Highways England primes market for £2bn tech spend as part of massive investment in crumbling roads network
- Reference: 1598273587
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/24/highways_england_2bn_tender_notices/
- Source link:
Split into two tranches, the framework agreements launched this week are prior information for the market only, with procurement set to begin in earnest in December.
The information technology commercial framework (ITCF) is set to be worth up to £1bn over four years and runs the gamut of IT hardware, software and services.
On the menu are technology and business change programmes including designing, rolling out, and maintaining "end-to-end solutions". It also requests specialist technical capabilities, services and skills, as well as multi-disciplinary technological professional services specialists. Finally, the prior information notice asks for the delivery of IT products including ongoing support, commodity IT managed services, and commodity IT infrastructure and platform services.
Highways England has not answered The Register 's questions about what is behind the investment, but the [1]prior information notice said the spending was necessary "to support the delivery of Highways England's RIS2 [Road Investment Strategy] technology pipeline and to meet the strategic aims of Highways England."
Road building was earmarked as [2]a priority for government investment in the March budget . It confirmed it would put Highways England in charge of an investment strategy worth £27.4bn over the next five years.
The other side of the technology investment relates to operational technologies to do with road building, operation, and maintenance under the umbrella of the operational technology commercial framework.
Worth slightly less than the IT side at £950m, the framework includes mention of biometric sensors; command, control, communication and computer systems; geological and geophysical instruments; and parking meters.
Highways England waves around £62m contract for National Traffic Information Service after brief chat with vendors [3]READ MORE
The [4]notice said the framework "will deliver projects and services which enable Highways England to operate and monitor the Strategic Road Network. These include support across the design, implementation and commissioning lifecycle of operational technology."
The central government procurement agency, Crown Commercial Services, is working with Highways England on both tender processes. Formal contract notices are expected in December, with contract awards to follow between June and August next year.
But anyone who has endured years of cone-infested commutes might suspect the timetable could be subject to delays.
In May, Highways England launched [5]a separate tender for a £62m National Traffic Information Service to help collect, process and disseminate real-time data and information about traffic on 4,300 miles (6,920km) of road. The agency has not said why it was not included in the larger frameworks. ®
Get our [6]Tech Resources
[1] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:397487-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/budget-speech-2020
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/27/highways_england_traffic_information_system/
[4] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:397491-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&WT.mc_id=RSS-Feed&WT.rss_f=Research+and+Development&WT.rss_a=397491-2020&WT.rss_ev=a
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/27/highways_england_traffic_information_system/
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Where would you put the asset tags?
Asset tags are pretty much already on everything - lights, bridges. Most are printed.
Some lights have tech in to power down for when they need fixing - and you can do that via API or physically there. Not a +1 on Yotta Mayrise but it's pretty comprehensive. https://weareyotta.com/software/horizons/ and they are already doing it... ( Horizons already manages over 100,000km of highway assets in the UK. It provides strategic decision support about maintenance and investment options relating to; roads and carriageways, car parks, footways, gullies and drains, signs, street furniture and more. )
EDIT: and no - don't work for them but have been an end user
Missed the joke icon. I had images of big bar codes running across the carriageways...
Now you know the real purpose of Zebra crossings! You didnt think it was to tell people where to cross the road, did you?
I have been trying to decode those white lines which run down the centre of our roads for ages. As best as I can tell it's some kind of Morse Code.
£2bn would fix a lot of roads.
It could also make a lot of Boris Johnson's and Dominic Cummings' mates rich.
Re: £2bn would fix a lot of roads.
Grump on: Bet the £2bn won't end the 50+ year wait for the A628 Mottram-Hollingworth-Tintwistle bypass. Grump still on:
Highways England == WTF?
They've just funded whole sections of the A31 to be tarred and chipped. A lot of it was put over tarmac that was laid less then 4 years ago and didn't need any attention.
Yet at the end of the A31 in Guildford (just before it crosses the Railway) there is a section of road that is more like a motocross track than a highway.
Numpties the lot of them.
Re: Highways England == WTF?
I think the key words are "at the end of the A31" ... you'll probably find that that piece of road is the responsibility of Guildford's districty council so is maintained by a completely unconnected budget.
Re: Highways England == WTF?
Isn't it supposed to be the Hog's Back and not a Pig's Ear?
Re: Highways England == WTF?
The name "Hogs Back" to me refers to the excellent brewery that is located on the north side of the ridge in the village of Tongham.
About a mile as the drunken crow flies from where I'm writing this from. OTT to the rescue!.
Epic Spaffage
Spaffing money on pointless tech and services while the roads literally crumble, Sounds like President Cummings had a hand in this.
Sign o' the times?
Inflation: £2,000,000,000 would have been enough to build over 4,000 miles of Motorway back in the '50s!
see: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1964-07-07/debates/343f1525-5af1-48de-a332-7bb58fda206b/M1Motorway(ConstructionCost)
If we could just post money back in time, we could have an excellent road system now.
More "Smart" motorways ?
Miles and miles of 50 mph average speed limits, that take months to complete and all you get are fancier road warning signs.
And no hard shoulder for added extra accidents, so they can show off the new signage.
Anyone looked up what a smart motorway is?
Interesting factoid - when you look up what a smart highway is, they claim that traffic moves faster after completing the work than it did 2 years beforehand. But wait, they had average speed checks for more than 2 years...
We regularly drive from Heathrow to the Lakes and for nearly a year there was a small digger sitting beside one stretch of the northbound M6 and I am sure it did not move. I work in the movie industry, I know set dressing when I see it.
And those variable speed limits... they are either much lower than they need to be or aspirational.
£2bn would fix a lot of roads.
Just get something like Mayrise or Pitney Bowes highways asset mangement software to manage all the assets and spend the rest on fixing stuff...