South West Highway Alliance

South West Highway Alliance

Business Plan 2016/17

Chairperson’s Introduction

The South West HighwayAlliance presents a key opportunity for us, as highways maintenance practitioners, to take advantage of our neighbour’s good practices as well as using our combined buying power, to gain the very best possible prices and quality from our supply chain networks. The Alliance, now in its third year, has already made great strides in demonstrating the value of collaboration and this business plan sets out a path to both enhance the good work to date but also shows ambition to see what further improvements and gains we can make by working together.

The South West has a long history of local collaboration between neighbouring authorities, but the level of collaboration planned by the Alliance represents a significant step change in approach. There are now many examples of collaboration, from Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset’s contracts that are available to all authorities in the region, through to innovative collaboration between County, District and Parish councils to secure cost-effective delivery of highway services.

It is important to us as a collective that the advantages of collaborative working is not underestimated and therefore it is my intention that meetings are definitely geared towards ensuring that we make the most of our combined knowledge and expertise. A key priority for the year will be strengthening the already excellent work that captures good practice, ensuring that this is shared with a wider group than just the few practitioners attending relevant meetings.

We are already leading the way with regard measuring and evaluating the effects of climate change, we are joining forces on a number of procurement exercises and generally talking to each other and picking up good practice.

This year, as well as building on the work to date, we need to find a mechanism to measure the impact of the Alliance to enable us to show in real terms our value to our colleagues.

Contents

1. Introduction

1. Budget

1. Issues

1. Work Programme

1. Service Area Group Projects

1. Programme and Alliance Management

1. Conclusion

South West Highway Alliance Business Plan 2016/17

1. Introduction

The South West Highway Alliance (SWHA) is a partnership of 15 highway authorities in the South West of England that have formally agreed to work collaboratively to deliver more efficient highway services.

The Alliance has modest financial and human resources at its disposal, limiting its capacity to deliver a large number of projects. Consequently, efforts will be focused on a small number of projects, making the best use of any opportunities that arise and harnessing the enthusiasm of existing groups. A number of authorities will be progressing procurement projects in 2016/17, creating opportunities to collaborate on procurement activities and/or develop framework contracts.

Along with improved procurement we will also look at producing meaningful benchmarking and development mechanisms for the core highway service areas, to drive forward improvements across the region. The toolkit to measure climate change impacts will continue to be developed for use nationally, and development of further toolkits will be explored as part of ongoing work in respect to risk and benchmarking.

1. Budget

The SWHA will maintain its subscription fees at £2,500 for district unitaries and £5,000 for county authorities in 2016/17. This will generate a total income of £52,500 pa to support SWHA activities. A modest amount of additional funding is expected to be generated from contract access fees.

Financial Projection

The Alliance manager is expected to cost approximately £35,000 in 2016/17 (on a half time basis), with the cost of Executive Board, Programme Board and Work Groups meetings expected to be in the order of £2,000.

It is anticipated that unless allocated to projects, by the end of 2016/17 the surplus funding available to the Alliance will be close to £60,000. Workstream leads will be encouraged to apply for SWHA funding, where additional resources are required to deliver projects, and £25,000 is allocated for this.

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South West Highway Alliance Business Plan 2016/17

1. Issues

The second SWHA business plan set out a number of issues facing local highway authorities in the South West region, and for the most part, these issues remain. Customer expectations regarding the condition of the highway network remain high, despite growing public awareness of reductions to public sector funding.

The availability of resources is a growing concern for both individual authorities and the Alliance, with reduced staffing levels, difficulties recruiting and retaining skilled staff, limited availability of materials and reduced funding increasingly affecting capability to deliver projects. We also have the dichotomy of reducing maintenance reliability and large sums of capital moneys which need to be spent in time limited fashion putting further strain on teams and supply chains.

Whilst the announcement of highways maintenance funding formula allocations for the five year period from 2016/17 to 2020/21 provides a degree of welcome certainty in respect to future highways funding levels, and the temperate winter has provided some respite for stretched highways budgets, many SW local highway authorities continue to face an increasing highway maintenance backlog and shortfall of funding needed to address this.

The introduction of the self assessment questionnaire, which determines the incentive funding levels allocated to authorities, in line with their commitment to achieve efficiencies, innovate, and adopt collaborative working arrangements, has the potential to have significant impacts on highways budget going forwards. In 2017/18, authorities in the South West could lose out on between £1.4m - £5.4m of maintenance funding, if they are unable to demonstrate level 3 performance, and consequently, work in 2016/17 will need to focus on collaboratively addressing any shortcomings.

With diminishing staff resources, short term funding mechanisms requiring process heavy applications are not viewed favourably by the Alliance. However, several South West authorities were able to secure additional funding from the local highways maintenance challenge fund, with £55m allocated to these authorities in tranche 1. Unfortunately, a number of authorities were unable to bid for this fund, due to the short timescales and resource availability to prepare a bid. 2016/17 provides an opportunity for authorities to prepare for the tranche 2 bidding opportunity anticipated in 2017/18.

The anticipated introduction during 2016 of new codes of practice and publication of accompanying guidance on moving towards a risk-based approach is expected to be a driver for new projects within the highway service groups. A collaborative approach to compliance and development of minimum standards of service where deviation from the guidelines is deemed necessary are two specific areas where highway service group work will assist authorities defending future claims made against them.

