The sector needs a focus that unifies people across age and background, public and private sector and drives genuine collaboration around a shared goal. If Decarbonisation isn’t that topic, I don’t know what is.

Scott Wardrop, Chief Executive, Ringway

The UK needs to decarbonise how it designs, constructs, maintains and operates highways. The headline date is 2050 but the analysis in the UK’s 6^th Carbon Budget shows that the majority of the heavy lifting has to be completed by 2035 – just 14 years away.

Faced by this enormous challenge, a recent CIHT Roundtable, sponsored by Ringway, explored the role of procurement in helping achieve Net Zero highways.

The attendees began by sharing their experience – good and bad – of how procurement had contributed to delivering other strategic outcomes. The group then identified some large and entrenched barriers to using this experience to help achieve Net Zero before finally identifying the outlines of a way forward.

A consensus rapidly emerged that behaviour – people’s choices and decisions - is key to progress. This isn’t as simple as saying that good people can make bad contracts work – or the reverse. Behaviour is a product of factors such as awareness, attitudes and culture and it can be nudged in the right direction by incentives. This means procurement and contracts can play an important role in structuring the choices of individuals. As an example, the value of a longer-term arrangement often lies in keeping partners at the table long enough to not just deliver an output but to be held accountable for an outcome. Similarly, introducing more challenging quality assessment – such as how a delivery partner will drive continuous reductions to a carbon footprint will send ripples through the whole project lifecycle.

On a linked issue, the high level of uncertainty that surrounds key aspects of Net Zero supports the case for a much more intelligent approach to balancing cost and quality in procurement. In these circumstances, confidence in a delivery partner’s ability to bring through innovation and improvement is of much greater importance than initial price. Procurement and contracts need in turn to reflect this much more collaborative relationship. Flexibility needs to be built into any long-term arrangements and greater use made of review periods. A simple example is the requirement to electrify plant and construction vehicles over the next decade. This can’t be priced today because the technology doesn’t yet exist. A process is needed to allow Authorities and their private sector partners to collaborate constructively to bring through innovation and where appropriate extend or amend the underlying contract.

Flexibility is crucial. We will need review periods around materials, technology, hydrogen and electric HGVs. More broadly the environmental sector is evolving very rapidly and there will be opportunities that emerge, for example using meaningful offsetting to support an Authority’s nature recovery aspirations. This all needs flexibility.

Maggie Hall, Ringway

The roundtable then turned to some of the entrenched barriers to applying this learning to tackling decarbonising UK highways.

Emerging research from the Future Highways Research Group provided some sobering insights. Client-side expertise in Local Highways Authorities on carbon management & measurement and other key aspects of Net Zero is very thin on the ground. Few Highways Authorities have the capacity to create robust measures of their Scope 1 and 2 emissions (those directly under their control) or work with their private sector partners to tackle Scope 3 (emissions in the value chain). This reflects a wider decline of client-side capability, with some authorities reporting that 60% or more of key technical roles are being filled by short term agency staff. This is a situation only likely to get worse as the same research reveals 30% of senior staff are within 5 years of retirement.

We have to better understand the capacity and capability need for the portfolio of initiatives that Authorities face – what is the current baseline, where people are in their career lifecycles and pathways for new entrants.

Simon Wilson, Future Highways Research Group

Elsewhere, attendees reported that even where clients did place greater focus on quality and capability, this did not always find its way down the supply chain, with tier 2 and 3 players being judged solely on price by main contractors.

Our directly contracted suppliers’ governance process seems to be designed around transactional design and build contracting. These processes are not built for integrated team delivery and is a big barrier to helping other parts of the supply chain add value through collaboration integrated delivery.

Martin Perks, National Highways

Turning to the future, the group sketched out the bare bones of a possible way forward.

First, if we are going to improve, we need to understand and share what can be learnt easily. Pooling the data and insight gathered by organisations like National Highways, FHRG and CIHT can sharpen our understanding of the options available for pursuing decarbonisation, their effectiveness and what is holding them back, for example legacy procurement models, stagnant standards or skills shortfalls. This knowledge base can be grown by trying to shift the sector to a culture where error is picked up quickly and treated as valuable learning. Introducing an amnesty from having costs disallowed for errors reported rapidly was suggested as one way to help achieve this goal.

Second, we need much greater standardisation of tools, measurement and processes. Attendees were alarmed by reports of a proliferation of bespoke carbon measurement and assessment methodologies. This adds costs, blocks the creation of robust and comparable performance metrics and distracts from the fundamental goal of collaborating to drive out carbon against a shared baseline. Bodies like CIHT are well placed to convene the sector players to hammer out agreements on common approaches – though many attendees felt there was also a role for the Department of Transport to set the sector some ultimatums.

I don’t want to see 100+ Local Authorities doing things slightly differently. Of course, there is local variation but focus on the 97% that is common across the country – they are all highways!

Martin Duffy, LCRIG and North Yorkshire Highways

Third, and more broadly, the sector needs to use the once in a generation challenge of Net Zero to collaborate to create and energise teams that draw on the public sector, all tiers of the supply chain and into academia. Procurement will be a key enabler and there is an opportunity to develop (or adopt from elsewhere) a new approach to procurement supported by delivery and payment models incentivizing the right behaviours.

This Guest Blog is proudly sponsored by Ringway

They will be continuing the conversation at the upcoming 'Using Better Procurement to Deliver Net Zero Highways' webinar taking place on 23rd November. The webinar is free to CIHT Members to attend.