Abstract
Roadworks and street works can be highly disruptive, expensive and deleterious to highway structures and infrastructure planning, yet these activities must take place if modern societies are to continue to function. In helping to strike this balance, this study investigates the public policy landscape of highway excavation management in England, UK. Semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders highlighted the complexity of the industry and revealed that a number of issues compromise effective management. Principal problems included street authorities failing to take enough ownership of the coordination process, highway legislation not encouraging joint working due to inherent challenges arising from reinstatement guarantees and entrenched attitudes and adversarial practices in the construction industry encouraging silo working. Key recommendations include amending highway legislation to support and recognise multiagency working and street authorities undertaking reinstatements on behalf of undertakers, thus helping to reduce fragmentation and discharge undertakers of onerous guarantees that contribute to silo working.
Highlights
An estimated 1·5 million utility excavation works with a direct construction cost of around £1·5 billion were estimated to occur in the UK annually in 2008 by Parker (2008)
Principal problems included street authorities failing to take enough ownership of the coordination process, highway legislation not encouraging joint working due to inherent challenges arising from reinstatement guarantees and entrenched attitudes and adversarial practices in the construction industry encouraging silo working
The interview findings are split into the following themes: performance of street work management processes; factors affecting street work management and future challenges and opportunities; and further subthemes
Summary
An estimated 1·5 million utility excavation works (street works) with a direct construction cost of around £1·5 billion were estimated to occur in the UK annually in 2008 by Parker (2008). The social costs of utility works are estimated to be around £5·5 billion annually, of which £5·1 billion is road user delays alone (McMahon et al, 2005). Comparative figures for highway works (roadworks) are not readily available but are likely to be significant. Such impacts, coupled with yearly increases in excavation activity (Goodwin, 2005) warrant better highway management to reduce highway excavations and their associated impacts. For the purpose of this paper, street works will be used to represent both terms given that the public are affected in the same way
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