News & Media > Highway Services
19:10:2011
A successful drive for better value and better repairs
In order to spend less on fire-fighting highways defects repairs and more on improving its highways, the innovative partnership MGWSP Northamptonshire Highways threw out the rulebook.
The county council launched a consultation exercise ahead of the publication of its draft budget for 2011/12, in order to pinpoint residents' top priorities at a time of tighter finances. The clear message that came back was that highway maintenance was the top priority council service, a long way ahead of libraries and education, the next biggest priorities. But the public also said that it wanted savings to be made so that the available money went further.
So the authority's political leadership agreed to adopt a new highway maintenance strategy to do just that: to switch more funding away from temporary reactive repairs to longer-lasting planned resurfacing schemes that provide better value-for-money.
When MGWSP Northamptonshire started work in April 2008, it spearheaded a new approach to maintenance that would maximise the value of investment through better knowledge of the asset. MGWSP reviewed the council's highways inventory of assets such as carriageways, footways, gullies, signs and bollards and structures – to allow more timely maintenance preventing these assets deteriorating to a point where much more expensive repairs would be needed.
The business cases for new, detailed life cycle plans for a number of assets demonstrated the value of the on-going collection of data on their condition which would allow cashable savings to be made and the service to be improved. However, the drive for a more planned approach was being stymied by a focus on reactive, short-term repairs.
The majority of highways budget was being spent on more expensive temporary repairs of highways defects, with only 8% going on pro-active, planned works. The partners pinpointed the service standards on a 24-hour response time for reactive repairs to non-emergency defects as lying behind this.
David Farquhar, assistant director of highways, transport and infrastructure at Northamptonshire, says: “We sat down with MGWSP and together asked ‘what is so magical about this 24-hour target? Is this the best way of spending the available money?'”
Kevin Whiteside, head of strategy and development at MGWSP, agrees: “Fixing everything within 24-hours means that in any given month potholes can be present for up to 10 days, because the ones that have been ‘fixed' soon fail and need another temporary repair. So we went away and worked out how long it would feasibly take to carry out repairs of all defects that would last six months.”
Cllr Jim Harker, the leader of the council, says that he does not simply wish to follow central guidance. “Risk management is not about not taking any risks, it's about taking informed risks.”
The county council, as the policy maker, agreed to take the risk of claims resulting from the policy switch in return for MGWSP being given the objective to ensure all repairs last six months. This allowed a huge switch in resources to planned resurfacing instead of the bulk of it being swallowed up by the task of fixing defects, an inefficient focus that was failing to satisfy residents.
In 2010/11, MGWSP increased the total amount of carriageways treated with surface dressing to 138,000sqm. They put together a programme of preventative works based on the need to prevent roads from deteriorating to an unacceptable quality, rather than simply firefighting by treating the ‘worst first' as the Audit Commission put it.
“It was a zero-based budget, channelling the way we were spending money,” says Whiteside. They even planned to allow the average condition of principal roads to slightly decline, from 3% needing structural repair to a still acceptable 5%, in order to dramatically improve the condition of the local road network, from 17% needing attention to 10%.
What was the result? “We've gone from a situation where less than 10% of our budget was being spent on planned resurfacing to two-thirds going on this fence-to-fence, pro-active work,” says Farquhar. “This has given our local politicians the confidence that if they give us funding for highways, we'll use it wisely.”
The county's cabinet agreed as part of the budget setting process to provide an additional £30m in capital investment over the four years in order to offset reductions in revenue funding from central Government, in what was described as “a big testament to our work”. In total, the partnership has delivered £4.5 in efficiency savings since it started in 2008, including £1.2m in reducing staff overheads by removing duplication and better integration of management from the client and MGWSP, and £1m in operational savings through better ways of working.
For example, MGWSP has raised productivity by introducing an operational Control Hub in September 2010 to better schedule and co-ordinate works; to maximise the number of jobs that are carried out right first time and do not need a repeat visit.
The hub allows MGWSP to meet its obligations under the county council's permit scheme for street works to restrict working times to when it has booked road space. The hub can track the progress of road gangs and reallocate them to different tasks if problems occur, in order to make sure that work is delivered at the times and locations planned. It has also reduced the money wasted on abortive maintenance work through better planning of the most appropriate treatments for each repair through an improved asset inventory and an improved inspection process.
Asset management does not determine all the highways work by MGWSP that takes place, however – local residents get a say through the introduction of the ‘parish enhancement gangs' under the county council's commitment to encourage more local decision-making.
“One of our crews goes into a community and say ‘you've got us for two days, what needs repairing',” says Whiteside. This was a noticeable change in the contract in 2009/10, made possible by the non-contractual, flexible approach that the partners have opted to take that also facilitated the revision of repair response times and other changes. “This is a new way of working for us,” he continues. “It allows us to act on local irritants that are seen as very important to residents that would never get into a Transport Asset Management Plan – cleaning a sign, or removing roadside vegetation, for instance.”
Farquhar adds: “Our council leadership agreed that we have to become a more listening council. That means delivering on the priorities of the public – and not wasting their money. People hate it when they see road crews visiting their street time and time again fixing the same problems.”
This article was originally published in Local Transport Today magazine on 23/09/11.
