A blueprint to improve performance and efficiency in the highways maintenance industry to aid cash-strapped councils under fire from government cuts is being produced by a leading trade body.

Hannah Shires, newly appointed chair of Highways Term Maintenance Association’s (HTMA) Improvements and Efficiency Working Group, is leading the drive to introduce the framework to simplify and improve the industry’s supply-chain.

The investigation instigated by the working group is to improve efficiency using key performance indicators (KPIs).

A KPI measures performance and is commonly used to help an organisation define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term goals.

HTMA’s Improvement and Efficiency Working Group has considerable experience in performance management within the highways sector consolidated from a membership that comprises virtually all of the UK’s top service providers.

Recent research has highlighted the avoidable cost to the sector and ultimately to clients arising from the use of contract-specific performance measurement regimes.  HTMA contends that the use of a consistent performance measurement framework in the highways sector would reduce administration costs.

“Further, it would drive improvement through the potential for genuine benchmarking of performance and the sharing of underlying good practices.  The resulting efficiencies would provide more resources for front line service delivery at a time when budgets are under significant pressure,” said Mrs Shires.

HTMA has set up a group to develop recommendations to help minimise the sizeable and sometimes hidden cost of inefficiency of performance indicators to the industry.

“Indicators enforced across the industry need to be consistent to minimise the cost of set up and maximise the benefits of measurement.

“Current indicators need to be reviewed in line with value for money outcomes and adopted consistently across the board not making measurement a separate industry,” concluded Mrs Shires.

Editors Notes

HTMA’s membership of leading consultants and contractors has a combined turnover of more than £3 billion, over 20,000 employees and maintains approximately 400,000 km of highway across the UK – approximately 80% of British roads.

The HTMA members are: Amey, Atkins, Balfour Beatty, BAM Nuttall, BEAR Scotland, Carillion, Colas, Costain, Enterprise, Volker Highways, Halcrow, Hyder, Jacobs, May Gurney, Morrison, Mott MacDonald, Mouchel, Ringway, Scott Wilson, Skanska and Tarmac National Contracting.  Kiely Bros, Nynas, Petroplus and WJ Linkline Group are Associate Members.

Issued on behalf of the HTMA Press Office by Joan Roemmele.  For enquiries from the media, journalists and researchers only, the HTMA Press Office can be contacted on +44 (0) 1782 443080, +44 (0) 7917 638336 or e-mail: joan@htma.co.uk