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South West Highway Alliance Business Plan 2016/17

1. Work Programme

The following projects will be developed during 2016/17:

Details of the main activities being progressed for each project are described below:

TMC Collaborative Procurement

Following extensive work in 2015/16,in which Somerset County Council, Devon County Council and Plymouth City Council collaborated on procurement of replacement term maintenance contracts, and jointly went to the market, it is anticipated that contracts will be awarded in 2016. Lessons learnt from this collaborative procurement will be captured and shared with the Alliance. Work continues in 2016/17 between N. Somerset and BANES on a similar project.

Professional Services

Gloucestershire is working towards procuring a framework contract for professional services around transport modelling, highways development planning application advice and approvals, and major scheme assessment. This is likely to consist of a single supplier contract for SATURN modelling work, with an additional framework or Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) for additional activities. Depending on the level of interest expressed in being able to access this contract, it may be made available for use by some or allSWHA authorities.

Swindon have an urgent need to progress a professional services contract, which, depending on expressions of interest from other authorities, may be made available to other SWHA members.

Somerset are also procuring a professional services framework, incorporating Project Management, Cost Consultancy and Dispute resolution.

Medium Schemes Framework

A number of authorities wish to establish framework contracts for medium schemes construction, to complement Hants’ Gen3 Framework contracts for major scheme delivery. Somerset, Gloucestershire and Devon County Councils have all expressed an interest in developing such contractsand have indicated that they may be happy to make them available to neighbouring authorities. Somerset are keen to establish a four year framework contract, with multiple suppliers, which willbe open to all authorities in the South West.

Small Contractors / RoW DPS

In order to address cost efficiency concerns around small works being delivered by large contractors and to develop better arrangements for accessing small contractors, Somerset County Council plan to develop a DPS for rights of way maintenance activities, with input from the SW Countryside group.

Weather Forecasting

Devon, Plymouth, Torbay, Dorset, Poole and Bournemouth have been working towards establishing a weather forecasting consortia and have now issued tender documentation for a three year contract with four one year rolling extensions. Evaluation is planned for April 2016, to allow for a start in October 2016.

Highways ServiceCharges

Within the South West, there are numerous operational highway activities, where collaboration on charging regimes could provide a more consistent experience for the customer, and provide assurance to authorities considering revisions to their charging schedules. An annual benchmarking exercise will be carried out to identify differences in charges in time to inform budget and fee setting activities in individual authorities.

Highway Safety Inspections

The South West Regional Asset Management Group (SRAMG) has established a sub-group to benchmark the inspection regimes currently adopted by southwest authorities, comparing inspection frequencies, intervention criteria, repair timescales and incidence of claims. This exercise will be used to explore the scope for developing aregional, risk-based approachthat can be adopted to inform any local inspection policies. It is envisaged that this work will be closely linked to the DfT’s development of guidance for taking a risk-based approach and the publication of the new codes of practice.

Developer - led infrastructure: Commuted Sums

Infrastructure delivered through the development management process has significant implications for local highway authorities, due to potential costs of bringing up roads to adoptable standards, ongoing maintenance and electricity costs, as well as the costs of putting things right later, should parking or congestion problems arise. The SWTDMOG will explore the scope for developing a common approach to commuted sums for infrastructure delivered by developers.

Incorporation of Climate Change Predictions into Asset Management Strategies

The southwest climate change task and finish group has been developing a methodology, based on work by Dorset County Council, which allows local highway authorities to risk assess the potential implications of climate change on their core, resilience networks (usually the winter network). The toolkit highlights points of weakness in the network, using historic and geographic information to identify high risk assets, thereby enabling future investment to be directed to secure the ongoing resilience of the network. It is envisaged that once finalised, this process will be embedded in authorities’ asset management strategies.

Collaborative Development of Drainage Asset Management Strategies

Similar to the Asset Management Strategy project, this workstream will seek to embed the good practice developed by authorities such as Cornwall Council and Wiltshire Council within a common approach across the region.

Collaborative Developmentof Asset Management Strategies and Systems

Following developmental work in 2015, Cornwall plan to procure anasset management system framework in early 2016/17. The contract will be open to all South West authorities and split into modules, allowing authorities to pick and choose any specific modules they require.

Benchmarking to Drive Service Improvement

In order to assist authorities’ efforts to achieve higher scores on the incentive fund self assessment questionnaire, a benchmarking club will co-ordinate benchmarking and reporting across the five main highway service groups: asset management, structures, winter service, street lighting and traffic signals. Information derived from the key indicators will be used to derive case studies for dissemination amongst South West authorities.

University partnerships

In response to the difficulties encountered recruiting and retaining skilled staff, particularly within specialist areas, the scope for developing partnerships between the Alliance and universities within the region will be explored. A sub group has been established to determine the full scope of this project, which is likely to also consider cross-boundary training and development opportunities.

Shared and traded services

Emerging evidence indicates that there are considerable savings to be achieved from shared services, whether these are delivered through sharing or trading resources across authorities. This project will explore the regional scope and appetite for buying, selling and sharing expertise across all local highway authority activities, leading to the development of a number of work packages.

It is anticipated that the skills shortage in the highway sector will be a key driver for both this project and the previous one. Work will initially focus on gathering information about issues relating to skills and staff, scoping the extent of the problem, before progressing to the development of potential solutions.

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South West Highway Alliance Business Plan 2016/17

1. Service Area Group Projects

The South West ADEPT environment directors group, which provides the executive board governance for the Alliance, has requested that the SWHA provides direction for task and finish activities to be undertaken by the various highway service area groups. A number of core projects have been identified as indicated below:

A secretariat service is provided to regional groups working on highway Alliance projects. The South West Councils web based workspace is being used to provide all groups with a central repository for meeting minutes and case studies, as well as offering a discussion forum and secure online environment for working on documents, such as common policies.