Herts faces pothole delays after outsourcing repair management

Hertfordshire County Council has formally served its reactive maintenance provider Ringway notice that it must urgently address its performance to comply with its contractual obligations.

The move came after councillors expressed alarm at delays in repairing reported defects since the contract started in October. More than a third of over 10,000 fault reports raised in the first four months of the contract had not been repaired at the start of this month. Half of them had not yet been scheduled for repair.

The procurement of the contract has achieved cost savings  of 20% because it has outsourced the job of assessing and prioritising defects to Ringway. Hertfordshire’s head of highways, Vince Gilbert, has advised councillors that this model, “although new to Hertfordshire is proven elsewhere in the UK”. Highways Term Maintenance Association chair Tony Gates has warned that contracts with ‘man-marking’ – where councils assess and prioritise defects – lead to unnecessary costs being incurred (LTT 3 Aug 2012).

Gilbert advised the highways and transport cabinet panel that a major reason for the delays in clearing defects include the fact that Ringway did not have access to the 23 county council staff transferring to it before October, “a normal situation for a contract transfer,” so were unable to train them to use a new system. However, this “bedding-in” problem was only part of the explanation, he suggested, given the fact that “the figures [on the repairs outstanding] started to go wrong during November”.

The problems were compounded by an increase in the number of defects following cold spells in December and early January, snowfall adding to the delays in response times, and by problems with the on-line fault recording system Serco provides.

“Although Ringway were showing a readiness to resolve the problems and progress was being made, the council formally served an ‘early warning notice’ requiring Ringway to ensure that contracted services are accepted and understood, sufficiently resourced and adequately discharged and reported,” Gilbert added.

The council also wants better data on the services being delivered, particularly the number of customer-reported defects that are being dealt with.

The managing director and regional director of Ringway have apologised to the council and agreed to provide additional staff to the team looking at and prioritising incoming defects and preparing work programmes, additional staff to deal with the backlog of responses to customers reporting defects, and additional gangs to carry out the repairs where necessary.

The latest information the council has indicates that the number of outstanding 24-hour jobs has plateaued despite an increase in the numbers having to be delivered.

Discuss this at LTT's  Future of Highways Delivery conference on the 14 March 2012