The Highway Agency’s handling of the procurement of a contract for a motorway and major roads communications system has been heavily criticised by MPs this week.
The public accounts committee criticised the agency for spending five times more than expected on procurement of a 10.5-year, £415M contract to provide national road telecommunications services (NRTS).
The procurement took five years to complete, rather than the original estimate of 21 months, and cost £15.5M. GeneSys was eventually appointed in September 2005 to provide services such as details on congestion and delays. The committee says the HA ‘never had a clear idea about the time and cost needed to complete the procurement’, and did ‘not deploy effective controls over the work of its advisers’.
While the NRTS provided new opportunities for the HA to give road-users more detailed and helpful information than had been possible in the past, it also had the ‘potential for giving confusing messages’.
Therefore, it was recommended that the HA consulted with road-users, their representative bodies and other stakeholders to ‘ascertain whether the NRTS-based information that it provides best meets the needs of road-users’.
The ultimate test of the value for money of NRTS will be the benefits that are delivered via linked HA projects to manage the strategic road network. The HA values these benefits at £2,800M, but the committee states that this ‘is dependent on the programme of associated projects proceeding in full, and being delivered on time and to cost’.
The HA defended its procurement of the NRTS and highlighted the fact that the project completed its construction phase in October 2007, to time and budget.
Download the Public Accounts Committee report here
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