Partnering for success - looking at the innovative Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership (NHP) two years on
It is just over two years ago that the Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership (NHP), a ground breaking approach to highway services based partnerships, was formed by Nottinghamshire County Council, and today it continues to deliver significant benefits for the county's highway works.
Partnership working has facilitated a qualitative difference on the ground for Nottinghamshire, drawing upon greater resources, improving service provision, facilitating joint working and the sharing of expertise, improving transparency and identifying efficiencies.
Nottinghamshire County Council's Services Director Highways, Bob Hart, and Tarmac's contracting director (Midlands) Mike Elford, discuss the progress of this pioneering approach to partnering, and how significant savings have so far been achieved.
Introduction
Improvements in the quality, delivery, cost effectiveness and execution of highways work is driven by Sir John Egan's 'Rethinking Construction' report which identified the need for central and local government to work with partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors to adopt more effective procurement procedures.
Nottinghamshire County Council's response to these needs was to lead the way by developing the ‘Nottinghamshire Highways Partnership' (NHP). The NHP was first set up four years ago, when the County Council established a legal agreement allowing three Local Authorities - Ashfield District Council, Broxtowe Borough Council and Mansfield District Council - to continue to undertake highway maintenance work in their respective areas on its behalf under the title of 'Manage & Operate Partners' (MOPs). This arrangement replaced previous highway agency agreements with the MOPs partners working alongside Nottinghamshire's own Highway Operations group who provide highways maintenance services to the rest of the County
In January 2006, Nottinghamshire County Council extended the NHP by appointing Tarmac National Contracting as its external highway construction partner. This involved Tarmac entering into a 10-year contract, the scope of which includes a range of services, from patching and surface renewal, to kerbing, drainage and general highway improvements.
Since then, Tarmac has worked in partnership with the Council and it's MOPs partners to support delivery of highway maintenance and capital programmes. Working together in this way is extending considerably the breadth of resources, capabilities, skills and expertise available to Nottinghamshire to deliver its highway programme. To-date, Tarmac has carried out approximately £13 million worth of works under the partnership.
By placing trust and mutual responsibility for the delivery of highway works with Tarmac as partner to our in-house teams, not only is the need for administration significantly reduced, but the team are able to take a holistic and long-term approach to highway services delivery. Tarmac's knowledge and expertise provides an extension to our in-house capabilities both from an Operations and management perspective, allowing the Partnership to deliver the Highways programme and develop its longer-term delivery strategy.
Nottinghamshire County Council's Service Manager for Partnerships and Programmes, Ross Marshall, who manages one of the few public sector teams to have been established to manage highways partnerships, explains: "Tarmac has become a well established and trusted NHP partner, working closely with us to deliver real efficiency improvements, promote best value and spread best practice – while bringing private industry commercial expertise and experience to bear."
The Council's contract with Tarmac covers work valued at between £80 and £100 million over ten years, and is based on the NEC2 Standard Form of Contract, which sets out a management and legal framework that encourages joint working.
"The length of the contract means that the Council and Tarmac are able to fully commit to the partnership, experiment, develop and innovate to deliver at a local and strategic level, whilst achieving benefits for the longer term," adds Marshall.
Putting it all together
People are at the heart of the successful delivery of this partnership. "Great efforts were made to involve staff from all levels, and across partner organisations, in the creation of the NHP," says Bob Hart, Nottinghamshire County Council's Service Director Highways.
The process was kicked off with workshops, initially focused at a strategic level and then widened to develop a set of shared processes, values and behaviours. The first set of workshops was followed by a detailed study on the likely demands on resources, with recommendations being made to ensure that the correct resources would be in the right place at the right time.
Simple performance criteria and objectives were also established, with aligned KPIs and reporting tools that enabled the partners to know exactly what they were charged with delivering, and whether or not they were delivering it.
This approach helped to secure staff buy-in, identify potential issues in bringing the partnership together and ensure that the most was made of existing experience and insight within teams.
Ross Marshall states: "The NHP relationship has developed significantly over the two years. We have put a great deal of effort into promoting the demonstrable benefits and openness of the relationship in order to ensure all staff affected by the arrangement are aware of what it is and how it can benefit them, proving it can work. Once people experience it first hand, they believe in it."
The inner workings
The NHP is currently governed through a three-tier structure, with strategic, operational and advisory groups designed. The management structure has evolved over the two years and into a format that reduces the resource input of senior managers, streamlines activity at the operational level and enables experts and practitioners to focus on identifying and recommending meaningful solutions at an advisory level.
