The Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme (HMEP) has launched a new roads maintenance tool kit.
The new guidance explains how leading local authorities are working with their providers and supply chains to bring about lasting change, competitive prices, releasing additional resources to make local roads fit for the future.
As the nature of the highways service changes, driven by economic pressures, changing user needs and technology – building long-term relationships between clients and providers is essential to successful delivery of highway maintenance and management.
Designed to give practical help and offer examples of achieving sustainable change, HMEP is working with the London highway authorities, Transport for London and the Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA) plus partners and suppliers from across the sector, to deliver and embed different ways of working.? The two new toolkits are: ‘Creating the culture to deliver’; and ‘Maximising client/provider collaboration in highway maintenance services’. ??Both provide real evidence of the type of efficiencies that can be expected when clients and their providers work together to focus on a common goal.
Transport for London’s director of roads, Dana Skelley, said:?“Through the new London Highway Alliance contracts, we have been able to improve efficiencies through more collaborative working across wider geographic areas of London. By creating the right environment for change, we have been able to provide a better service for our customers, driving forward innovation and efficiencies, which could save TfL and boroughs up to £450 million across the duration of the framework. This can then be reinvested directly into related services and developments, further improving the road network for all.”
Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA) chairman Tony Gates added: “The challenge of achieving sustainable change through collaboration is not new and neither are the rewards. At a time when we are all being pushed for increased efficiencies and to meet higher customer expectations, these can only be truly delivered by working together in a combined culture of openness and trust: where all parties are driven by a single set of customer-focused outcomes."
The president of the Association of Directors of environment, economy, planning and transportation (ADEPT), Steve Kent said: “Budgets for highways maintenance are going to become tighter and the challenge to maintain or enhance service delivery will not go away. There is little doubt that clients will struggle to deal with this problem on their own – we need to work closely with our providers and partners to achieve success.”
The Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme (HMEP) plans to roll-out the new toolkits through a series of workshops later this year, and to further explain the other ways that HMEP is helping to increase efficiencies in the way roads and highways infrastructure is managed and maintained.
