DELIVERING COLLABORATIVE PROCUREMENT
CASE STUDY – MIDLANDS HIGHWAY ALLIANCE
HEADLINE OUTCOME
Delivered change to Regional Procurement to Improve Service Delivery and • In its first year of operation, the framework created by CWC delivered
Efficiency for The Midlands Highway Alliance (MHA), made up of 13 some £10m of local authority schemes and £40m on Highways Agency
local highways authorities and the Highways Agency. schemes.
• The Lean improvements in Term Maintenance practice is leading to a
collective programme of improvement to help authorities to converge
towards best practices.
THE CHALLENGE • This is being applied to both ‘in-house’ and ‘external’ arrangements. It
should lead to more efficient and effective delivery of this ‘bedrock’
The MHA was launched in July 2007 to promote collaborative working in aspect of the highways service.
highways. In combination with CWC, the alliance is looking to make
improvements in procurement of schemes and of commodities, inter-
authority shared professional services & improved practices for term
maintenance. CLIENT ENDORSEMENT
“Part of the Highways review was to look at the whole organisation. The
THE APPROACH review and Lean Sigma have allowed us to reshape, re-engineer and
implement proposals that have delivered efficiencies in excess of
£2.2m” – Matthew Lugg, Director of Highways, Midlands Highway
With the Highways Agency, CWC set up a framework involving four Alliance
Contractors to deliver highways schemes costing up to £8m. This Lean
approach aims to:
THE DELIVERY TEAM
• save local authorities the cost of procuring their own Contractors and
cut the time needed for this from the delivery timescale
• enable early Contractor involvement The work was undertaken by Joe Dowling, Alastair Jefford, Ian Stuart, David
Bowen and Roland Gilbert.
• enable procurement of services through shared risk and cost
management using target cost and open book working.
CWC also utilised a Lean assessment of MHA’s Term Maintenance
arrangements, in order to develop best practice.