Sustainable Solutions: Roads of the Future Challenge Final Judging Ceremony

Over the past few months, pupils from across Scotland have been working in teams to imagine and design a ‘Road of the Future, as part of the ‘Sustainable Solutions: Roads of the Future Competition’. This is an exciting national initiative run annually by Transport Scotland’s Academy9 educational programme and sponsored by Balfour Beatty, that aims to encourage the next generation of engineers, designers and innovators. This competition is open to all schools across Scotland for pupils in years P6-S3, and challenges pupils to design their own stretch of sustainable road, incorporating the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs are all about making the world a better, fairer and more sustainable place for everyone, and aim to meet the urgent environmental, political, and economic challenges facing our world.

The challenge provides the perfect solution to incorporating sustainability into teaching and learning. It is teacher-led and supported by an industry professional assigned to each participating school, to provide technical guidance to teams. Resources are provided, including a step-by-step lesson plan aligned with Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes.

The Final Judging Ceremony:

In April 2025, participating schools submitted their road designs to the competition, using a variety of creative methods to showcase their designs, including video presentations, Minecraft walkthroughs, annotated drawings and PowerPoint slides. An initial judging round took place to go through the design submissions, provide helpful feedback, and importantly to select the successful teams to invite to the final round, an in-person Judging Ceremony in Perth.

Following this initial judging stage, the shortlisted teams travelled from all over Scotland to present their designs at the AK Bell Library Soutar Theatre on 14th May 2025, competing to be named the ‘Most Sustainable Design’ for the Primary or Secondary Schools category. Each group presented their bold and innovative designs in front of a judging panel of industry experts and an audience made up of other schools and representatives from Transport Scotland, Balfour Beatty, Jacobs, WSP and Atkins Réalis. Each team also had the chance to vote for their favourite design, in the ‘People’s Choice Award’, as well as getting the chance to hear from guest industry speakers.

The Judging Panel had the difficult task of choosing a winner of the ‘Most Sustainable Design’ award for the Primary and Secondary Schools categories, considering in their decision how well designs linked to the SDGs, how creative and practical ideas were and how well teams worked together.

The judges and representatives from Transport Scotland shared that they were so impressed by the quality of the ideas presented this year and the energy that was put into the competition, with teams showing the skill, creativity, teamwork, problem-solving that are exactly what the world needs for the future:

Very well done to all teams that participated in the competition this year, and particularly those who reached the final ceremony.

Very well done to this year’s finalists: Portsoy Primary School, Laurieknowe Primary School, Our Lady of Loretto School, Udny Green School, St Dominic’s RC Primary School, Pitlochry High School, Firrhill High School, and St Paul’s RC Academy.

With a further congratulations to:

St Dominic’s RC Primary School for winning the Most Sustainable Design Award for the Primary Category
St Paul’s RC Academy who won both the Most Sustainable Design Award for the Secondary Cateogry and the People’s Choice Award.

We are looking forward to the Sustainable Solutions: Roads of the Future Competition returning in 2026!

Interested in taking part next year or want to find out more about sustainability in the construction sector? Find out more about Sustainable Solutions: Roads to the Future here.