Integrated Asset Management for Greater Manchester’s Major Roads

Leamington Spa, 26 October 2016 – Following its success in winning a competitive tender, Yotta has been commissioned by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) to deliver the third phase of an ongoing specialist analysis and consultancy support contract. This latest phase is designed to provide insight into the carriageway asset condition of the region’s Key Route Network (KRN) and inform the road maintenance plans of Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities, while plotting a path towards an integrated region-wide approach to road maintenance.

Yotta was awarded the contract following its successful delivery of the first two project phases, which involved estimating the carriageway asset maintenance works required on the Greater Manchester KRN.

“We were impressed with Yotta’s work,” said Kevin Hargreaves, TfGM’s Key Route Network Manager. “Its team was highly professional and quickly built an in-depth understanding of the key challenges we face today. We had confidence in awarding them the contract for phase three.”

Simon Phillips, UK Commercial Director, Yotta said: “Through working with TfGM on this important contract, we have built a close working relationship based on trust. We were delighted to have the opportunity to extend that relationship and provide TfGM with the tools and consultancy they needed to help ensure the Key Route Network delivers what Greater Manchester needs for the future.”

Using its UKPMS accredited SCANNER survey machine, Yotta collected information about the TfGM carriageways in the first two project phases and analysed the data to produce a red/amber/green traffic light map of the results, before developing an estimate of the maintenance works required by applying a nationally recognised maintenance ruleset to the raw SCANNER data.

Following the award of the contract for phase three, Yotta has refined its maintenance works required estimate and adjusted it to precisely align with observed local conditions, as well as updating it with the current year’s condition data. As a result of this work, Yotta has generated a more refined works required estimate of the total investment required by Greater Manchester to bring the whole Key Route Network up to the desired standard.

The work done also enabled Yotta to recommend the precise kinds of road surfacing treatment that needed to be applied to specific sections of the carriageway. Yotta then mapped the results using its visualised asset management software solution, Horizons. Yotta also delivered some future ‘what if’ scenarios to TfGM to help identify an optimal maintenance strategy for the network going forward.

According to Phillips: “This analysis formed the basis of the strategic consultancy we delivered. We provided a series of potential future scenarios that helped TfGM answer key questions including: would spending more now result in better savings in the long run, or how much would it cost to achieve a ‘steady state’?

“And we also built into the calculation priorities specific to Greater Manchester - proximity to certain economic areas or other social variables, for example, which could be used to prioritise certain kinds of maintenance interventions,” he added. “The end goal was to arrive at an optimal scenario for Greater Manchester and then build a multi-year maintenance programme from that.”

As part of the project, Yotta has worked collaboratively with TfGM and the ten Greater Manchester highways authorities, drawing on their local knowledge and expertise throughout the entire process. This cooperative approach has proved crucial in enabling Yotta to play a key role in enhancing asset management across the KRN and in helping TfGM and the highways authorities move towards an integrated region-wide approach to road maintenance.