemaker Displays and how they want to be innovative through collaboration and inclusivity.

Members were also guided through the different products that the company offers, such as the MS1, MS4 and variable message signs. There were also case studies about safer school routes in Wales, renewable powered VMS kit, Fore Street Tunnel, tidal fl ow systems and Silvertown Tunnel’s VMS. We then heard from Santosh Surabi about the technical elements of the MS1 sign developments.

The next speaker was Alistair Gollop from ITS Now, who spoke about his ‘top five global challenges facing the ITS industry’.

Members heard about cybersecurity in an interconnected world, managing and integrating the lifeblood of ITS, bridging the infrastructure gap, achieving standardisation and interoperability and privacy and societal implications. It was a thought-provoking session that had everyone thinking about what could be done to help overcome these challenges.

Whether you were directly involved with ITS or the more general highway industry, this session highlighted how the development of technology is impacting everyone’s daily lives.

The final talk of the afternoon was by Rocky Pearson from Yunex Traffic who spoke about the company’s products and services, providing innovative solutions for traffic management systems, as well as the history of the organisation. Yunex builds all their equipment in their factory based in Poole, which brings major benefi ts to their service offer.

Once the speaker sessions finished, members were given a guided tour by Messagemaker Displays around their factory where they make, test and distribute all their fi xed and portable signs. This provided valuable insights into the manufacturing processes of electrical highway infrastructure.

Overall, the afternoon was a great success and the IHE Southern Branch would like to thank Messagemaker Signs for hosting and generously catering as well as all speakers for being a part of it.

All members of the IHE are encouraged to get involved with local branch events, whether in person or online, to continue to create learning and networking opportunities, which