Highways Agency

Appendix B - Subject Area Information

PFMAC Scope of Service

Executive Summary

The objective of the Scope of Service discussions is to obtain answers to the following key questions:

1. What role should the PFMAC take in Control Office functions?
2. What role should the PFMAC take in on-road activities?
3. What role should the PFMAC take in customer service issues?
4. What involvement should the PFMAC have in developing major improvement schemes?
5. How critical is it that the PFMAC has responsibility for the maintenance of on-road and off-road technology equipment and systems?

Introduction

The Scope of Service of the PFMAC generally encompasses a greater scope of activities and responsibilities than the MAC's and DBFOs. The consultation document identified the following three key issues in any relationship between the PFMAC and the Agency:

• the level of autonomy that the PFMAC needs to deliver the required service, and
• the ability of the PFMAC to manage the risks affecting service delivery, and
• The level of control that the Agency needs to ensure proper use of funds so that the Secretary of State's responsibilities are discharged across the whole network.

In developing the Scope of Service many detailed matters are being addressed. This paper sets out and discusses some of the significant issues that have arisen and which will be explored at the workshop.

Network operator

The Highways Agency/ACPO roles and responsibilities review concluded that, with the exception of a few core-policing activities, the majority of activities could either be shared or transferred to the Highways Agency.

Responsibility for traffic management and traffic operations on the trunk road network is being transferred to the Agency, whilst the Police will retain responsibility for criminality, major incidents and accident investigation.

The review considered the following three elements of the Network Operator role:

• Control office functions
• On-road activity

It is envisaged that most of the central planning and control functions, such as routing of abnormal loads and planning for roadworks, will become a PFMAC duty, with the PFMAC supporting the Agency and Police in developing protocols and contingency planning. The majority of those functions are already contained in the MAC contract.

The current thinking is that operators in the Integrated Control Offices (ICO) will be Highways Agency staff working with the Police. A decision has not yet been made on the presence of the PFMAC/MAC/MA+TMC in the ICOs. The Incident Support Units (ISU) will continue to be out sourced and provided through the PFMAC/MAC/MA+TMC contracts

The current thinking is that high visibility patrols, the Traffic Officer (TO) role, will be an Agency in-house duty.

There remain issues within the Control Office and on-road elements that have yet to be resolved and these are discussed in more detail below.

Issue 1- Control Office Functions

It is important to have single point responsibility in the management of the Control Office; this is seen as essential in incident management/deployment and telephone call handling. Although the Agency is proposing to keep those roles in-house, the PFMAC will still be involved in incident management and deployment with the ISUs, and providing other resources needed to clear up and repair damaged infrastructure.

Clearly there will be an interface to manage between the Police, other emergency services, the TO, the ICO, the PFMAC and other organisations which have a role in incident management.

This is being dealt with in the procedures/protocols being developed for the TO.

The PFMAC will have a role in incident management/deployment. The ICO operator will be responsible for handling the emergency roadside telephones and calls re-directed from Police control offices. They will set the matrix signals and variable message signs and monitor the network using CCTV where available. There is no reason why the PFMAC cannot also monitor CCTV if a link is provided to them. Providing information to the media will also be a function of the ICO and the split between the ICO and TCC is something to be resolved.

If the PFMAC is to be measured on overall network journey time reliability, what role should the PFMAC have in the following activities?

• incident management/deployment
• telephone call handling
• incident sign setting
• monitoring road network (CCTV)
• providing network information to the media
• tactical and strategic sign setting

Issue 2 - On-Road Activities

The Agency is not proposing to take over accident investigation if there are injuries. For damage only the TO would attend, not the Police, and the TO would check those involved had exchanged addresses, insurance details etc, had called out a recovery organisation and were not in an unsafe situation on the highway.

There are other on road activities which fit in with the PFMAC's responsibility to keep the roads open and are linked to journey time reliability. Although dealing with damaged/broken down vehicles is covered by the Police vehicle recovery contracts, there may be an opportunity for the PFMAC to provide this service.

What role should the PFMAC have in the following activities?

