Infrastructure asset management firm Symology developed, tested and implemented a system to manage a new lane rental scheme within a local authority's tight implementation timeframe, the firm said.

Symology said it developed the new solution as an additional feature of its existing Insight Street Works system for Surrey County Council – the first authority outside initial trials to receive government Lane Rental approval.

Matthew Jezzard, traffic manager at Surrey Highways (pictured), said the scheme, which charges organisations for working on the council's busiest roads at the busiest times, is ‘designed to challenge people to think about how they're designing and delivering their works, and the timing of those works, to minimise disruption'.

‘Symology kept us updated on their progress and met all of the timelines that we asked of them, which were challenging. They committed development time and they did it quickly, efficiently, cooperatively, and at a very reasonable cost model.

‘The Symology system enables us to identify very easily those streets that Lane Rental applies to, and then it automates a lot of the process for us, saving officer administration time. We've found it invaluable, and it's working very well, doing exactly what we wanted it to.'

Symology said the consultation, review and approval process produced significant time pressure, while Surrey needed enough time to update and publish the Lane Rental designations for 320 streets in the National Street Gazetteer so works promoters could add the information into their own systems ahead of the go-live date.

Sales and marketing manager Stuart Marshall said: ‘Surrey had used a permit-based scheme for many years, so the introduction of this new system necessitated not only a change in business process, but also a solution to manage network occupancy and associated charges. The aim was to ensure the new scheme didn't add an extra administrative burden to the street works co-ordination process.

‘As Surrey's existing Street Works solution provider, we had to ensure the new Lane Rental functionality ran in conjunction with the council's permit scheme, to identify the streets and works where Lane Rental was applicable, and to manage the Lane Rental charges alongside permit charges.

‘We collaborated with the council to ensure integration and automation of the relatively complex Lane Rental and Permit charging lifecycles, and we added in a mapping layer so that Lane Rental street occupancy could be quickly identified prior to reviewing the permit details.'

He added: ‘A Lane Rental charge is automatically calculated when the works are on a Lane Rental street during Lane Rental times and has the necessary traffic management type. If it is outside those criteria, a permit charge is automatically calculated.

‘The result is a comprehensive system which allows the council to manage their charging automatically, with no manual input, saving time and providing genuine cost efficiencies.'