DfT awards contract for national road assessment

13 August 2008
 
The Department for Transport has awarded a three-year contract to support the production of a robust, nationally-consistent method for assessing local road conditions, and planning their maintenance.

TRL and Atkins won the research framework contract to promote the use of pavement management systems (UKPMS) and SCANNER surveys in local authorities, and to support commercial suppliers in implementing systems and SCANNER specifications.

The move follows a hiatus in the support contract, after the DfT failed to replace the contract earlier this year. Chris Capps, who will lead the project steering group for the UK Roads Board, said it was ‘good news’. ‘We have secured the funding to support UKPMS and SCANNER as reliable pavement information and decision systems to help local authorities deliver the objectives in their local transport plans and transport asset management plans.’

TRL said that ‘at an aggregate level, the information on the highway asset is of value to national governments in strategic planning and resource allocation’. The DfT has been accused of undermining the national road maintenance-condition survey, but ministers have raised hopes that they will act to ensure that the continuity in data on national road conditions is not lost, as national surveys begin to be derived from SCANNER surveys (Surveyor, 24 July).

The UKPMS support contract has allowed the group Capps chairs to undertake ‘annual health checks of accredited systems and equipment’, and to keep under review a ‘rule set’ covering the identification of defects and the deriving of condition indicators. Capps has told Surveyor that it was ‘crucial’ to keep the technology and methodology for surveys up-to-date, and to take on board the new definitions of the national indicators for highway condition.

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