National Highways Academy hosted a Highways Delivery 2016 conference on the 23rd June in London’s Transport Museum. The conference was about “Making the Network Work” with presentations from nine speakers and a panel debate to summarise the day. Speakers represented MHA, DfT, Atkins Global, Colas, HE, Transport Focus and TfGM with a video presentation from David Quarmby & Phil Carey. We had a full day’s agenda with delegates from across the Highways sector, providing a good opportunity to network and share thoughts on our industry.

The whole day was chaired by Mike D’ Alton – Head of Strategic Growth for Infrastructure at WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff. Mike kicked off the event by sharing some interesting facts with the audience: [1] £15 billion per annum is the cost of congestion to the UK economy [2] We should expect an increase of 63% in congestion by 2020 [3] We have a £12 billion deficit to fix maintenance backlog which would take 6 years to complete.

Presentations were given by the Midland Highway Alliance (MHA) on Local Authority Partnerships which we have seen develop across the country with EHA, NEPO, SWHA and GEN3. Peter Barclay and Stewart Corbett outlined that there were 22 members with a full-time Framework Manager in place with host authority Leicestershire. The MHA is self funding through the LA’s fees of 400k per annum, delivering capital projects and skills training. However, the framework is continuing to develop as latest figures would show that despite a 64% increase in performance there is a potential loss of 44% of its budget in the delivery of schemes.

There was an interesting presentation from Lila Tachtsi about lessons learnt between the Local and National networks which have both experienced poor funding over the years. The impact of our highway network on the social well-being of the UK population was not lost on the audience as both are accountable to the tax payer. The core similarities are: [1] The challenges [2] Expectations of the public [3] Complexity of the network. However, differences stretch even further through funding, core users, access to network (maintenance), resources and the nature of the asset and purpose of the organisation responsible for the highway. A 5 year plan to succeed shares some common themes going forward [1] Understanding what the customer wants [2] Defining priorities [3] Making decisions [4] Value of asset [5] Skills training.

The DfT presentation was given by Gary Kemp and focused on Local Authority Self-Assessment with LA’s requiring an asset management plan and structure. Throughout 2015-2021 there is a £6 billion package for maintenance with £578 million to incentivise LA’s and £250 million for pothole action fund. Self-Assessments will be user friendly following HMEP principles with 5 key areas: [1] Resilience [2] Asset management [3] Customers [4] Benchmarking and efficiencies [5] Operational delivery. There will be three bands for local authorities and all devo authorities will be in band 3. The DfT will be assessing scoring patterns in July and hosting autumn workshops to understand lessons learnt and the process will be repeated in autumn 2016.

One of the other main presentations given was by David O Neil of Highways England. He talked about the massive transformation with respect to Customer Service. Guy Dangerfield of Transport Focus is looking at all the road user needs, including horses, to understand what the customer wants based on evidence with a pilot survey via the DVLA & Households. Guy will also look at users who are non-drivers, passengers, cyclists, pedestrians, horse riders, operators and companies. An interesting video was presented about a “Vision for England Major Roads” to provide economic growth across our strategic network. This would involve some strategic local authority highways aligning to the Highways England network – a total of 3600 miles to provide a network right for business and leisure. It all sounds very logical, but why does everything take so long to action when the solutions are so obvious? We waste so much time and energy waiting to do what we all know is best for our industry.