• dealing with abandoned vehicles
• removal of damaged/broken down vehicles
• escorting AILs/high risk vehicles (supporting role)
• road use education (shared role)

Issue 3 - Customer Services

In the MAC contract the MAC generally manages customer service issues although overall control for strategic and politically sensitive matters rests with the Agency. If the PFMAC is to be measured on customer satisfaction, to what extent should the PFMAC have a role in the following activities? The question of "single branding" needs to be taken into account.

• queries and complaints
• public relations
• liaison with TCC
• road user education

Issue 4- Improvements

The PFMAC will be responsible for identifying improvement schemes to any value. It would have an "as of right option" to carry out schemes to a threshold value of £5m. Issues about discretionary and imposed improvement schemes need to be resolved.

Issues to be considered are:

• Should the threshold level of £5m be reconsidered?
• Should schemes above the threshold identified at tender be built and/or managed by the PFMAC?
• Should the PFMAC be given the opportunity to build or manage schemes above the threshold but not identified at tender?

Issue 5 - Technology Systems

If the PFMAC is to be measured on journey time reliability, should it have a role in the maintenance of on-road and off-road technology equipment and systems? Responsibility for the maintenance of the equipment in the new ICOs will depend on the form of procurement for the new offices.

It is likely that ICO equipment will be procured under a national contract, although the PFMAC might be required to maintain this equipment.

Some of the issues that will affect the final outcome are:

• geographical boundaries
• national contracts
• interfaces

Preformance Specification

Introduction

A key concept within the PFMAC contract is the use of performance measures. This strategy paper outlines proposed performance measures being developed for the PFMAC contract as an introduction to the workshop where we will ask you to consider:

• Is it right to measure outcomes?
• Are the proposed outcomes valid?
• Are the proposed measures appropriate?
• What are the risks in using these measures - to the Suppliers and to the HA?

Background

The development of the performance specification for the PFMAC is based on a needs driven process modelling approach that links procedures to outcomes. This understanding of needs has identified 6 streams of measurement that support the key objectives of the Highways Agency (HA). The measurement streams cover generic outcomes that the HA are striving to achieve. The measures will be context specific to enable evaluation of the contribution of the suppliers in achieving the HA's overall objectives. The aim is to keep measurement simple and easy to understand.

The measures add value by:

• aligning suppliers with the Agency's objectives
• encouraging innovation at all levels in the supply chain
• providing a driver for continuous improvement in service delivery
• improving whole life value decision making processes
• incentivising achievement of objectives by linking to payment
• allowing aggregation of measures across the network when adopted by other areas
• enabling benchmarking of areas against each other

Measurement of process, procedures and outputs will support the 6 outcome measurement streams as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Procedures, processes and outcomes

Measures

The proposed measures for each of the measurement streams are:

Safety - measured using HA's casualty reduction measures; total KSI, PIA rate and child KSI. It is proposed to report against a road safety index for similar roads. Also measuring non-injury incidents through TCC traffic data, Traffic Officer reports and network damage reports. The PFMAC will be expected to operate an auditable safety management system, which will provide evidence of a proactive approach to incident reduction through intelligent inspections, incident analysis, and knowledge of HA strategy and legal obligations.

Journey time reliability - measured using TCC data either provided for the contract by HA or through third party value added service providers (VASPs). It is proposed to use the TCC stress, delay and congestion indicators from the TCC reporting mechanisms in a format similar to the payment mechanism used in recent DBFO contracts along with whole journey time measures.

Customer satisfaction - measured using an extended form of the Road User Satisfaction Survey. It is proposed that a telephone survey is added to the existing interviews to gain the required level of coverage to give statistical significance to the results on an area basis. The measure will include a weighted combination of road user charter indicators and a measure of customer complaints and enquiries, and how they are responded to, using the HAIL and correspondence unit's databases.

Environment - measured primarily through process measurement of the PFMAC's Environmental Management System (EMS). It is proposed to use the Regional Environmental Committee - an established body of independent key environmental stakeholders (English Nature etc.) - to review the PFMAC's EMS. Options for environmental indicators are being developed with HA. They will need to align with the HA's own indicators, and it is likely that they will incorporate the 11 criteria used in GOMMMS (Guidance on Methodology for Multi-Modal Studies).

