Vidheya Rao

Vidheya Rao is a road safety engineer and practitioner with over a decade of experience in transportation infrastructure, regulatory affairs, and field-based road safety research. His work spans the full lifecycle of road safety interventions — from IRC-compliant design and specification, through field deployment on national highways, to post-installation safety auditing and evidence-based policy advocacy. He holds a Road Safety Auditor Certificate from the Central Road Research Institute (CSIR-CRRI), New Delhi, and an EBRD Road Safety Engineering Certificate from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

He serves as General Manager — Regulatory Affairs, Research & Road Safety at Kataline Limited, Nagpur — an ISO 9001 certified road marking organisation operating across 35 countries and a recipient of the IRF Global Road Safety Award and the FICCI Road Safety Award. In this capacity, he leads the company’s engagement with NHAI, PWD, and municipal authorities on IRC-compliant safety proposals, blackspot interventions, and detailed project reports. He also practises independently as a road safety consultant, advising on safety audit frameworks and corridor-level intervention design.

Recently, he was placed third nationally in the 6th NHAI Innovation Hackathon — out of 341 entries — for a proposed solution addressing the development of a high-quality retro-reflectivity measurement system for road markings and sign boards on national highways. The hackathon, conducted by NHAI, invited solutions from students, startups, professionals, and researchers across India.

His academic formation includes a Bachelor of Engineering from BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Project Engineering & Management from the National Institute of Construction Management and Research (NICMAR), Pune. Prior to specialising in road safety, he held project engineering roles in EPC and offshore construction environments with Leighton Welspun Contractors Pvt. Ltd., Swiber Holdings, and Petron Gulf — a foundation that informs his systems-level approach to infrastructure delivery, one that simultaneously weighs material performance, regulatory compliance, lifecycle economics, and field execution constraints.