This structure also facilitates efficient communications and defines clear roles and responsibilities across the three tiers, in the process empowering those involved to develop new ideas and trial innovations. The NHP are currently considering a joint funded role within the team, showing a long term commitment to the partnership.
Successes to date
The NHP's successful delivery of the 2006/07 highway programme (value of circa £52m) is testament to the strong and productive relationships formed between partners - with Tamac's work delivered within 6 per cent of the Final Target Price (FTP).
"Adopting the principles of target price costing and pain gain incentives has enabled us to implement and demonstrate operational efficiencies and drive innovation that has enabled us to achieve cashable savings for Nottinghamshire," reports Mike Elford, Tarmac's National Contracting director for the Midlands.
He continues: "But there has also been a relentless focus on the quality of the approach to work as well as quality of work delivered, which has been evolved through various initiatives such as joint training exercises, benchmarking and continuous development of performance measures."
Two years on, the NHP's vision, values and objectives are well embedded at all levels, including across partner organisations, with shared procedures, processes and standards being rolled out and well received.
"The NHP is now well established as a truly forward thinking and innovative partnership. Together we’re delivering demonstrable results, both in terms of cost savings, the quality of the approach to our work, and the work itself," says Bob Hart.
"We have been able to achieve an average target price accuracy of approximately minus 6 per cent, which allows us and our internal clients to have confidence in our ability to provide price and programme certainty and enables us to forward plan workload with much more confidence," he adds.
Future developments
NHP members are continually questioning, challenging and developing their approaches. Recently, a set of four strategic objectives has been established to drive continuous improvement; fully integrated working relationships, operational efficiency, creation of better and safer working environments and improved environmental performance.
Whilst existing KPIs are largely focused on financial performance, further key drivers for improvement relate to partners' need to develop, measure and manage the NHP's performance in more detail and across a wider range of criteria.
In the future, the partners' performance will be measured using a 'balanced scorecard' approach. The NHP is currently assessing existing systems used by partners, with a view to identifying best practice and to creating a powerful tool for the measurement and management of the overall partnership's performance - while aligning strategic objectives to challenging, deliverable and measurable operational objectives, and achieving a 'balanced' view of the organisation.
Bob Hart continues: "This approach will enable our work and progress to be regularly demonstrated to all levels of staff, allowing teams and individuals to see the difference their contributions make in the bigger picture and focus on areas for improvement. This will empower staff to make positive change, and fits in with our commitment to regular, open and transparent communication. It also provides a method for clearly identifying and sharing best practice across all the NHP partners."
There is also the opportunity to integrate teams further still, by such means as combining staff from different partner organisations in single locations - enabling employees from across partner organisations to share ideas, expertise and knowledge, and utilising construction resources more efficiently.
Other initiatives planned for the county include the development of recycling initiatives to minimise the financial implications of the new legislation with a focus initially on developing a real understanding of the benefits of using recycled technologies and materials where appropriate in construction and maintenance programmes.
The NHP in action
Nottinghamshire County Council has recently signed off a high profile £10.5m project to rationalise its northern area depot facilities. Faced with the challenges of a limited budget, a complex programme, a short mobilisation period and the issue of business continuity, the Council needed to ensure the delivery team appointed was able to provide the necessary expertise.
To this end, the Council has approved the use of all partners, including Tarmac, within the NHP to deliver the project, which has construction scheduled to later this year. Tarmac will provide infrastructure construction input to this flagship project, which represents a key opportunity to demonstrate the power of integrated working and the NHP's partnership approach. The success of the project will depend on joint contributions made by the Tarmac team, internal Nottinghamshire County Council staff - including the Authority's Highway Design and Property teams - and Scott Wilson, which has recently joined the NHP as engineering services and design partner.
'The securing of this prestigious work is evidence that partners' confidence to work together and deliver on the ground is well placed," concludes Mike Elford.
Conclusion
There are real benefits and rewards from this kind of innovative working, but it takes considerable focus, resolve and commitment on the ground to deliver. The NHP is a living, breathing example of how a partnership with the private sector can increase output, improve efficiency, share best practice and ultimately provide the taxpayer with better value.
As Ross Marshall puts it: "Partnership working is all about relationships - with the NHP, we have a team that is genuinely passionate about their work - they realise they have something to be proud of and work hard to show others how to make it work to their advantage."
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14 April 2008
