Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership

Client: Nottinghamshire County Council
Value: £80 million
Duration: 10 years
Completion: December 2016

A Project that has required integration of people, practices and cultures from the public and private sectors.

NHP is a collaborative contract delivering highway maintenance and improvement works throughout the county. The Partnership benefits from co-ordinated programming of schemes, accurate long term budget forecasting and efficient use of resources.

Tarmac is involved at every stage of each scheme from initial inception, design and value engineering, material selection, through to construction. To encourage joint working, the NHP contract is based upon NEC Option E (for schemes valued below £12k) and Option D (for those between £12k and below £1million).

Comment:
"The length of the contract means the council and Tarmac are able to fully commit to the partnership, experiment, develop and innovate to deliver at a local and strategic level, while achieving benefits for the longer term. Tarmac has become a well established NHP partner, working closely with the council to deliver real efficiency improvements, promote best value and spread best practice - while bringing private industry commercial expertise and experience to bear."
Bob Hart, Nottinghamshire County Council's Service Director for Highways

Driving Best Value through Co-location

Co-location of offices has improved direct communication through "face to face" contact. A small integrated team from both Nottinghamshire and Tarmac work together to provide best value by reducing bureaucracy, removing duplication of measurement and streamlining the process of scheme design, value management and long-term programme management.

Refining the scheme Design Process through Standardisation of Scheme Information

Information supplied by Nottinghamshire's Area and Scheme Managers at the contract's outset differed in content. Most were fully designed and priced with a request for us to simply agree a target cost and with little or no scope to provide any design input.

Sheet piling works, Gunthorpe

We now undertake a joint scheme 'walk & talk' at a very early stage when new ideas and methods of carrying out the work are agreed as a joint value engineering and buildability exercise. Subsequently Tarmac are presented with an un-priced 'Request for Input', which we take off and build up the Initial Target Price. We have championed the use of a standard electronic package of information that contains a risk register, programme and costs as well as detailing any supply chain input that can be used later to produce and agree a final account. This process of design reduces scheme time, requirements for traffic management, disruption to the public and, ultimately, scheme cost.

Flattening the Annual Programme through effective Resource Planning

The partnership allows Tarmac to support Nottinghamshire's long term programming issues and assist in accurate preparation of their annual budgets. Our assistance with scheme allocation has 'flattened' the programmed workload and reduced unmanageable peaks and troughs.

Early removal of Cost Uncertainty

The Partnership quickly realised that the tendered schedule of rates contained a number of prices that were inequitable to both parties and introduced both a pricing risk and cost uncertainty into the target pricing mechanism. A joint working group established a banded set of rates for key components of the price schedule that provided both positive and negative adjustments and aligned Target Price to Actual Costs.

This enabled cost comparisons between schemes, in turn driving continuous improvement and further rate reductions. Further benefits include improved cost certainty, improved transparency and trend analysis on specific schemes.

Newark Town Centre

The Contract's success is measured by Performance Indicators

Simple performance criteria and objectives ensure all partners know what they are charged with delivering and how successful they are in meeting that aim. This approach has aided staff 'buy-in' and made the most of existing experience and insight within teams.

Comment:
"Tarmac's approach to the partnership has been one of complete professionalism, openly adopting the principles of our arrangement with enthusiasm.…….whilst these performance figures are good Tarmac have accepted, and in some instances proposed, the need to continually improve our performance.”
Ross Marshall, Nottinghamshire County Council's Principal Partnerships Officer

Strategic, Operational and Advisory Groups govern the NHP

These groups reduce the resource input of senior managers, streamline operational activity and enable a focus on identifying meaningful solutions at an advisory level. This structure also facilitates efficient communications and defines clear roles and responsibilities across the three tiers, in turn empowering all those involved.

Comment:
"The NHP is now well established as a truly forward thinking and innovative partnership. Together we are delivering demonstrable results, both in terms of the quality of the approach to our work and the work itself.”
Bob Hart, Nottinghamshire County Council's Service Director for Highways

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Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership (pdf, 308kb)

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