Network best value - to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the PFMAC's asset management. The measurement will use the HA's current asset management systems (HAPMS, SMIS, Edb etc.) to forecast future maintenance requirements, providing the cost and the timing of required interventions. The present value of the required interventions is used as a measure of ongoing maintenance liability. This is based on a measure of network condition or serviceability (similar to DBFO), for example, using TRACS to measure pavement serviceability and using the new structures indicators for assessing condition of the bridge stock.

Supplier capability and performance - to measure the PFMAC's processes and the outputs and outcomes that they produce. PFMAC performance will be measured against the Construction Best Practice KPIs: Client satisfaction-product, client satisfaction-service, cost and time predictability, defects and workforce safety. The client satisfaction-service measure (supplier capability) will align with Procurement's Capability Assessment Toolkit (CAT) - based on the EFQM business excellence model - looking at 6 indicators; direction and accountability, strategy and planning, people, partnering, processes, and internal resources.

Integrated Management System

To ensure consistency of measurement across the different streams it is necessary to look at the PFMAC processes in holistic way. Therefore the processes defined in the various management systems (safety, environmental etc.) will be measured as parts of one Integrated Management System (IMS).

The PFMAC's IMS will be subject to audit and the audit process should look at culture, knowledge and behaviour of staff as well as procedural compliance. A system similar to the International Safety Rating System (ISRS) could be used for the audit of each element of the IMS whereby the audit team interview randomly selected staff to gauge the level of awareness and knowledge of the workforce and the strength of systems and process through structured questioning. This approach has been used successfully by TRL for local authority audit and fits with the Agency's new capability assessment approach.

The measures used in each stream reflect an element of the IMS i.e. all measures are related to outcome, output, and quality and process. The following table shows how the measures that have been selected conform to the IMS concept and relate directly to the Agency's business.

Key: Clear boxes describe what the outcomes, outputs and processes are.

Using the Measures

The adoption of an output / outcome based performance specification will enable a service provider to be rewarded for achieving the Agency's stated objectives, rather than simply by reference to the amount of work done, thereby promoting better value and improved price certainty against service delivery.

View larger image

The measures break down into outcome focussed measures - measuring what customers and stakeholders see out on the network, and output focussed measures - measuring what the Agency needs from its supply chain. The 'supply chain' measures relate to efficiency and effectiveness in delivering the customer focussed outcomes:

The customer-focussed measures are aimed at outcomes aligning to HA objectives:

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The diagram illustrates how the whole of the supply chain, including the Highways Agency and Government, ultimately has the same customers - the road users and network neighbours and stakeholders.

The outcome-based measures are designed to be holistic. By aiming at high-level outcomes that encompass the Agencies aims and their values, and by allowing suppliers to take responsibility for achieving the outcomes rather than individual outputs we align the objectives of Agency and supplier much more effectively.

The use of high-level outcomes will require suppliers to rely on partnerships with 3rd parties such as the police and to take responsibility for factors outside their direct control to be able to deliver effectively. This risk needs to be reasonably predictable to be accepted by suppliers.

Risks

There are number of perceived risks to delivery and operation of the performance measures, the workshop is intended to explore these issues. Risks identified to date include those below but others will be identified:

Data in databases may be inadequate or invalid. Databases may not be available throughout the contract, in particular the TCC contract is scheduled to cover an 8 year operational period only.

Fallback measures/payment mechanisms will need to be included in the contract, does this place undue risk on the PFMAC?

There is a risk that the PFMAC may achieve compliance with the performance measures without contributing to the objectives of the HA. Holistic measurement at as higher level as possible will help ensure that the supplier is delivering what the HA want but what happens where the PFMAC pursues a strategy that is against HA policy?

The proposed measures are, in part, new and untried. Tenderers and their financiers may lack confidence in the objectivity or in the relevance of the measures and apply a high risk premium to their prices. The use of independent objective data sources where possible (e.g. TCC) and the use clear and conceptually simple measures linked to process should help allay concerns. Would it be best to have tried and trusted fallback measures included and develop the new measures in parallel to be included at an agreed point (e.g. interim review)?

There is a risk that the HA current thinking on bringing the Traffic Management role 'in house' may dilute the effectiveness of performance measures and limit the opportunity of linking payment to performance. There will be a requirement to partner but can we measure the PFMAC on outcomes that the HA has more control over than the PFMAC?