Highways Benchmarking - Accelerating Impact
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The CQC Efficiency Network, involving 84 local councils, utilizes performance benchmarking tools from the Institute of Transport Studies to enhance highway maintenance efficiency, resulting in over £35 million in annual savings. Funded by the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account, the initiative promotes sharing best practices to achieve significant cost reductions while improving service quality and customer satisfaction. Collaborative efforts and workshops foster trust among councils, emphasizing the network as a supportive rather than punitive benchmarking tool.
Highways Benchmarking - Accelerating Impact
- 2. Cost,Qualityand CustomerEfficiency Network A fast-growing network of local councils is using performance benchmarking tools developed by researchers at the Institute of Transport Studies (ITS) to share best practice on highway maintenance – a performance improving initiative that could significantly drive down costs, while at the same time maintaining quality and improving customer satisfaction. Indeed, the Cost Quality and Customer (CQC) Efficiency Network, which now has 84 local authority members, has already allowed participating authorities to demonstrate they have collectively made over £35 million of savings per annum over their 2010 baseline. A further £100 million per annum potential ‘Scope for Improvement’ has been identified. ImpactAcceleration Account The CQC Efficiency Network is a collaborative venture between ITS researcher Dr Phill Wheat and leading performance and benchmarking company measure2improve (m2wi). Dr Wheat has used £25,000 funding from the EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) to refine the tools to support m2i in developing the fast growing network. The IAA is an institutional award funded by EPSRC to help speed up the contribution that engineering and physical science research make towards new innovation, successful businesses and the economic returns that benefit UK PLC. Impact Acceleration Account Case Study: HighwaysBenchmarking ImprovingServices Similar spending constraints are also on the horizon for Highways departments up and down the country. Jason Russell, Deputy Director, Environment and Infrastructure at Surrey County Council, who has worked with Dr Wheat and deployed the CQC tool, notes that the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme says that councils can manage the network and achieve the same outcomes at substantially lower costs by 2020. “This is not going to happen by changing the way we do things slightly – it will take a radical change in the way we do things. CQC gives us a tool to make that kind of radical change ourselves by sharing best practice,” Mr Russell said. “What we are doing in the network is a much more collaborative and iterative process than the setting of national targets. It is a tool for them to learn best practice from one another, to allow them to see what good looks like, and improve services while keeping control of costs,” said Dr Wheat. Indeed, the Department for Transport (DfT) is now advising local authorities to carry out robust benchmarking audits against best practice to identify any gaps in performance. “It’s a measure of our success that the DfT actually cites the CQC as an exemplary tool to use,” said Dr Wheat. This is not going to happen by changing the way we do things slightly – it will take a radical change. CQC gives us a tool to make that kind of radical change ourselves by sharing best practice. Jason Russell, Deputy Director, Environment and Infrastructure at Surrey County Council AToolForChange “m2i are well respected within the highways sector for their benchmarking and auditing work which involves surveying road user and customer perceptions of the services delivered by local authorities,” said Dr Wheat. The company approached him to see if he could develop a more sophisticated way of comparing the performance of different councils against exemplary benchmarks. “Working with Phill and his colleagues has given us access to advanced benchmarking tools that can support local authorities up and down the country to learn from the best,” says m2i’s Sales Director Simon Pinkney, whose company has more than two decades of experience gauging business performance, measuring customer satisfaction, and providing the software tools to improve both. “There are lots of performance benchmarking products on the market,” says Dr Wheat. “But they tend to measure lots of things, which results in every authority being good at some things and every authority being bad at some things. What we have done at ITS is develop a tool that cuts through the confusion and provides local authorities with a single reliable measure of performance that allows them to see where they stand in terms of cost, quality and customer perception. That is a powerful, collaborative tool for change.” In developing the tool Dr Wheat drew on the groundbreaking work he and his colleagues – Professor Chris Nash and Professor Andrew Smith – had done for the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) in assessing