The engineering and consultancy firm WSP is sending a Manchester-based Assistant Consultant to present at the ITS World Congress.
Steph Barton won a competition open to all the company’s Early Career Professionals in ITS, in which entrants had to submit a paper and have it accepted for presentation at Congress.
After an internal review, the papers were submitted to the Congress organisers who carried out a peer-to-peer and expert panel review, and three were accepted.
These were:
· Connected vehicles and driver distraction – disentangling the ethics by Katherine Rogers and Mark MacGarty
· Future Mobility: the impact of changing working patterns by Steph Barton, Tom Grahamslaw and Robbie Burns, and
· New opportunities in assessing tunnel safety risk by Hannah Steele, Dave Dollan
The three young professionals then had to pitch their papers to two senior WSP leaders – ITS (UK) Chair Ian Patey and Steve Green (Head of Discipline) – Steph Barton was chosen overall winner. “They gave us an extremely difficult decision to make,” explained Ian Patey. “They all made a compelling case for their attendance and how they would realise the benefits from the investment – networking, learning at the event, gathering evidence for bids, contribution to professional development and communications and knowledge sharing after the event (both within WSP and in industry forums).”
“I am over the moon to get this opportunity,” says Steph Barton. “I really enjoy the concepts we raise in our paper and am looking forward to having further discussions with other industry professionals.”
The three papers will all be presented in Singapore.
WSP is one of the sponsors of SMART Highways magazine’s Talking Transport podcasts available from the ITS World Congress Singapore. Listen out for these programmes in the run-up to the event and during the week’s discussions, demonstrations and exhibition. The other sponsors are AGD Systems, Cohda Wireless, HERE, Jenoptik, PTV Group and SWARCO.
