“Think Slow, Act Fast”
Catalysts for change: transforming the motorway enhancement experience
Introduction
Odvantage were approached by Highways England to shape product design and development for the Smart Motorways Programme (SMP), transforming outcomes in safety, customer experience and project delivery through enabling better design and more efficient construction solutions.
Smart Motorways use technology to improve journeys, increase the capacity of the busiest motorways by a third, and help ease congestion, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional widening. The design of smart motorways includes controlled motorways, sections of motorway where the hard shoulder is open to traffic at peak times and during congestion, and where the hard shoulder is fully converted to a permanent running lane. The SMP was established to develop and deliver a portfolio of smart motorways projects and secure benefits across the motorway network in line with the Government’s overall ambition of supporting economic growth, improving the service to road users, and generating greater value for tax payers.
Smart Motorway Programme
Client: National Highways
Sector: Highways; Advisory
Capabilities: Strategic Design; Technical Leadership; Portfolio, Programme and Project Delivery; Diagnostic Assessment; Trusted Advisor
Challenge: The Programme was to be at the forefront of a delivery transformation for a new organisation, rapidly mobilised and scaled to successfully deliver 25% of a capital funding settlement with a 400% increase in annual activity, and achieve a series of tangible metrics in safety, customer and delivery performance within a 5 year period.
Solution: Odvantage initiated a transition towards product and production-oriented methodologies, aiming to revolutionize engineering design and pre-construction practices through stripping waste out of solution generation, prioritising safety, quality, customer experience, and delivery through a ‘design once, use many times’ mantra.
Key Outcome: £470M+ of design efficiency from £4.3Bn portfolio.
Timeframe: 2015-2020
Challenge
Odvantage were tasked with shaping homogenous solutions with an array of consultant and contractor partners who had been independently appointed by Highways England. These comprised multiple combinations of new and established joint ventures and partnerships, each with their own datapoints for optimum design and construction, preferred ways of working, and resistance to anything ‘not invented here’.
SMP was to be at the forefront of Highways England’s delivery transformation. In addition to tackling operational performance issues around road safety and congestion, improving journey time reliability, and adding much needed capacity, tactical delivery was to include significant quality improvement, real efficiency and value, and a better customer experience.
Given the imperative to rapidly mobilise and scale to successfully deliver 25% of Highways England’s capital funding settlement, and achieve a series of tangible results, how did Odvantage help SMP transform the industry, delivering a 400% increase in activity with improved metrics, within 5 years?
Opportunity
Our Product Development function was initiated to transition towards product and production-oriented methodologies, aiming to revolutionize industry practices and prioritize safety, quality, customer experience, and delivery.
We co-opted a collaborative, central Product Development team from the SMP partners. This team, strategically composed of individuals with optimal behavioural, competency, and experiential profiles from across the supply chain, were unified to challenge traditional design and construction paradigms.
We undertook detailed analysis of expenditure, identifying key areas for standardization and efficiency, including environmental assessment and management. Integrated working practices were implemented, fostering collaboration and driving transformation through consistent application of product and production thinking, maximizing the use of standardised “products.” The shift towards a product led approach encouraged more structured and disciplined project execution. Key aspects of this approach included:
- A defined Delivery Strategy, organizing interventions into Delivery Tranches, with overarching product development decisions made at the Tranche level;
- Clear and consistent definition of operational needs (Product Definition), balanced with complementary investments on route corridors;
- A structured methodology for developing the Operational Concept (Design Fix 1), followed by a phased approach to maturing design solutions (Design Fix 2 to 5);
- Establishing existing design and construction baselines, based on historic and current precedent, to determine process and product improvement potential;
- Open, collaborative data-led dialogue with Tier 1, 2 and 3 supplier partners to enable robust appreciation and analysis of delivery choices to shape the future state;
- Proactive planning and management of a Product Development roadmap for each component, aligned with Tranche timelines, ensuring timely decision-making;
- Standardisation, Commoditisation, and Productisation as the new normal, utilising a systems integration approach for product assembly and installation, significantly enhancing the production phase for all network users.
- Proactively monitoring operational feedback, resolving issues where discrete or series solutions have not realised the planned benefits, and updating the design catalogue.
Outputs Delivered
- Implementation of Highways England’s first Common Data Environment, a “single version of the truth” repository incorporating over 1M documents, enabling the digital footprints of design and construction decisions to be communicated within project teams and stakeholders.
- Development of a Survey Guide, to enable the safe and efficient collation of the asset data that matters most for construction and handover. Risk based approach to data collection, balancing roadworker safety, customer disruption and design efficiency.
- Delivering validated Operational Concepts for each project, verifying whether solutions were appropriate to operational needs, resulting in poor Value for Money (VfM) projects not progressing beyond concept stage.
- Establishing peer to peer forums, fostering a symbiotic one-team approach, where proportionate process application, design reusability, resource optimisation, and production logistics would create a step change. This generated an agreed Design Guide, enabling consistent development of a suite of interconnected product solutions, standardised for safe, streamlined installation.
- Delivering a Design Management and Assurance function, with transparent design gateways, to facilitate composed, deliberate solutions with the appropriate design maturity and buildability input prior to transition to site (resulting in projects migrating to site at the optimum date for delivery efficiency).
- Deliver Technical and Operational Triage, providing a 360-degree feedback loop to address risks and issues with solutions, and facilitated evolution and continual improvement. This ensured that support was maintained until such time as projects had successfully transitioned into ‘business as usual’ operational practice.
Outcomes Achieved
| Investment | £4.3Bn (max. £1Bn per annum) |
| Projects | 30+ |
| Enhancements | 800 lane kms |
| Health, Safety, Wellbeing | 50M hours worked, Lost Time Incidents <0.1 28% casualty rate reduction |
| Customer experience | 90%+ satisfaction (roadworks, information) |
| Delivery | £250M+ (5.8%) costs mitigated and avoided £220M (5.1%) of low VfM project investment saved Every Delivery Plan milestone achieved |
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