In 2018, a major UK retail bank, TSB, attempted a large‑scale digital system migration intended to modernise operations and improve customer service. Instead, the rollout resulted in prolonged system outages. Customers were locked out of accounts, frontline staff were left without usable tools, and manual workarounds overwhelmed operations. Subsequent investigations highlighted inadequate testing, weak change management, and limited staff readiness as central causes.
While TSB is not a road authority, the lesson resonates strongly with road operators. Both sectors deliver 24/7, safety‑critical services, depend on legacy systems, and rely on frontline professionals who must act quickly under pressure. When digital change fails in these environments, the consequences are immediate, visible, and damaging.
Crucially, most post‑mortems reach the same conclusion: failure is rarely about technology itself. It is about execution, people, and clarity of purpose.
Why this matters for road operations
For road organisations, digitalisation is important and unavoidable. It directly affects:
- Linear asset management (pavements, structures, drainage, signage)
- Control rooms and traffic operations
- Incident detection, coordination, and clearance
- Maintenance planning and work‑zone management
- Data sharing between operators, contractors, and emergency services
These initiatives unfold in a challenging context:
- Long‑lived assets with fragmented or inconsistent data
- Legacy systems that cannot simply be switched off
- Wide variation in digital confidence across the workforce
- Very low tolerance for disruption, particularly during incidents
A simple lens: effectiveness depends on people
A well‑established change model expresses success simply:
Effectiveness = Technical Quality × User Acceptance
This is particularly relevant for road operations. Even high-quality systems deliver limited value if operators bypass them, distrust the data, or revert to familiar workarounds under pressure.
When digital tools are not embedded into day‑to‑day behaviour, organisations fail quietly, through under‑use.
Rethinking the starting point: from technology to people
A more human‑centric approach to digitalisation means resisting the instinct to start with solutions, and instead starting with needs, users, and real operating conditions.
As Steve Jobs once observed:
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to sell it.”
In road environments, this principle is critical. Digital tools are used in live, unpredictable conditions — during incidents, congestion peaks, adverse weather, and overnight maintenance windows. Systems that appear elegant in workshops can fail where it matters most: on the network, in real time.
A human‑centric approach therefore reframes the key question:
Who needs to use this, in what situation, and to solve which problem?
In practice, starting with people means translating operational pain points into clear user requirements, defined from the perspective of those who must rely on the system in live conditions.
In road operations, the same “problem” — for example, poor incident visibility, often generates different requirements for different users: control room operators, on-road teams, supervisors, and managers. Treating these requirements as uniform is one of the most common causes of poor adoption.
Understanding the human system behind digital roads
Successful programmes invest deliberate effort in understanding the human roles that shape adoption. Each of these groups encounters digital tools differently and therefore defines success differently. A human‑centric approach recognises that user requirements are not generic; they are shaped by responsibility, risk exposure, and operating context.
Effective programmes make these differences visible early, rather than assuming that a single set of functional requirements will work for everyone.
Three groups matter most.
Digital‑savvy leaders
These leaders are not necessarily technologists. They are senior decision‑makers who understand how digital capabilities affect operations, performance, and customer outcomes.
Their role is to:
- Set clear intent and realistic ambition
- Anchor digital initiatives to operational value
- Demonstrate visible sponsorship.
Without credible leadership, digital programmes are quickly perceived as “IT initiatives” rather than operational enablers.
Champion users: the bridge between vision and reality
Champion users translate ambition into practice — but they do not all play the same role.
Business‑focused champions - often non‑technical, these users are trusted operational figures. They focus on why change matters, translate tools into everyday language, and drive acceptance through peer influence.
Technical‑focused champions - these users concentrate on how systems work. They focus on configuration, performance, and reliability. They dig into data quality and integration. Their goal is to ensure that solutions stand up in operational conditions.
Champion users play a critical additional role in the most successful projects. They shape user requirements from real operational experience. Business‑focused champions help articulate what must change for the problem to be worth solving, while technical‑focused champions translate those needs into reliable, testable system behaviours. Together, they ensure requirements remain grounded in reality.
General users: designing for diversity, not averages
General users are often treated as a single audience. In reality, they vary widely in terms of digital confidence, their openness to change, and in how and where they interact with systems.
A human‑centric approach acknowledges this diversity. It identifies different user profiles, brings digital literacy to a common baseline, and builds confidence gradually through use, rather than mandates.
Defining user requirements for general users is less about capturing every preference and more about acknowledging different thresholds for confidence, clarity, and trust. Systems designed around an “average user” often satisfy no one particularly well. More resilient solutions reflect a small number of clearly defined user profiles, each with realistic requirements.
Reframing user resistance
Resistance to digitalisation in road organisations is often misinterpreted as reluctance or conservatism. In reality, it is usually a rational response to risk. Operators are accountable for safety, network performance, and public trust. When tools are unfamiliar, unreliable, or poorly aligned with workflows, falling back on proven methods is a sensible choice.
A people‑centric approach addresses resistance by:
Building trust before enforcing change
Demonstrating value in real operational scenarios
Allowing confidence to develop progressively
Over time, resistance reduces because systems earn their place.
What success looks like in practice
Where digital programmes succeed in road operations, common patterns emerge:
- Solutions are clearly tied to operational pain points
- Users are involved early and meaningfully
- Adoption is planned, supported, and measured
- Change is treated as an organisational journey, not a deployment event
In these cases, digital tools become part of “how we operate”, rather than something imposed from outside.
The key takeaways for road operators
Digitalisation can transform road operations, but only when it is:
- Problem‑led, not solution‑led
- Human‑centred, not technology‑centred
- Phased and realistic, not over‑ambitious
- Actively managed as change, not delivered as software
The evidence is consistent: technology enables performance, but people determine outcomes.
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Author: Agata Gomes, Egis Road Operations, Portugal