the performance of Network Rail. “Our research revealed a 37% efficiency gap in relation to rail infrastructure costs and operations, relative to international best practice. The tools we have developed for the CQC network help us to identify similar gaps relative to best practice within the highway sector,” Dr Wheat said. The work Dr Wheat and his colleagues did for the ORR resulted in annual efficiency targets being set for Network Rail which reduced costs from £18.2bn to £15.8bn over five years, between 2009 and 2014. So successful has the ITS technique been that the water and sewerage regulator Ofwat adopted the same tools for its periodic review in 2013. What we have done at ITS is develop a tool that cuts through the confusion and provides local authorities with a single reliable measure of performance that allows them to see where they stand in terms of cost, quality and customer perception. That is a powerful, collaborative tool for change. ITS researcher Dr Phill Wheat 84 LocalAuthority Members... 2 newroles created ...have collectivelysaved £35m perannum £25k fundingfrom theIAA
- 3. ImprovingServices Similar spending constraints are also on the horizon for Highways departments up and down the country. Jason Russell, Deputy Director, Environment and Infrastructure at Surrey County Council, who has worked with Dr Wheat and deployed the CQC tool, notes that the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme says that councils can manage the network and achieve the same outcomes at substantially lower costs by 2020. “This is not going to happen by changing the way we do things slightly – it will take a radical change in the way we do things. CQC gives us a tool to make that kind of radical change ourselves by sharing best practice,” Mr Russell said. “What we are doing in the network is a much more collaborative and iterative process than the setting of national targets. It is a tool for them to learn best practice from one another, to allow them to see what good looks like, and improve services while keeping control of costs,” said Dr Wheat. Indeed, the Department for Transport (DfT) is now advising local authorities to carry out robust benchmarking audits against best practice to identify any gaps in performance. “It’s a measure of our success that the DfT actually cites the CQC as an exemplary tool to use,” said Dr Wheat. This is not going to happen by changing the way we do things slightly – it will take a radical change. CQC gives us a tool to make that kind of radical change ourselves by sharing best practice. Jason Russell, Deputy Director, Environment and Infrastructure at Surrey County Council SharingBestPractice But the biggest challenge of all – and the one that the IAA funding helped most in meeting – was the need to build a network of trust amongst different councils so that best practice could be shared. “There is understandable concern that if the results of our work were published they would be used as a stick to beat underperforming authorities. That is not what we are about. This is a collaborative benchmarking network not a regulatory benchmarking exercise, where we respect confidentiality while at the same time encouraging dialogue and collaboration between councils.” In a bid to reconcile the need for confidentiality with the desire for open collaboration, Dr Wheat and representatives from m2i spent two years running workshops up and down the country, explaining the power of the tools and the benefits they could bring. “The IAA money was vital for this,” he said. “It allowed us to run these workshops, establish a rapport with the delegates and win the confidence and trust of the local authorities – which is essential to the success of the network and the tools it deploys. Without that buy in, it just becomes an ivory tower exercise with no real world impact.” In order to communicate the benefits of the tools to elected politicians and officers Dr Wheat has developed an easy-to use model that allows council staff to see how the tools work and to discover the insights they can provide. With support from the IAA funding, Dr Wheat says he has been able to do this while at the same time maintaining the academic integrity and independence of his work and that of the ITS which gives him credibility among the authorities. In addition to this, the flourishing relationship with m2i and the growth of the network has led to the creation of two new roles - ITS post-graduate researcher, Alex Stead, who is now the m2i Research Fellow in Efficiency Analysis and a Network Account Manager at m2i to help develop and maintain the network. “The big success of the CQC efficiency network is that it not only provides local authorities with the analysis and the objective support they need – it also strengthens the research base and reputation of ITS and the University of Leeds.” Dr Wheat added.
- 4. Formoreinformationonthe CQCEfficiencyNetworkcontact: Dr Phill Wheat Institute for Transport Studies T: +44 (0)113 343 5344 E: P.E.Wheat@its.leeds.ac.uk www.its.leeds.ac.uk/research Formoreinformationonthe EPSRCIAAcontact: Research & Innovation Services University of Leeds T: +44 (0)113 343 3518 E: epsrciaa@leeds.ac.uk