Agenda item

ES 20135

The Riney Contract Performance Report was presented by Garry Warner (Assistant Director for Highways). Attending from Riney were Peter Hyde (Managing Director) and Luke McFarlane (Contracts Director).

The Assistant Director informed the Committee that the key performance indicators were now within tolerance levels and the works with respect to  street lighting were now progressing well. 

A Member referenced a project that had commenced in his Ward in January 2021. The project had not ended until very recently. He said that the project (as he understood it) was primarily concerning the realignment of a curve in a pavement. This being the case, it seemed to take a long time to complete and he wondered why this was. The Contracts Director responded that there were complications with respect to the location of the drains which seemed to be located in unusual places; it was a project with a lot of unknowns.

A Member referred to a period in the report where the performance against KPIs had dropped off sharply. He hoped that Riney could provide assurances that such a drop in performance would not re-occur. He also referred to a section in the report regarding Riney’s CO2 emissions and asked for a note that could be disseminated to the Committee regarding these. Riney’s Managing Director responded and said that the period in question was part of a challenging year, with the organisation being affected by COVID lockdowns and other significant unknowns. There was also the challenge that a number of their workforce were East European and because of the travel restrictions resulting from lockdown, many had taken long holidays and went back home. The construction industry had experienced other significant challenges with respect to the procurement of various building materials. There had been other issues like HGV driver shortages and fuel problems. He concluded by saying that Riney were now back on track in terms of KPIs.  Regarding CO2 emissions performance, he said that he would be happy to provide data to the Committee regarding this and that Riney as an organisation were committed to reducing their carbon footprint.

The Ward Member for the Crofton Road Cycle Scheme (Cllr Marlow) stated that the scheme had taken 10 months to complete which was longer than expected and had resulted in significant disruption to residents over an extended time frame. He was hoping that guarantees could be made that this sort of thing would not happen again and asked if the Riney representatives wanted to make any comments to the public who were in the public gallery,  many of whom were affected residents.

A Member drilled down into the drop in performance for April and observed that much of this was regarding street lighting. He expressed the view that this area of work should not have been affected by a shortage of materials which had been stated previously as a reason for poor performance over that period.

The Managing Director from Riney said that he would look into this issue and respond, but he made the point that with respect to street lighting it was difficult to replace some of the very old lighting stock due to its age. He said that when LBB went fully over to LED the Council would have a much better lighting network. The Member responded that there had been nine months of underperformance and that Riney should have had contingency plans in place. He asked if Riney would be able to share their contingency plans with the Assistant Director for Highways.

Regarding the issue of the work of utility companies which involved the digging up of roads, a Member suggested that wherever possible the digging up of the road should be done in conjunction and liaison with the utility company, so that wherever possible the road was not dug up more than once in a short space of time. The Assistant Director for Highways commented that the Council would not communicate with utility companies if it was just a matter of repairing potholes.

The Chairman concluded the update from Riney by saying that the Committee would be keeping a close eye on the performance levels of Riney during November and December 2021 and that he expected the KPIs to be on target.

RESOLVED that the report and the ongoing work to ensure contract compliance be noted.