Utilities working in Sheffield will be restricted from digging up highways refurbished by the city’s private finance initiative Streets Ahead team for up to five years, the city council has said.

And local bus companies have been asked to plan their investment round the five year £350M core investment programme for the £2.1Bn PFI also in the interests of reducing disruption.

“We have been talking to the utilities for the last four years and they know they can target their works to tie in with ours,” said Sheffield City Council head of highway maintenance Steve Robinson. 

“If we work together it will reduce their costs. And they are also aware that if we have resurfaced a street as part of the PFI there will be a restriction on them digging it up again for up to five years.”

Amey’s contract for the city’s street maintenance PFI began in August and work on the first three of 108 zones of top to toe maintenance is now under way. Overall work includes resurfacing and rebuilding 1888km of road and replacing 68,000 conventional street lights with LEDs. The PFI includes capital improvement and a programme of accruing new private developer works into the project which could involve up to 100km of new roads to service the city’s growth.

Over the 25 years of the PFI it works out that “every road will be refurbished 1.7times,” said Amey director and Streets Ahead project director Mike Notman.

In terms of general maintenance “there will be five to six times the amount being done compared to what people have been used to,” he said.

By some measures Sheffield has officially had the worst roads in the country, Mr Robinson said. “The attraction of the PFI concept has always been that it will lead to the regeneration of the city. And there was no other way of getting done the amount of work that is needed.”

For a full feature on the Sheffield PFI, see your December issue of Transportation Professional.

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