Highways Asset Management Efficiencies for Norfolk County Council

“Working in partnership with Yotta has enabled us to raise standards in highways asset management across the county while at the same time delivering operational efficiencies and driving down costs. We have a shared vision of how by harnessing and making optimum use the latest technology developments in this area we can maintain our highways infrastructure at the highest possible level and ensure Norfolk remains a great place to live and work.”

Tracy Jessop, Assistant Director, Communities and Environmental Services, Norfolk County Council

Norfolk is the third largest county in England but it has the second largest highways network, comprising some 200,000 assets stretched out across a total of 9,600 kilometres of road. Norfolk County Council has the challenging task of managing and maintaining this vast and sprawling network.

As Tracy Jessop, the council’s Assistant Director of Communities and Environmental Services, explains: “Like all local authorities, we are experiencing issues with ageing infrastructure, a growing demand for services and reduced budgets. To meet these challenges, we are focused on driving down costs and maximising funding available through Government schemes like the Incentive Fund and the Local Highways Maintenance Challenge Fund, with the end goal of maintaining and enhancing the quality of our highways network.”

The council began looking for a new asset management software solution to deliver on this vision. Following a competitive tender process, it signed a five-year £500,000 contract with technology company, Yotta which includes hosted versions of Yotta’s Mayrise suite of asset management software, incorporating the integrated Highways and Street Works modules, as well as the visualised asset management platform, Horizons.

The partnership also delivers multi-platform support for mobile devices as well as integration with the Council’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM), finance system and third party contractor works management system. The Yotta Mayrise and Horizons solutions will also be interfaced with the Council’s online mapping portal, giving visibility of planned works and allowing for the monitoring of reported defects.

Prior to the contract signing, Norfolk County Council was already a longstanding customer of Yotta having operated its accredited pavement management system software, MARCHpms for several years. The trust that developed between the two organisations during that time was a key factor in the contract award. Norfolk CC was also impressed by the potential of Yotta’s software solutions to support cost savings and drive operational efficiencies.

Having signed the contract, Norfolk CC put in place a staged implementation process, spread out across eight to nine months and split into three implementation phases – Horizons; Mayrise Highways and Mayrise Street Works.

What Horizons Delivers

Norfolk CC is using Horizons to carry out a multi-scenario analysis of its highways network, ensuring it can model asset behaviour and deterioration and therefore make the choices required to maintain the network in optimum condition. More specifically, Horizons can determine the current maintenance backlog faced by the Council i.e. the type, extent and cost of remedial works needed to return the highway network to acceptable condition. The Horizons Analysis module will also support the appraisal of different scenarios determined by anticipated levels of funding; and service delivery targets measured against both national performance and specific condition parameters.

Over time, the use of Horizons will help the Council to achieve a much better understanding of the condition of its network. The tool’s visualisation capability will also help the Council justify decisions around network maintenance and its use of the available budget to senior management and members.

Making the Most out of Mayrise

In addition to Horizons, Norfolk County Council is also using Yotta’s Mayrise Highways Maintenance and Mayrise Street Works modules to better manage its highways assets.

Mayrise Highways provides Norfolk with a cost-effective approach to asset management, from inventory to works orders and inspections, while also handling the end-to-end cycle of reactive maintenance from customer enquiry, through to inspection, works and completion. It also enables Norfolk to order work to their internal and external contractors. Mayrise Street Works allows Norfolk to effectively manage its street works register, enabling operational efficiency and an appropriate, transparent service on the streets.

The council was attracted by the flexibility that Yotta demonstrated during the tender process. Karl Rands, Area Manager Highways, Norfolk County Council, said: “Mayrise is a continuously evolving solution and Yotta emphasised that they would be happy for us to have input into it and how we would like to see it operate for the business, especially around the future works contracting module.”

One of the key benefits that the new Mayrise solution will deliver for Norfolk is an enhanced mobile solution. Previously, the council issued paper work tickets to the crews working on the highways network, who manually update the ticket and return them to the office when the job is complete. The business support team would input the re-measure into the back office system.

With Mayrise supported on Android mobile devices, 100 council users will be working with this new technology. It is anticipated that Norfolk can achieve significant efficiencies and savings across its highways asset management processes. The council can, for example, forward works orders directly to its road workers in-cab. The in-cab team can then in turn view a photograph of the relevant defect taken during the original inspection, carry out the work; photograph it to confirm it has been done and then transfer the documentary evidence in real time to the back office.

Norfolk’s team of highways inspectors will also benefit from the new Android-supported Mayrise modules. Using Mayrise will enable highway inspectors to see customer requests out in the field in real-time, allowing them to deal with queries immediately rather than having to go back to the office and download service requests received from customers on the previous day.

Mayrise also interfaces with Norfolk’s new Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)-based computer system which uses Microsoft Dynamics and enables automated responses to be issued to customers, allowing them to track the progress of repairs on defects they have reported.

Summing up, Karl Rands reports: “The combination of Mayrise and the new Android mobile devices has helped deliver more efficient business processes and will ultimately produce efficiency savings for the authority.”

Reaping the Rewards

According to Tracy Jessop: “The hosted nature of the Yotta Mayrise and Horizons offerings is saving us hardware, software and personnel costs and ensuring we remain at the forefront of future advances in highway asset management. Added to that, the mobile working enabled by Mayrise is providing us with significant and ongoing efficiency savings.”

The Yotta solution also allows for identification and prioritisation of highway maintenance and improvement schemes through the use of multi-criteria analysis, as well as the end to end process of defect reporting through system integration and mobile working.

Underlining the importance of Norfolk County Council to Yotta, Nick Smee, Yotta CEO, commented: “This is our largest local authority contract to date and represents our commitment to extending the scope and scale of our business. We have demonstrated a thorough understanding of Norfolk’s requirements and challenges and have delivered solutions that are helping them implement new working practices, achieve efficiency gains and benefit from our ongoing commitment to innovation.”

In addition to the core software solutions, the Yotta Norfolk partnership also includes multi-platform support for mobile devices as well as integration with the Council’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM), finance system and third party contractor works management system. The Yotta Mayrise and Horizons solutions will also be interfaced with the Council’s online mapping portal, giving visibility of planned works and allowing for the monitoring of reported defects.