How can we monitor real time performance on reinstatements to the highway to ensure compliance?
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On average in England and Wales utility companies dig up roads and footpaths over 2 million times a year.
This will increase over the next five years with the replacement of aging infrastructure, leak repairs, laying of new fibre infrastructure and the connection of new customer properties and alternative energy sources. Typically, street works is a costly process, for example,75% of a new customer connection cost is associated with works in the street.
Digs can cause delays to road users and inconvenience to residents and businesses, as well as being damaging to the environment and surrounding infrastructure. Opening up the road to create a trench reduces the roads structural life by up to 30%, even when reinstatement is done correctly. However its sometimes not clear what defects were pre-existing and associated with excavation works.
Badly completed reinstatements are one of the main reasons for the rapid deterioration of the road surface and the formation of potholes. Local authorities now have greater powers to enforce fines but how can we avoid defects in the first place and assure enduring repairs, giving a win-win-win for customers, local authorities and utilities?
We will understand how and why things go wrong and identify areas for improvement. We will investigate how using complimentary data, technology and services can provide a better way to minimise the impact of street works, starting from the high-level design stage of a potential street works site to post completion and reinstatement.
The overall aim will be to:
- Investigate how to streamline the process
- Reduce travel and on-site time
- Minimise environmental impact
- Enable more visibility of conditions before, during and after works
- Reduce poor reinstatement and overrun fines
- Minimise customer complaints – better confirmation the work is complete
- Define the ROI for adoption.