The Highways Agency has been charged with finding £294M in efficiency savings over the next two years, having met and exceeded its £200M target over the last three.
It says that efficiencies have included delivering road maintenance and upgrade schemes to specification at reduced cost. A spokeswoman for the HA said there had been ‘improvements to processes,’ including in planning, design and construction phases.
This included, for example, saving £2.8M during the construction of the A38 Dobwalls bypass through efficiencies such as using pre-cast arches over a railway line, instead of building them on-site.
The HA will provide a detailed breakdown of how efficiencies were achieved in the spring. This should also include details of the target for £250M in cashable savings to local roads procurement, led by the HA. Matthew Lugg, chair of the County Surveyors’ Society’s engineering committee, said there was ‘even greater scope for highways savings’ through joint procurement and collaborative purchasing.
Most councils saving significant sums for the 2005-2008 highways procurement targets had achieved this by negotiating reduced costs with contractors.
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