Essex highways service wins national industry award
Essex County Council’s highways maintenance service, which is delivered in partnership with Ringway Jacobs, has won a national highways industry award.
The partnership triumphed in the Highways Excellence Awards, Highways Maintenance Efficiency category, beating several larger organisations.
The accolade comes just months after the partnership won the Effective Partnerships category in the 2015 CIHT (Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation) Awards.
The Highways Maintenance Efficiency Award is awarded to a local authority highway service team or partnership “which has developed and implemented a transformational approach to service delivery, resulting in service improvement, measurable cost efficiencies and enhanced delivery”.
The Highways Excellence Awards judging panel said: “Essex County Council has clearly exhibited good contractor and local authority collaboration, as well as demonstrating year-on-year efficiencies and improvements that are being reinvested back into its road network.”
Councillor Eddie Johnson, Essex County Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways Delivery, said: “We are absolutely delighted to receive this award which is an excellent testimony of our partnership with Ringway Jacobs.”
Mike Notman, Ringway Jacobs’s managing director, added: “The Highways Excellence Awards are very important in the UK highway services sector, so it’s particularly satisfying to have won this year, especially is it reflects the innovative approach to the services we deliver for Essex road users.”
Ringway Jacobs was appointed as the strategic partner to Essex County Council to maintain the county’s 5,000-mile road network in 2012.
Based in Chelmsford, the highways maintenance partnership places more than 30% of its expenditure through local Essex businesses, has taken on more than 50 new apprentices and developed graduate opportunities with Anglia Ruskin University.
All its employees are encouraged to volunteer for community programmes and engage with schools to raise the industry’s profile.
The number of unrepaired potholes and carriageway defects on the county’s busiest roads fell by 70% in the three months leading up to July 2015, compared with the same period in 2014.
The crackdown on road defects is just one of a number of initiatives brought in this year in a bid to improve travel for Essex residents and businesses.
2 November 2015