23rd November 2006 - TARMAC AND NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL LEAD THE WAY WITH NEW PARTNERSHIP CONTRACT

An innovative contract that will improve efficiency and share best practice while delivering highway construction and maintenance services is being implemented by Tarmac and Nottinghamshire County Council. As part of the Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership (NHP), the Tarmac contract has an anticipated budget of up to 80 million pounds to spend on improving the county's roads over the next ten years.

The NHP has been developed by the County Council in response to Sir John Egan's Rethinking Construction report, published in 1998, which called for some radical changes to the way that construction sector services are delivered by local authorities. In delivering the Tarmac contract, which is based on the NEC Engineering and Construction standard form of contract, the NHP team will work together to achieve best value and spread best practice county-wide. As well as the contract with Tarmac, the NHP brings together Nottinghamshire County Council, three Nottinghamshire local authorities: Ashfield Borough Council, Broxtowe Borough Council and Mansfield District Council and will shortly be complemented by the appointment of a new engineering services partner.

Mike Elford, Tarmac's contracting director for the Midlands, said: "By working more closely together, the joint contract team is able to design and implement road repair and maintenance work in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. In particular, early collaborative involvement on contracts enables us to maximise value and minimise waste."

The NHP contract will cover a wide range of activities including highway design; patching; surface renewal; footway edging and kerbing; drainage; general highways improvements and traffic management schemes.

For Nottinghamshire County Council, the new way of working will provide access to additional expertise and resources, to complement the existing local authority team, while making best use of money available.

Bob Hart, service director for highways, at Nottinghamshire County Council, explains:

"The Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership will make a real difference and help us to maximise efficiency. We are pleased to be working with Tarmac to improve the standard of roads across the county and we know that they have the breadth of skills and resources that we need."

"This is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the public and private sector working together to generate best value. We hope it will provide an example of good practice and useful information for local authority highways departments around the country."

The NHP is already well underway and the joint contract team is currently working on a number of road maintenance and repair contracts in the county.