After the rather hectic week of news last week, there has been less news around infrastructure this week (apart from the tragic bridge collapse in Baltimore).
The effects of the range of different DfT announcements, and results from the ALARM survey, are continuing to ripple. If you didn’t see my update last week, you can view it here, where I cover the key announcements for our sector.
If I’m honest, describing the news events of last week’s announcements as a “ripple” understates the significance of challenges faced by councils amongst a backdrop of Politicians who are keen to show there is new redirected HS2 funding for the road infrastructure in England. Apologies to my Scottish and Welsh colleagues at this point, of whom are involved with their own funding challenges. Of course, with any Government and politically tinged announcements, there is bound to be unintended consequences. I certainly heard a few of those this week, speaking with individual councils, suppliers, and at the LCRIG SE Regional Group meeting, chaired this time by Surrey County Council, and the joint LCRIG/ADEPT Highways Direct Management Group chaired by East Riding of York Council. For the time being (until the proverbial dust settles), I am reserving judgement on whether the unintended consequences are short term blips or long-term industry problems – I hope it is the former.
Whilst the news is focused on councils funding, the additional impacts into the supply chain cannot be ignored in our sector. Of course, there is a welcome increase in funding in some areas, which helps businesses and helps create jobs. But, there is also planning, delivering and contract procurement, and how the supply chain gears itself up to respond to the changes.
In other news, this week myself and a couple of our LCRIG Board colleagues (I can’t decide if I strong-armed them) have finished of a series of Innovation & Learning Festival tasks and meetings. These tasks included a series of meetings we’ve had with different universities, and innovators who will all be coming to the Festival to showcase new research, prototypes, products and insights. We are looking forward to showcasing some of these announcements in a series of updates post Easter and right through to the Festival.
Some people may not know that we have ten different Universities that are members of LCRIG. We are supporting an increasing range of university research proposals, including those at both early and more mature areas of research around road and health including Air Quality, micro-trenching, behaviour and many others. The key for me, is that we start at LCRIG to find routes to share more of this with suppliers and councils for greater benefit to more of our sector.
The other area of note to keep readers abreast of, is that the “PAS2161 – , Road condition monitoring (RCM) data – Specification” which will undoubtedly affect authorities, is (I understand) still on course to be open for public consultation through BSI Standards Development website between 10th April and 7th May. This will certainly be of interest to those in the supply chain wishing to provide road surface condition data to councils for their DfT submissions, and obviously for Councils wishing to submit data. Once the link is available, I know ourselves, DfT and others will share this.
Finally, last week was a hugely proud moment for us with the launch of the Highways Maintenance Academy at Salford College, which you can find out more about here. I must say a huge congratulations and thank you to Kerry and Keely from LCRIG, and Alan at Salford College for all their work and a special mention to all those companies that have supported the course: SCP, Bethell, Argyle, A1 Services (Manchester), Siignals, Amberon, SRL Traffic Systems, Recomac (Radcliffe), Saint Gobain PAM, Instarmac / Ultracrete, Meon, Marwoods, iTip Safety Handles, Salford City Council, Bolton Council, AE Yates, MultiPave, Casey.
For us, and many of the other industry partners we collaborate with, skills shortage is a worrying matter across all the entry points into the sector let alone an infrastructure that doesn’t seem to have faired well this winter despite a noticeably warmer one.
Have a great Easter everyone!
Paula Claytonsmith, Chief Executive