By Andrew Crudgington and Jon Munslow

Climate-related disruption is already a fact of life for local highway authorities. This summer’s heatwaves and accompanying wildfires, following a winter of storms and flooding, are a stark reminder of the growing pressures facing our networks, assets and the people who keep them operating.

We have developed a new highways resilience and adaptation toolkit to respond to this challenge. A lesson from the project is that resilience is never simply about responding better when an event occurs. It should start much earlier and continue long after the immediate disruption has passed. Developed for CIHT and Local Partnerships, the toolkit therefore brings together guidance on strategic adaptation, operational preparedness and incident response within a single suite of documents. It draws on the Department for Transport’s (DfT’s) transport hazard summaries, evidence gathered through last year’s UK Roads Leadership Group (UKRLG) and DfT roadshows, expert input and, importantly, extensive engagement with practitioners. That engagement has helped us keep the guidance focused on the realities of delivering local highway services.

Another lesson is that resilience is a whole-service responsibility. Directors, asset managers, emergency planners, operational managers, engineers and contractors all have different roles but should operate as one system. Highways must in turn be integrated with wider council resilience arrangements, local resilience forums, emergency services, utilities and other partners.

Some key concepts run through the guidance. Authorities need to understand both vulnerability (where failure is likely to occur) and consequence (where failure will have the greatest impact). Decision-making should be consequence-led, considering impacts on safety, communities, critical services and the economy.

Operationally, that means establishing triggers and thresholds for action before an event, maintaining situational awareness as it develops, and using rapid impact assessment to build a timely, “good-enough” picture of vulnerable locations and assets. During significant disruption, authorities may also need pre-established arrangements for reprioritising or suspending “business-as-usual” activity so limited resources can be concentrated where consequences are greatest.

Within the suite, strategic and hazard-specific guidance supports whole-service planning and long-term adaptation, operational framework guidance helps authorities establish arrangements for responding to disruptive events, and six operational checklists support teams before, during and after incidents. Different users will naturally concentrate on different documents, but greatest value comes when the authority uses them together in an integrated resilience cycle:

Understand → Prepare → Respond → Recover → Learn → Adapt.

The most important word in the cycle is learn. Every incident provides evidence about how assets, services, contracts and decision-making arrangements perform under pressure. Capturing that evidence and feeding it back into preparedness, asset management and investment planning means every incident can leave an authority better prepared for the next one.

We regard the published toolkit as version 1.0. CIHT and Local Partnerships now want to work with practitioners as they begin using it. Anyone interested can sign up to join CIHT’s new Highways Resilience and Response Forum, which will provide deep-dive webinars on the guidance, and an opportunity to share experience and feedback.