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September 2006

Scotland: Annual report on trunk road maintenance now published

The latest annual report on trunk road maintenance in Scotland, undertaken by Halcrow’s Performance Audit Group (PAG) on behalf of Transport Scotland, is published today.

Compiled by Halcrow’s Performance Audit Group (PAG), ‘Driving Improvement’ reviews the performance of maintenance contractors who delivered more than £142m of work in 2005/06.

The Halcrow team is based in Edinburgh and led by Project Director Donald Bell. He commented: “Our team of engineers and accountants has carried out more than 130 detailed audits as well as visiting over 1,200 roadworks sites across the Scottish trunk road network to gather data for this detailed report.”

He added: “Our report found BEAR and Amey’s commitment to improving their services continued. The overall number of default notices issued declined, reflecting a year on year trend. Work across the network was to a good standard, and the contractors’ management systems performed well.”

The contractors worked well to reduce delays at roadworks, with 99.3% of the network open to road users. Emergencies were handled quickly and professionally. BEAR significantly improved its performance in repairing the most serious faults, Category 1 defects, delivering good performance. Amey’s performance in this aspect of work dipped. PAG and Transport Scotland will monitor Amey’s commitment to improve. A prolonged and cold winter resulted in the contractors spreading more salt than in the previous two years.

Donald Bell said he was delighted to deliver the report to Transport Scotland, commenting: “The PAG team is proud of its contribution to driving forward improvement in maintaining, managing and operating Scotland’s trunk roads.”

John Gooday the Transport Scotland National Network Manager said that he was pleased to receive the report: “I am grateful to all of the PAG staff who have contributed towards the production of the Driving Improvement report. This is the culmination of a great deal of work undertaken throughout the year and sets out in a clear and transparent manner the performance of our maintenance Operating Companies.”

Halcrow was originally commissioned by the Scottish Executive in 1995 to lead the first PAG project. In 2002, Halcrow; with long term partners PricewaterhouseCoopers, beat international competition in a rigorous tender process to win another seven year contract to lead the project until 2009.

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