Key figures in Scottish and Welsh highways have given warnings and advice on how to approach modern asset management in today's political environment.
Taking questions at the LGTAG annual presidential conference this summer, Hugh Gillies, director of roads at Transport Scotland and David Denner, highways technology manager at the Welsh Government, discussed the political, funding and structural challenges of UK asset management.
Mr Gillies gave insights into how his team make the case for their budget in the context of high pressure politics.
He told attendees: ‘I have to give the cabinet secretary the tools to articulate her argument that funding is required to be spent on an asset. So the first question is: what do roads do for society, what do they do for economic growth? I need to feed that narrative.
‘We have made sure that when I am saying what I would like as a budget, I'm going with one ask: one ask for ITS equipment, one ask for the facility equipment, one ask for roads, one ask for structures. I'm not going back during those times and repeating that question.’
Mr Gillies addressed the issue of linking asset management to resilience in the face of climate change by discussing how to make smarter long-term investments in the type of work needed.
‘What we have been doing for the last few years is providing proof of concept in asset renewal for what we need to do beyond that for adaptation... so sometimes I will do asset renewal, or adaptation, but sometimes I will do both. Eventually, I want to put a line in our budget that says this is adaptation of the asset network, as well as asset renewal.’
Mr Denner picked up on the point regarding breaking down the budget siloes.
He told attendees: ‘[Asset management] has been a tough journey. The challenge is that we are still very siloed with all the asset leads. Is the street lighting manager talking to the engineer for crash barriers, or is the paving engineer talking to lines and signs?
'I am constantly at meetings trying to get people to break down the barriers, [but] people are very protective over their bit of the budget. Asset management is really about showing communication from kerb to kerb.’
The most sobering element of discussion was when these two senior figures raised the risk posed by the ageing asset base in the UK, suggesting not only that a generation of major assets are coming to the end of life all at once, but also they are often in a lot worse repair than thought.
Mr Gillies said: 'We have an issue in this country which is starting to show itself - the age of our structures. There's no way to get away from that. And one of the things we are finding is that when you crack open these old structures it is not what you expect.
'They were built to the standards of the day, the as-built drawings are not as you would expect. And it's really, really challenging and it's really expensive.'
