Kaiasm enables digital transformation at National Highways

Data integration and ontologies specialists at Kaiasm are working with National Highways to support their Digital by Default (DbyD) Programme, which aims to introduce shared information standards and approaches to major projects, focusing on structured change management, embedding and digital upskilling across projects.

Partnering with Sopra Steria, a European leader in consulting, digital services and software development, Kaiasm is responsible for delivering an operational ontology - a detailed map of all the data held, how it was in the past, is in the present and needs to be in the future - to support a common data environment. This will improve how National Highways connects and shares information with their suppliers. It will also reduce waste and information rework in how National Highways captures, exploits and manages data. The contract extends to April 2023.

The principal objective of the Digital by Default toolset is to create a standard - a National Highways-owned common data environment that will use existing data pipelines, use a ‘single source of truth’ to provide data feeds to existing and future solutions.

The combined team will work closely with National Highways to provide a full picture of the data managed by Major Projects teams and their supply chain, including how the data is structured and disseminated. The Common Data Model will recognise and resolve any existing duplication of definition or usage back to consistent ontological/conceptual and logical data models. The team will make use of existing practice from within and beyond National Highways, incorporating updates from a wide range of stakeholders working on data modelling within National Highways.

Kaiasm and Sopra Steria are working alongside existing Major Projects and IT stakeholders, particularly the MP Digital by Default, MP Data Hub, IT CDO and IT Business Partner teams. The project will support National Highways employees including data managers, project managers, IT data architects and leaders, as well as supply chain employees including supply chain data or system managers and supply chain solution developers.

Kaiasm’s Chief Data Scientist Liam McGee said, “Currently, National Highways’ numerous data models are isolated from each other, which is creating inefficiencies within and across departments, especially information rework.

“Ultimately, employees and the supply chain will be able to quickly and easily find, use and share the data they need. Plus, they can be confident that the data is traceable back to the original locations. For example, construction project managers will be able to address over-spend by being able to pinpoint which part of a project is driving cost overruns. With all systems linked, project managers will be able to report on costs, schedules and risk at an asset level as well as at a project level. It will also do away with the bad old days of posting hard drives and sending people laptops!

“This approach to data modelling is incredibly exciting and has all kinds of future applications. You can extend it beyond organisational boundaries into the supply chain and even intersections between external systems. We can foresee connecting into wider national infrastructures and transport sectors such as water, power, telecoms, railways and ports, investigating mutually dependent systems.”