Driving change
The £6 million Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme promotes collaboration, the development of new methods of service delivery and the creation of a “sustainable balance” between meeting the needs of highway users, improving quality and meeting costs
This summer, the Department for Transport (DfT) launched the £6 million Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme (HMEP) to deliver improvements in the way England’s 187,000 miles of roads, from country lanes to motorways, are protected and repaired.
Transport minister Norman Baker said that in the current economic climate, the local authorities and businesses responsible for delivering highways maintenance need to “drive down costs and drive up efficiencies”.
The aim of HMEP, he added, would be to develop practical and adaptable efficiency solutions, while allowing councils to make better informed investment decisions to support their local community and economy.
Baker said the programme has three “unique selling points”. Firstly, it is “sectorled” in its scope and shape, with resulting solutions developed by public and private organisations working in partnership.
Secondly, it is a change programme that will engage senior local authority personnel and provide opportunities to improve delivery and maximise investment. These personnel will be the ones to lead and embed efficiency in their organisations.
Finally, said Baker, the HMEP will act as a gateway through which the whole highways maintenance sector will be able to access best practice and efficiency research, including guidance, case studies and tool kits.
Drawing the roadmap
Following the launch of the HMEP, a series of workshops was held with representatives of the highways maintenance sector to clarify the outcomes the programme is trying to achieve. These sessions defined three key principles that underpin the long-term vision of the strategy:
• To continuously seek new and improved ways of delivering services for highway users and managing highway assets
• To make use of collaborative partnerships to improve processes and outcomes
• To deliver a sustainable balance between meeting the needs of highway users, improving quality and minimising costs
The workshops recognised that the local highways sector is diverse, with each authority starting at a different point on the journey towards the programme’s desired outcomes. 2018 was set as a realistic goal for highway authorities to deliver the HMEP vision, albeit with “significant early progress” over the next few years.
In November, the DfT published the results of its survey of local authorities on the HMEP. Eighty-two councils responded to the poll, a response rate of around 55 per cent.
The study found that the most common form of contract currently in use is the NEC standard form, which is used by more than two-thirds of local highway authorities. Over half of these had amended or added special clauses.
There was no evidence of a common alternative to the NEC standard form, suggesting there is scope for standardising the NEC.
Indeed, 95 per cent of authorities supported the development of a standard form of contract. Another 86 per centsaid that there should be a different approach for determining bituminous surfacing specifications to deliver different specifications for different classes of roads.
The DfT said that these responses provide good evidence for the development of standard highway maintenance specifications with a focus on local highway authority services.
Meanwhile, the survey found that 12 collaborative alliances were already in place involving around 31 per cent of respondents.
In addition, there was strong support for collaboration, with another 26 per cent of authorities considering either joining or forming an alliance for the first time. The DfT said that supported the development of a collaborative alliance toolkit.
Elsewhere, just under one-third of authorities were found to be sharing services. This was considered a mutually beneficial approach, as well as a good way of achieving efficiencies. Seventeen per cent of respondents wanted to continue in shared service arrangements, while 15 per cent were considering entering such an agreement for the first time.
Authorities shared services across a number of disciplines, including asset management, reactive maintenance, direct labour organisations, urban traffic control and winter maintenance. This indicated support for a shared services toolkit, the DfT said.
The survey also discovered that a range of procurement strategies are currently in operation. Around one-third of authorities use either restricted or open procurement procedures, while only 20 per cent use competitive dialogue.
More than two-thirds of authorities use integrated contracts to provide some or all of their services. These primarily cover preventative maintenance (60 per cent), routine maintenance (59 per cent), winter maintenance (57 per cent) and reactive maintenance (55 per cent).
The majority of services (72 per cent) were delivered by external providers, with the remainder split between equally between in-house teams and in-house with an external “top-up”. Sixty-one per cent of authorities expected external provision to remain the main method of delivery, with 37 per cent looking to delivery through frameworks.
Sixty per cent thought that restricted procedures would likely remain the most popular method of procurement.
In light of this feedback and issues raised by chief executives of local authorities with highway maintenance responsibilities, the DfT has drawn up five key elements that HMEP will offer. They include:
• Healthy Checks – to enable organisations identify and prioritise potential opportunities for efficiency gains and to create baselines for current levels of efficiencies and operations
• Signpost and Brokerage - to signpost “good practice” resources to stakeholders and broker access to experts
• Knowledge Hub - to provide a central, evolving repository for “good practice” around generating highways efficiencies
• Design, Deliver & Enable Projects - to test and validate initiatives designed to generate efficiencies (and new good practice) and capture efficiency gains via a “defined gateway process”
• Industry Forums – to bring together various stakeholders to create a culture of continuous learning and the sharing of ideas on the focus of HMEP
The next step in the development of the HMEP comes in the new year, when the DfT will outline how different users will be able to engage with the programme to ensure it suits their individual needs.
In the meantime, the department is asking stakeholders to get involved with the HMEP in order to guide its focus. Interested parties should email highwaysefficiency@dft.gsi.gov.uk
