M4 J3-12 Smart Motorway

Classified as a ‘Tier 1’ project, the scheme was anticipated to incur whole-life costs above £500 million, intricate designs, multiple stakeholders, and substantial risks. As much of the M4 was originally built as a dual two-lane carriageway (D2M), evolving the route to meet the demands of the 21^st century was challenging:

• 102km of new smart motorway capacity
• 34 new high visibility emergency areas for customer use
• 11 existing bridges to be demolished, impacting local traffic networks
• 11 new bridges to be built alongside neighbours and communities
• 2 existing bridges widened whilst remaining operational, carrying motorway traffic over railways, rivers and roads
• 150 km of new drainage, adapting infrastructure for climate change
• 63 km of new concrete central safety barrier, enhancing customer safety
• 22 km of new environmental noise barrier, minimising impacts on communities
• 158 new gantries, enabling signalling to keep customers informed and safe
• 865 new road signs, ensuring drivers are kept informed and updated
• 130,000 new trees and plants, mitigating impacts on neighbours

Early challenges generated a need to work differently, migrating away from transactional supply contracts towards an enterprise alliance way of working. Package 1 (J8/9-12) had suffered from late identification of errors, omissions, clashes, ambiguities and clarifications, generating safety and quality consequences which impacted on time and cost. At the point Odvantage were engaged, the project was facing significant pressure, with an emerging forecast £180M beyond the funded position. There was a clear need to critically examine all facets of delivery, and chart a path to recovery.

Odvantage were tasked with providing strategic leadership counsel to the project team to achieve efficient project delivery. Our role provided the crucial link between the client’s vision and the stark reality of a major design and construction undertaking. As an already mature project when we were engaged, we worked with the partners to reinforce a unified ‘One Team’ approach, achieving clarity on objectives and expectations in terms of relationships, ways of working, and how we intended the new arrangements to operate in practice.

Our involvement provided an opportunity for fresh perspective on the technical, institutional and financial pressures that major projects face. With a multitude of stakeholders, our role as a guardian of the project vision was key in unlocking opportunities to enable the project and the partners to achieve successful outputs:

• work with the team to challenge the efficacy and efficiency of solutions, taking account of the technical requirements of the smart motorway, and the impact on neighbours and communities;
• engage with stakeholders and customers, who may have envisioned different versions of the project based on the details available in the DCO;
• validate expectations that the entirety of the asset base merited renewal due to its proximity to a major project;
• verify scope, and the management of change, to make a real difference to a project with lengthy development and construction durations;

deliver not only a safe work environment, but a safe and serviceable

With significant stakeholder interest in smart motorways, the project was delivered under a renewed level of public scrutiny. We worked in concert with multiple organisations to gain the widest spectrum of project perspectives, then aimed to enhance understanding of the overall smart motorway product and change perceptions of delivery. Key outputs delivered through our input included:

• safety leadership engagement with design offices, improving the connection between design choices and construction safety outcomes;
• an independent maturity assessment of the deliverability of Package 2 (J3-8/9), to ensure that the design provided a sufficient level of detail to generate safe and efficient construction;
• constructive liaison with the delivery partners, critically reviewing sequencing and logistics with roadspace availability and customer expectations;
• transparent briefings with DfT, Transport Focus and the Design Council, to aid understanding of the integration and interfacing of products to simplify smart motorway understanding, compliance for users, and product legacy;
• positive dialogue with asset owners, National Highways and local authorities, on whole life considerations and scope, challenging the concept that replacing ageing assets was a necessary requirement to enable functionality;
• regular conversations with neighbours, recognising that environmental mitigation to a predetermined design occasionally requires assessment from an outside perspective, and not being afraid to adapt if necessary;
• starting at the finish, understanding that successful handback commences at initial handover, and not walking away once a project opens for traffic, we ensured that the project was correctly configured for the operational acceptance of the various owners.

The project had to navigate delivery alongside seismic events, including Covid-19 lockdowns and Royal Funerals, with sensitivity and respect. Through regular, proactive engagement with the numerous stakeholders, the team were able to react with positivity and agility to these challenges and still deliver to time and budget, achieving the following outcomes: