Following Will Britain’s recent call to action for LCRIG members to become advocates and help drive change in the highways sector, John Ingle from Cumbria County Council has volunteered to become a digital/video inspection advocate. Here, he discusses the council’s move towards digital inspections of its roads and assets. John is keen share his experiences of implementing these processes with other authorities.
Having worked for both Blackpool Council and Cumbria County Council in highway inspections, and been heavily involved in the Department of Transport supported Digital Inspector project, I have over 10 years experience of innovation in highway inspections. I believe there are reliable options currently available which can help to improve the highway inspection process making it more effective, efficient and auditable; giving better results for the road user and providing a better Section 58 defence for the highway authority.
With Cumbria County Council being a Tier 1 authority within the national Digital Inspector project we were well placed to move swiftly towards digital inspections when the pandemic hit in early 2020. The necessity to change the way we work was accelerated and we are now much further ahead than we had envisaged which has led to improved efficiency and a greater degree of clarity around the condition of the highways network in Cumbria. Our collaborations with both Gaist and Vaisala, using SafetyView and RoadAI have been vital in making the successful shift towards a more digital way of working.
We have now reached a point at which, after using digital inspections methods for over 10 months, we would not go back to the traditional method of inspection. We feel that both of these two new methods are more accurate than traditional methods of inspection, safer to conduct and provide a more robust defence against claims submitted against the council.
Neither SafetyView nor Road AI replaces our highway inspection team, but instead they allow the inspectors to focus their attention on areas of the highways where their skills and experience can be used to the best advantage. The products provide a greater level of data for the inspectors to assess, allowing them to pause and properly consider the potential defects in the safety of an office rather than being dangerously positioned on the highway. If the inspector is ever unsure whether to action a defect or not based on the information from these systems they can of course attend site and, in a controlled manner, assess the issue. But this is in fact rarely required. Both products have been found to be more accurate than our traditional inspection method, particularly in the highlighting of planned maintenance works and the condition information of the highway.
A major concern about undertaking such a drastic change to the inspection process is of course the defensibility in court cases and we have of course involved both our insurers and lawyers in the process of moving towards digital inspections. As mentioned above, the new way of working has provided us with a more robust evidence when defending a claim in court. Having photographic evidence from the time of the pre-incident inspections has been invaluable. It has been able to show that no defects were present on the highway, and on adjacent property walls, in multiple claims. All this has given us more confidence, not less, in our claims process.
I’m hoping that by being a digital/video inspection advocate I can help encourage other authorities to use these methods of inspection and to help develop them further. I’m more than happy to share my experiences at implementing these processes and welcome any feedback other authorities have from using these or similar processes for undertaking highway inspections.
You can get in touch with John at John.Ingle@cumbria.gov.uk
LCRIG is currently going through the process of identifying other advocates. Once identified LCRIG will include them as part of an organisational structure that will allow us to process queries efficiently and effectively.
For further information or to express an interest in becoming an advocate please contact Secretariat & Executive Officer Susanne Ingham at susanne.ingham@lcrig.org.uk