Issue - meetings

(To receive a report from the Executive Director for Environment and Economy, which invites the Executive to consider the information within the report and the Lincolnshire Highways 2020 Business Case and seeks approval of the recommended option as the basis on which the Council proceeds to put in place replacement arrangements)

(1)  That approval be given to the carrying out of a procurement process for the external commissioning of the services currently covered by the Highways Alliance contracts.

(2)  That Option 17, as described in the report, be approved as the package of contracts to be offered to the market within an Alliance model utilising the New Engineering Contract NEC4.

(3)  That the Executive Director for Environment and Economy, in consultation with the Leader of the Council and the Executive Councillor for Highways, Transport and IT, be delegated authority to take all decisions necessary to progress the procurement of the replacement arrangements to include choice of procurement procedure, scope of the services and the terms of all necessary legal documentation but excluding the final decision to award the contract.

Consideration was given to a report from the Executive Director for Environment and Economy, which outlined the replacement options available to the Highways Service and recommended a future option that was best suited to Lincolnshire County Council.

The Executive Councillor for Highways, Transport and IT presented the report to the Executive and advised that option 17 had been recommended for approval, as it improved on the existing model through a knowledge capture exercise from the current arrangement and offered the opportunity for ongoing improvement.

The Infrastructure Commissioner and the Senior Project Leader advised that the current Lincolnshire Highways Alliance contracts were due to reach full term on 31 March 2020 and could not be further extended under European Union Procurement Law.

The Executive was asked to consider the information contained within the report and the Lincolnshire Highways 2020 Business Case (as detailed at Appendix A to the report) and approve the recommended option (Option 17) as the basis on which the County Council should proceed to put in place replacement arrangements.

The Chairman of the Highways and Transport Scrutiny Committee advised that the Committee had considered a report on the Highways 2020 – Options Appraisal at its meeting on 6 November 2017.  The comments of the Committee were detailed on page 25 of the agenda pack.  It was highlighted that the Committee supported the recommendations included in the Executive's report.  It was also highlighted that the Committee had welcomed its early involvement in the process and the involvement of the three members of the Committee on the Project Board.

Members were provided with an opportunity to ask questions, where the following points were noted: -

·         The risks involved with moving to an alternative model at this stage were not offset by the challenges that the existing model faced.  Lessons learnt, market analysis and local authority benchmarking had confirmed that the model was the correct solution for Lincolnshire County Council.  A copy of the completed Evaluate Options Scoring Matrix were detailed at Appendix C to the Lincolnshire Highways 2020 Business Case;

·         The preferred Model (Option 17) would specifically target incentivising the reactive service and widening the design services top up arrangement to offer provision for the broader highway service, as detailed in the report.  The ways in which incentivisation could be implemented and the ways in which quality control could be managed were discussed;

·         The possibility of implementing a find and fix approach to highway maintenance and its benefits were discussed.

RESOLVED

(1)  That approval be given to the carrying out of a procurement process for the external commissioning of the services currently covered by the Highways Alliance contracts.

(2)  That Option 17, as described in the report, be approved as the package of contracts to be offered to the market within an Alliance model utilising the New Engineering Contract NEC4.

(3)  That the Executive Director for Environment and Economy, in consultation with the Leader of the Council and the Executive Councillor for Highways, Transport and IT, be delegated authority  ...  view the full minutes text for item 35