DfT ‘foul up’ over pavement management

09 April 2008

The UK Pavement Management System support contract has ended, following the failure of the Department for Transport to re-tender it.

A source told Surveyor that the DfT’s failure to replace the contract for supporting a robust, nationally-consistent method for assessing local road conditions and planning their maintenance was ‘a foul up’ which left management of UK local roads ‘flapping in the wind’.

However, Chris Capps, chairman of the steering group, said it was ‘manageable’ in the short term, although it was ‘important’ that that a decision was made within the next month, in order to get a new contract up and running by the summer.

The UKPMS support contract allowed the group to undertake ‘annual health checks’ of accredited systems and equipment, and to keep under review a ‘rule set’ covering the identification of defects and deriving condition indicators.

Capps said it was ‘crucial’ to keep the technology and methodology up-to-date, but ‘not possible’ for members of the steering group to do all the work themselves. There was a need to take on board the new definitions of the national indicators for highway condition, and for continued support on the use of SCANNER machines for monitoring condition.

Another long-standing ambition was to produce a consistent way of predicting the rate at which conditions would deteriorate, said Capps. While it was not ‘the end of the world,’ he would ‘not want to be getting into the autumn and still having no support contract’. There was ‘lots of work to be done’.

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DfT ‘foul up’ over pavement management

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