For better parking procurement, be open

Conduent Transportation’s Trevor Taylor offers useful advise on specifying parking services

Many in the parking enforcement sector are facing big decisions in the coming months on how to shape the future of the services they provide. Recent technological innovations have rapidly opened doors for significant reimagination of how we can best deliver parking enforcement services in the UK.

The emergence of technology-led enforcement in the UK has arrived at the perfect moment, as local authorities battle against significant increases in the cost of the workforce, constricting budgets, and the wider cost of living crisis. There is ever-increasing pressure to demonstrate increased performance in the delivery of services alongside expectations of reducing costs.

As many parking enforcement operations are outsourced, in these circumstances the route to change is through an open procurement exercise. The question commonly posed by decision-makers is: “How do we create a specification which invites innovation to advance our parking operations?”

The simple answer is to write a specification which invites service providers to present their vision for delivering a parking service to meet the challenges faced by the operation today. This approach breaks with the tradition of asking for service providers to put together costs to deliver a pre-designed, prescribed solution designed for the previously issued specification.

While the benefits are demonstrable, there is an investment involved in producing a specification of this nature as it will involve careful planning and research to be successful.

A modern parking specification

Here are four steps to take in order to create a modern parking enforcement specification which will extract the best from service providers in the market and benefit your operation:

1. Define strategic objectives
Typically, the strategic objectives of the authority will already have been defined by the wider published policy, and the first task is to align these core strategic objectives to the parking operation. Common themes include protecting the environment, public safety, supporting local economies, and protecting the needs of residents and businesses.

2. Define obligations
In each parking operation there will likely be specific obligations which distinguish it from others around the country. Examples include a heavy focus on special events, recurring problem parking in certain locations such as areas surrounding significant regional transport hubs, complex parking permit schemes, or high volumes of requirements for parking suspensions which must be managed.

Within this scoping phase the volumes of current activities should be established and discussed, forming the foundations of what the obligations of the parking operation are to improve the communities which it serves.

3. Define the challenges to overcome
Every parking operation has challenges which could be overcome with a fresh approach or redistribution of resources. Examples include pressure from the local community because of an increasing volume of noncompliant vehicles at specific times or days which are disrupting their day today lives, problem parking causing congestion and impacting on air quality, or high rates of errors in the issuance of Penalty Charge Notices. Identifying challenges that a new operation could be designed to overcome is a key activity in the procurement exercise.

4. Collate aspirations
In addition to obligations and challenges, there may be an approach which is appealing to explore as part of the procurement exercise. This could include introducing additional services such as tackling blue badge misuse, monitoring air quality, exploring zero emission zones, or blending other services into the operation. Collate all of these aspirations and share with the market to explore opportunities to include in the specification.

Once these fundamentals have been established, the optimal next step is to organise a soft-market testing exercise with leading service providers. This is a great opportunity to share your position ahead of a formal procurement exercise and generate valuable feedback on plans and learn about the differentiation between service providers and how they can service your needs.

Armed with this knowledge, the creation of a specification which allows the different approaches of service providers to be evaluated can begin.

Open Specification Approach

The key is to avoid closing the door on innovation by prescribing outputs to achieve desired outcomes; the classic mistake in traditional parking enforcement procurement exercises has been to prescribe deployed hours. In this example, the size of the workforce is rigidly fixed and service providers cannot demonstrate methods to deliver outcomes with different workforce compositions while introducing technology to drive effectiveness and efficiency.

The key benefit of an open specification approach is to receive a variety of responses to the open procurement exercise Through the receipt of varied approaches to advance the parking operation, the process of down selecting the preferred bidder can begin. The distinctive characteristics of the strongest tender will become apparent and the best-suited service provider for your unique parking operation can be identified.

Trevor Taylor is operations director at Conduent Transportation

Conduent Transportation is a leading provider of automated and analytics-based smart mobility solutions for government agencies. These solutions span roadway charging and management, parking and kerbside management, and advanced transit and public safety systems. Our intelligent kerbside management systems enable an improved customer experience and provide operational efficiencies by augmenting the integration of people, technology and data for our customers and drivers.
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