Let's nail down what the true costs are

THE Highways Term Maintenance Association's annual conference last week was unsurprisingly focused on cost.

Phil Hoare, the chairman of the industry body, commented that while times were tough, this was "an opportunity to assess and re-evaulate how highways maintenance spending is carried out". I agree with him.

The HTMA launched the first of a series of initiatives aimed at uncovering waste: costs that are unnecessarily added to term contracts that only take money away from frontline services. The new price indexation mechanism will be used in contracts that will shortly be issued by Cheshire West and Chester Council are overdue and welcome.

They will allow the unitary authority to more accurately reflect changes in the cost of labour, plant and materials over the lifetime of its new contract. Different items of work, whether it be routine maintenance, renewal or construction, or professional services, will have different methods for applying price adjustments that reflect their different proportions for labour, materials and plant.

In a separate project, the HTMA is also trying to unearth the unnecessary costs added by the multitude of different key performance indicators that each local authority uses.

It is amazing that so many of these unnecessary costs have gone unchallenged for so long. I think that these initiatives will make the option of issuing a new contract, rather than simply renegotiating an existing one, more attractive.