Plymouth Council & Asset Management

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1 Plymouth Council & Asset Management Plymouth City Council is committed to improving the condition of its carriageways and has demonstrated this graphically by pledging to spend 20m over and above any DfT/central Government settlement over a period of ten years. However, despite this significant long term financial commitment, the results from the NHT public opinion survey indicates that the level of public satisfaction with the condition of carriageways remained low and carriageways were attracting a high level of negative local press and media coverage. As part of Plymouth Council s undertaking to respond to public opinion and develop an asset management strategy that is truly fit for the future and aligned to changing policy demands such as the requirements of Whole of Government Accounts, Challenge Funding etc. Plymouth City Council spent a period of time investigating a number of different strategies and systems employed by other authorities across the UK. It was important for Plymouth Council to be fully cognisant of the state of the art and capitalise on lessons learned by other agencies and to formulate the most robust plan with the least financial risk whilst ensuring the best outcomes. The core objectives of this investigation was to identify the very best practice that is appropriate to Plymouth Council and make best use of new technologies, the latest research and development and emerging methodologies for robust whole of life management of assets and investment planning. Plymouth became aware of the work that Gaist Solutions Limited had been undertaking with other local authorities across the UK and the scope of services they offered which appeared to be delivering rapid results and new technologies designed to underpin lifecycle planning. The Council was then contacted by the consultant Towie Duffy for some advice regarding deterioration and investment modelling, procurement, efficiencies, estimated costs, deliverable volumes of work within Plymouth's network etc. for an internal Council report. Martin Duffy referred to the work Gaist had done in Blackpool and highlighted the success they were having in transforming their highways network, whilst at the same time galvanising public opinion. The Council made a number of visits to Blackpool Council to study their approach and understand how they had effected a positive change in public opinion over a short time line and how they had developed the business case for a 30 million supported borrowing scheme. From the investigations that Plymouth undertook, it was felt that Blackpool s approach and associated methodologies represented the most advanced available, cost effective and most aligned to the aspirations of Plymouth City Council. As part of the dialogue with Blackpool, a visit by Cllr Mark Coker, Cabinet Member for Transport, was arranged. The visit met with very positive feedback and with clear evidence of the improvements and benefits achieved in Blackpool. Initial discussions with Gaist, who had provided the technical support for

2 Blackpool, were very positive and Managing Director, Steve Birdsall spent time with Plymouth City Council to create a mutual understanding of the challenges and potential solutions. Plymouth City Council scrutinised Gaist's company profile, services offered, and experience and considered case studies of other local authorities they had worked with. Following these detailed consultations with Gaist, it was clear that it was essential to acquire a complete, accurate and high resolution survey of the entire carriageway and footway network if the Council was to be able to make the tactical and long term strategic decisions needed to support a whole of life approach to the management of the councils highways and footways stock. Plymouth City Council recognised that they face a number of long term challenges that are shared by all Councils to a certain degree, including; limited budgets, limited staff resources, mature highway networks with a significant backlog of maintenance, increased accountability to the public, increasing public expectations and outdated legacy ICT asset management systems. They also recognised that to meet and overcome these challenges they needed to invest in the fundamentals of asset management and in particular they needed to fully understand the true state of the highways and footways network and accurately determine the current maintenance liability. Without that starting point it was obvious that any decision regarding targeted investment would be undermined by a lack of data and negate sound long term decision making. Plymouth Council commissioned Gaist to undertake a full network survey that included a tactile walked survey, backed up by a full vehicle borne video survey. The survey captured the condition of all hard surfaces, the material types, suggested treatments and other contextual information such as overriding on footways and the extent of utility damage. The survey also collected some additional street furniture that was needed to complete the existing Council Inventory. Significantly the Gaist survey is designed to return the true surface area of materials and areas of defectiveness etc. that are inherent in the network. This was determined as being essential to accurately support valuations and robust estimations of costs for remedial maintenance plans and renewals. The survey commenced in September 2014 and was completed in December The benefits of the survey soon became apparent. The data required no black box processing and provided clear and unambiguous data that could be immediately used to support the Highways Asset Management Plan. The data was easily auditable because of the full network of high resolution video imagery. For the first time, Plymouth City Council has a highly detailed knowledge base relating to their highway asset. The detail is impressive and provides immediate access to vital statistics on the construction, condition and treatment options that can be related directly back to a single point on the network. Importantly, the whole process of developing and implementing a data collection strategy, including the selection of Gaist as the preferred provider, has been a collaborative effort between Council Cabinet Members, Council Officers and Maintenance Contractor (Amey). This was vitally important

