The HA’s newly published business plan for 2011/12 says that planned efficiency improvements on capital works are expected to come from a policy of “continuity, commitment and control”.
To quote directly (and without comment) from the business plan...
"There are three key features of the funded programme that enable efficiency improvements to be made:
• Continuity – an underpinning component to delivering the efficiencies. This enables learning to flow naturally from activity to activity. It provides the reason for investing time into building relationships. Ultimately, this will lead to collaboration at a level that seeks the ‘right person for the job’, as opposed to conventional thinking based on the organisation they should come from. In turn, this will also remove duplication.
• Commitment – provides programme visibility, allowing us to present a strong portfolio of work to the market and enabling us to take full advantage of economies of scale in areas that are yet untapped. This also provides the potential for investment into developing new and more efficient ways of delivery.
• Control – control over the delivery of schemes means that development can be planned around seasonal and resource constraints. This allows us to plan for the long term, smooth out workload and increase resource utilisation.
All of these provide the confidence to develop long term delivery and procurement models that will lead to a reduction in the cost base with the ability to manage risk more effectively across the programme. Little of this is deliverable with conventional, project-by-project, delivery models.”
The full business plan can be viewed at http://www.highways.gov.uk/businessplan.
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