S30162 Drone Operating Standards & Requirements 2026-31

Overview

National Highways is seeking specialist technical consultants to assist with the development of our Drones Standard (GG 954), in line with changes made by the Regulator (the CAA) as well as emerging best practice to support the implementation of our drones governance procedures to facilitate the businesses use of drones. Additionally, we intend to further develop drone use cases, supporting the business - particularly operational colleagues - in the uptake of drones in new areas where a safety benefit can be evidenced. Through this, we are seeking to enable the following commitments: As part of 'Connecting the Country - Planning for the Long Term' strategy, National Highways has stated it will explore a range of options to make construction work even safer and more efficient, including opportunities for using drones to help inspect and manage our assets, and also to support incident management. Our Digital Roads strategy also assumes the use of drones, with references to use of 'drone data' as well as the commitment to develop a dedicated 'drone information repository'. Drone use has the potential to assist in achieving our three business imperatives - Safety, Delivery and Customer Service - by allowing the business to undertake its construction, operation and maintenance activities in a safer, smarter and more efficient way. A number of our Asset Class Strategies make references, sometimes explicitly, sometimes inferred, to drone use as ambitions to help deliver the overall strategies.