3 to ensure that all stakeholders share the same vision and confidence in the data that will ultimately underpin the asset management strategy for years to come. This sense of partnership has continued to grow throughout the project and is seen as a hugely positive factor. Gaist subsequently supplied their GRP2 technology in support of data collection for visualisation and interrogation of the data. The system includes the advanced toolsets to manage the complex data and modelling required to provide a calculation of the long term financial impact of a given whole of life maintenance strategy. This system allowed Plymouth City Council to fully understand the true state of the asset base, quantify the maintenance requirement and model the effects of any investment / maintenance strategy over the long term. Fig 1. Gaist s GRP2 system interface What was important to Plymouth was to acquire asset management technology that is very intuitive and operated without the need for expensive training ensuring that system does not rely on a super user, which is common with most asset management software creating a disconnect between decision makers and the information they need. Plymouth City Council valued the fact that the Gaist system can be used by decision makers, not just technicians. By reducing the skill level needed to operate the system ensured that more users actually use the technology and this in turn increased the value and cost effectiveness to Plymouth and helps realise the value of the investment into high quality data. It was also significant to Plymouth City Council that the system required no set-up time and has a low ICT overhead, making deployment instant and free from conflict with existing internal ICT protocols. Plymouth also valued the long term research and development work that Gaist has led with The University of York to develop an advanced deterioration modelling system to evolve the work undertaken by HMEP in this area. The systems Gaist has developed utilise powerful and rapid linear programming algorithms which can model the deterioration of carriageways and footways to

4 instantly identify optimum investments and allocations to different treatment types on different parts of the network. It can support a high level of refinement of the network to model the behaviour of different road construction types and environmental and traffic conditions. The modelling can also predict the lifecycle of a pavement s core parts such as wearing course, binder course and road base. As the system is compatible with running the default HMEP deterioration matrices, Plymouth City Council are assured that the results of any long term deterioration modelling are at the very least based on standardised factors. However, as Plymouth now has an up to date and accurate baseline for measuring the actual deterioration of their own network, the deterioration rates used in the modelling will be calibrated, over years to come, to actual locally observed deterioration of various materials and carriageway and footway types. Using the modelling technology Plymouth are now able to instantly evaluate, using graphical outputs and reports, the long term effects of a particular funding scenario. Engineers can demonstrate the need for additional funding and the effect of under investment in real terms. Fig 2. Gaist Treatment Modelling Gaist s system is used to produce long term maintenance scenarios for Plymouth which enable appraisal of the optimal investment option with alternative user defined options to support the identification of a sustainable approach to whole of life management of the highways assets. Monitoring financial liabilities and investment needs As the system can report the exact volume of materials that exist within an entire highway and footway network. This provides Plymouth City Council with the gross replacement cost (GRC) of the whole network and a measure of the cost of depreciation (Accumulated Depreciation). The savings that can be derived from better understanding material quantities alone are huge and ensure that investment plans are right sized.

5 Fig 3. Calculation of volumes. Value through the use of Whole of Life Asset Management By understanding the true value and long term performance of the Plymouth highways network engineers are able to make a bid for right-sized budgets/funding such as the Challenge Fund and have the accurate technical information to support their bids. Plymouth now has the ability to demonstrate the far reaching financial and social benefits of a strategic long term maintenance plan, over an ad-hoc reactive strategy. This strengthens the credibility of these plans and helps overcome political barriers to increasing funding. To be able to manage a whole of life strategy for carriageways and footways, including associated assets such as street furniture, a detailed understanding of maintenance history is needed. The Plymouth GRP2 system supplied by Gaist will be extended to be used as a dynamic repository for maintenance data and will support the calibration of deterioration curves for the various materials and construction types associated with the carriageway and footway network. As Plymouth now has a full and accurate understanding of the current condition of all roads and footways coupled with a prediction of the rate of deterioration, the Council can now target condition surveys in areas of the network that are most likely to need preventative treatments. Moving away from the traditional method of an annual condition survey of a fixed percentage of roads to one of targeted investigations will ensure that a more cost effective program of maintenance can be implemented. This capability is now being developed further to provide the capabilities needed for Building Information Management (BIM) which will ensure that Plymouth City Council s construction data is compliant with future BIM standards. Plymouth Council are now planning to use the data systems supplied by Gaist and the new capability for brokering the data with other internal and external agencies to support other business areas

6 beyond highways information such as; traffic, demographics, surface water management, SUDS, planning, critical infrastructure, utility infrastructure. The capabilities now being implemented at Plymouth can be used to support resilience issues and civil contingencies. In summary Plymouth City Council have taken a proactive and innovative approach and worked closely with other English Councils to find the very best approach to the challenges of asset management, whilst adopting advice and principles promoted by HMEP. This positive, inclusive and far sighted approach has enabled a rapid step change in Plymouth s understanding of the state, value and long term options for their highways asset stock. The Council can now make robust and lucid business cases for funding and Challenge fund bids, with a clear recognition of where value for money exists. More importantly than anything else the work undertaken by Plymouth City Council is ensuring that the Council can now demonstrate how they are developing a sustainable asset management plan which is designed primarily to meet the demands of today without compromising future generations.