Agenda item

(Alex Gilbert and Will Warner, AMEY, were in attendance for this item)

(1)      Members were updated on the major change programme carried out within the Highways and Transportation Division since 2010 entitled Future Highways.  The programme was developed in response to a number of major challenges facing the Service, notably the need to transform business culture and deal with the impact of falls in government funding.

(2)         The report described the key challenges facing the Service in 2010 and what had been done to tackle them head-on to create a modern, forward thinking Service that put customer care at its heart.  The Future Highways Programme was now substantially completed, and its successes had enabled Highways and Transportation Service to substantially fulfil the Vision it published in 2010.  The Vision was designed to focus on creating a top performing highway authority to become an intelligent Client through the re-procurement of key contracts and the delivery of a number of related internalisation projects, leading to the transfer of some functions back to KCC from Consultancy. . A major staff re-structuring was commenced together with a re-procurement of the Works Contract which ultimately led to Ringway being replaced with Enterprise in September 2011.

(3)  The key challenge facing H&T was to ensure that despite a reduction of budget, community facing elements of the business and work programmes showed improvement and embraced the requirement to manage resource in a completely new way. The significant challenges were set out in the report.  A dedicated programme team, clear governance and strong political and senior management support was vital for success in meeting the challenges.

(4)  The Future Highways Programme included a review of the Term Maintenance and Consultancy contracts, aligning the service to the needs of the business, relocating services to where they were best placed and supporting the staff through training. Engagement and communication was paramount to ensure seamless change without disruption to service delivery.  The Programme was divided into Phases and delivered the following activities:-

·                    Phase 1 delivered a new Term Maintenance Contract. Enterprise commenced the contract in September 2011 with a continuity of service from Ringway.

·                    Phase 2 delivered the mobilisation and embedding of the Enterprise contract into the business.

·                    Phase 3 had delivered, the internalisation of the Structures Team, Intelligent Traffic Systems, Crash Data Team and Arboriculture Service (Soft Landscape) – the teams and their ICT systems were moved from Jacobs’ employment and place of work to H&T offices under Kent County Council Employment.

·                    Phase 4 delivered a new Technical and Environmental Services Contract which commenced in April 2013. It also included the demobilisation of Jacobs and the extraction of key systems.

            The mobilisation of Amey was also undertaken in phase 4 to ensure that the new Consultant was ready to commence work on 1 April 2013.

·                    Phase 5 delivered the assimilation of Transport Integration into H&T.

(5)       The H&T/Enterprise partnership was designed ensuring that “every pound counts”. The contract was procured as Enterprise offered the best balance of cost versus quality. Risk was allocated to those best placed to manage it and there was clear ownership of liability – KCC only paid once for any works done thereby driving “right first time” workmanship.  Performance had improved across the business with regard to response times, budget management, programming of works and route optimisation; all were key areas where working better together with Enterprise was proving particularly successful.  Relationships were already being successfully forged with Amey and early indications showed that the principles of the new contract were being embraced by both the business and consultant.  The decision to internalise some services into the business had already shown economies were realised.

(6)               The report set out evidence of H&T’s level of success.

(7)               Mr Gilbert of Amey updated Members on staff changes and office facilities.

(8)       RESOLVED that the report be noted, now that the Future Highways Programme was substantially completed.