Surrey County Council is abandoning its policy of reviewing its two-term maintenance contracts on an annual basis, as part of an overhaul of what are hailed as ‘next generation’ deals.
As part of further changes to the county’s five-year-old partnering deals, which sought to combine a partnership ethos with robust performance management, the county wants to provide Ringway and Carillion with ‘the stability to invest’. A ‘more robust’ key performance indicator system for rating the contracts was introduced last summer, as part of moves to establish more formal, structured contract management (Surveyor, 25 January 2007). But Cllr David Munro, Surrey’s executive member for transport, agreed with officers that contracts should not be extended ‘simply on the basis of mathematical calculations’ and that having reviews every year was ‘not in the best interests of Surrey’. Ringway and Carillion were largely meeting the minimum expected performance under the KPIs, such as, for instance, on the percentage of work ‘completed right first time’. But Cllr Munro said there was ‘a recognition from all parties that there is further to go’. A meeting between Surrey and the managing directors of Ringway and Carillion resulted in an agreed ‘improvement programme’ to tackle issues that the KPIs do not necessarily cover. This includes the productivity of gangs, which became an issue after one of Carillion’s road repair gangs clocked-up less than one hour of work in an eight-hour shift. That was ‘an isolated incident’, two years ago, and the contractors hav since ‘raised their game’. Nonetheless, ‘further improvements were needed,’ said Cllr Munro. While both firms had achieved more than 100% in terms of the KPI scores in the second half of 2007, ‘we want to delve deeper’. ‘Do the gangs always have the right tools with them? Could their stores be in better order?’ The plan also entailed improvements to invoicing, the supply chain and programming. The contracts have been renewed for a further two years, until April 2011, during which time Surrey will consider the contracts’ future. This would include finding ‘better ways of rewarding performance’ and transferring more risk to the contractors.
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