CIHT on Transport Infrastructure Investment & Professional Skills
July 21 2010
CIHT has sent a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport & the Chief Executive of Infrastructure UK outlining the Institution views on Transport Infrastructure Investment & Professional Skills.
Transport Infrastructure Investment & Professional Skills
Transportation is fundamental to the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of the community. Our society uses the highway network for a wide variety of purposes including work and leisure activities. It enables long and short distance movement of people and goods, access to other transport modes such as rail, air and sea, and is a conduit for delivery of water, energy, information and waste. It provides links to community meeting places and is fundamental to the creation of a quality street scene.
It was reassuring to see that the UK Government recognises this in its ‘Programme for Government’, stating that “The Government believes that a modern transport infrastructure is essential for a dynamic and entrepreneurial economy, as well as to improve well-being and quality of life”..
Continued Investment
CIHT believes there remains a strong economic case for continued investment in transport infrastructure both at the strategic and the local level. A fully functioning and developed UK Transport system is a vital component of continued economic prosperity. A 5% reduction in travel time for all business and freight travel on the roads alone could generate around £2.5 billion of cost savings.
With significant changes in funding anticipated, CIHT believes that a hierarchy for any investment needs to be identified to ensure effective use of available resource. CIHT has identified this hierarchy as being:
1. Maintaining and safely operating our network;
2. Making better use of that network
3. Make targeted infrastructure improvements
Investment in infrastructure is a core requirement to facilitate and stimulate other investment and growth programmes.
Maintaining the Asset
CIHT believe that reactive maintenance is extremely inefficient. The establishment of a funding environment that encourages long-term planned preventative programming could provide far better value for money and significant efficiency gains.
As we are all encouraged to do more with less, it is important that a high standard of infrastructure maintenance is continued, as this has an influence on the safety of all users. Poorly maintained infrastructure can lead to a wide variety of incidents and injuries. Reductions in funding should not be at the detriment to the safety of highway users and of road workers when maintenance is carried out.
The decision-making process has a direct correlation with the efficiency of principal road maintenance operation and further effort must be directed towards improving the efficiency of road maintenance management and procurement.
Development of Skills
The highways and transportation industry covers a large number of professions each with their own technical skills and all requiring the supervisory and management skills necessary to lead and deliver projects.
It is vital in a period of economic uncertainty for the UK Government to maintain its commitment and investment in skills whilst encouraging organisations to continue training their workforce. Once these skills are lost it will prove difficult to re-establish them. The loss of a steady pipeline of infrastructure schemes and investment increases the risk of a widening skills gap.
UK Governments need to encourage employers to support the new Engineering and Built Environment Diplomas, National and Scottish Vocational Qualifications, and apprenticeship schemes. It needs to make available university places in the engineering and transportation sectors. Young people must have access to the training and progression routes necessary to raise the UK’s skills base. In turn this will enable the UK to recover from the current economic situation over time.
Continuing professional development is essential to maintain a skilled and effective workforce. To achieve transferable and efficient highways & transportation professionals, a broader range of work experience is required by today’s practitioners.
CIHT calls on UK Governments to ensure that adequate funding is in place to provide good quality training for new entrants to the industry and to encourage on-going professional development.
Moving Forward
CIHT supports the representations being made by our sister institutions and associations in expressing their concerns over future investment, the progressive loss of existing skills and the need to develop skills to meet the challenges of the future. CIHT is keen to explore how UK Governments, in combination with industry, can help to implement the ideas suggested in this letter, and is willing to enter into more dialogue to examine how, in addition to its current initiatives, this can be done.
For more information please contact Daniel Isichei, Director of Communications on t: +44 020 7336 1566 or e: Daniel.Isichei@ciht.org.uk