5 January 2010
Capita Symonds has been awarded a new three year
contract, worth £400,000 pa with the potential for a two year
extension, to carry out a systematic highway safety inspection
programme for Lancashire County Council (LCC).
The contract comes as a result of Capita Symonds’ work on a
similar seven year contract with the council which has helped to
reduce the money paid out in third party claims by two thirds, from
around £7 million to around £2.5 million
A team of ten dedicated Capita Symonds highway safety inspectors
is covering the whole of the LCC highway network looking for all
hazardous defects that may cause damage or injury to the general
public and vehicles. The team then measures, records and transmits
the information to LCC which then arranges for the relevant repairs
to be carried out.
We are continually developing our inspection methods and are constantly being contacted by other authorities who are interested in our systems
Nick Pocock, Capita Symonds, explains: “We use state of the art
data capture devices to carry out inspections and utilise GPS and
3G technology to locate and transmit data from site to our central
office. We have developed a sophisticated inspection system which
allows us to cover around 44,000 kms of walked and driven
inspections per annum.”
He adds: “All our inspectors are home based and do not need to
report to an office, carrying out all their work by means of their
data capture devices and communication systems. The inspectors in
effect use their inspection vehicles as mobile offices. This acts
as both a cost saving method and also allows the inspectors the
freedom to programme their own work.”
The team has also recently opened a satellite office in one of
the LCC highways depots at Accrington which enables them to work
more closely with the client as well as having a central meeting
point for the team’s inspectors and for receiving inspection data
prior to transmitting it to LCC.
Nick says: “We are continually developing our inspection methods
and are constantly being contacted by other authorities who are
interested in our systems. As an addition to our work LCC, asked us
to implement a Highway Condition Rating system which allows us to
rate the condition of every section of road on the LCC network on
an annual basis.”