Contents
Overview
Figure 1
The Highways and Traffic Management (HTM) Service Plan sits within a service management framework as shown in figure 1.
The elements of the service management framework include:
- Performance Framework
- Asset management Plan
- Financial framework
- Workforce plan
- Social Value plan
These elements fit together to provide the strategic and tactical direction for the service. Each element has further detailed documents, plans and programmes of work which provide the operational direction for the work functions delivered by the teams within the service.
The framework format enables us to keep the service plan updated to reflect both our progress towards our vision and changes to our operational environment.
1. Why, where, how and what?
The Service Plan provides strategic direction for the entire service and sets out the service purpose and vision In simple terms, it sets out why the service exists and where we are headed. The other elements of the service plan and service management framework are tactical and operational.
The tactical elements set out how we will deliver on our strategic direction. These are the enablers and include culture and principles, policies, performance insights, transformation and service improvements, priorities, and risk registers.
The operational elements, set out specifically what we do; the tangible work, systems, processes and activities that manage, deliver, and improve the service day to day.
2. Our Service Purpose
Devon County Council’s Strategic Plan 2021 – 2025 makes commitments to enable Devon to be the ‘Best Place’ to grow up, live well and prosper.
Figure 2
The Highways and Traffic Management service strategic goals, purpose and vision support the Council’s organisational commitments.
As shown in figure 2, there are two strands to our service purpose: to safely connect people in Devon to the people and places that matter to them, and to enable people, communities, and businesses to thrive.
This leads to three purpose principles connecting people, providing safe and resilient routes, and supporting the economy, which support the Council’s strategic plan. We will use these three purpose principles to guide day to day operations.
2.1 What we do: Maintain, operate and improve the highway network
To meet our purpose we maintain, operate, and improve the Devon County Council highway network.
Maintain the highway network
We take a long-term approach to maintenance, combining community knowledge and local priorities with our technical expertise and available resources to ensure the highway network is as safe as possible to meet user needs, whilst actively reducing our carbon footprint.
To do this we carry out:
- regular inspections to find and repair safety issues
- regular surveys to provide information on the condition of the network
- routine cycles of general maintenance, such as gully emptying
- planned maintenance to drainage systems and ditches, the road surface, traffic signals, street lighting, road markings and signs
We take a long term approach to the maintenance of all highway assets, as set out in our asset management plan. We work together to identify what needs to be done and the best way to do it with the limited funds available to us.
We collect and analyse data that tells us the condition of the assets over time. This enables us to see how well our maintenance policies and maintenance processes are working.
We talk to community representatives to find out what matters locally. We then bring all that information together and apply our civil engineering and highway maintenance knowledge to design our future policies, processes, and work programmes.
We enable trained volunteers from communities across Devon to be involved to do minor maintenance works in their area through various community schemes including the Parish Paths Partnership (P3) and road and snow warden schemes.
Operate the highway network
We proactively manage the movement of traffic on the highway network, providing a 24-hour service that is reactive to severe weather and emergencies as they occur. We monitor traffic and congestion on major routes and plan our response to forecast weather conditions such as ice, snow, heavy rain and storm force winds.
We coordinate dates and timing of works to minimise disruption to traffic and communities.
We manage and enforce parking restrictions and we supervise and enforce activities on the highway, including works by utility companies, and events, such as street parties and carnivals.
When agreeing any work or activity on the highway network, we concentrate on safety of the workforce and all highway users.
We try to let people know what we and others are planning to do and when, by publishing our work programmes and our policies. We also share information about current works via social media channels and our website.
We empower business and community use of highway land to support the local economy and community through a variety of licences. For instance, skip and scaffold licences, street cafes, and special events, including street parties.
The public rights of way, Stover Country Park and the Grand Western Canal support the economy and encourage health and wellbeing for all. This includes the internationally renowned South West Coast Path National Trail, the soon to be complete England Coast Path National Trail and popular regional attractions such as the Tarka Trail and Exe Estuary Trail.
With the help of our Parish Paths Partnership scheme we keep public rights of way accessible for people to use all year round.
Keeping the most strategically important roads open during adverse weather conditions such as ice and snow; we do precautionary salting (gritting), and work with local communities to enable self-help through our snow warden scheme.
Improve the highway network and our service
We consistently work towards improving our service, our highway network, and our green and recreational spaces.
Our approach includes:
- making informed decisions evidenced by data and tested methodology
- using modern technology and new methods to reduce carbon emissions and manage costs
- the ability to successfully apply for government funding
- working with other authorities and partner organisations to share best practice and keep ahead of changes in technology
- developing an adaptable, resilient workforce
- strategies for management of highway assets
- working with communities and partners to identify and provide local priorities for improvement schemes
- training volunteers to enable community led maintenance activity
- exploring commercial opportunities
3. Our Service Vision
Our vision is to work together to deliver what matters most for Devon. Our service vision gives us future direction, it’s our aspiration and ambition, and where we are aiming for rather than where we are today.
This vision recognises our belief that if we concentrate on working together more effectively to fully utilise the skills and knowledge across diverse work teams, we can continue to improve the service we deliver. And it recognises that we must prioritise effort and funding to work on what is most important to the environment, community, and economy.
Our workplace culture and the approach we take to managing the service will enable us to work towards our vision.
3.1 How we do it: The enablers
Two key factors will enable us to deliver our service vision to ‘work together to deliver what matters most for Devon’:
- our culture
- our business management approach
3.2 The enablers: Our service culture and how we work together
The service culture is summarised as follows in three main principles that support the service vision as shown in figure 3:
Figure 3
Related to these three principles we are concentrating on the following three areas to maintain and develop the positive culture and working environment that supports our service vision and subsequently feeds into our strategic goals:
3.2.1 Communication and customer service
All forms of communication, including internal and external, and customer service is a vital part of all our work.
Therefore, we are committed to identifying and building on existing good practice to improve the quality of our customer service and communication by:
- Defining the behaviours and standards expected for customer service and communication.
- Supporting colleagues, via training and feedback, to achieve the customer service and communication behaviours and standards expected, with emphasis on providing support where people are dealing with challenging situations and behaviours
- Developing our communication and customer service methods so that information is clear, accurate, and easy to access.
3.2.2 Support each other
People working in our service have a diverse range of knowledge, skills, and experience.
It is important to recognise our achievements, the way we interact with each other and how that influences the service we provide. Therefore, we are committed to:
- Working together as a cohesive group and making it easier to share our knowledge and skills to deliver the best service we can.
- Supporting each other, with understanding, care, and compassion always. Understanding it is even more important during difficult times.
- Managing work activities and supporting colleagues to deliver their best.
3.2.3 Ambition to improve the service
Delivering the service with limited financial resources is a continuing challenge. However, we have continued to improve the way we work throughout the period of financial austerity making best use of the resources we have and utilising emerging technology and innovation.
We are now rethinking how we organise ourselves to provide further opportunities for people to work together differently and to identify service improvements. Enabling and empowering individuals and teams to improve in all areas of their work. Therefore, we will:
- Work together, and collaborate with others, to combine our abilities and achieve improvements to the service we deliver.
- Encourage people to suggest and share improvement ideas.
3.3 The enablers: Our business management approach
Our business management processes, policies, plans and information provide the governance, performance management and operational framework that steers our thinking. They influence our actions and support continuous improvement of our service.
They include:
- Performance framework and improvement plan
- Financial framework
- Highway Infrastructure Asset Management Plan
- Workforce plan
- Risk register
- Health, safety, and wellbeing
Figure 4
A key element within our business management approach is a simple model that promotes communication, engagement, development of understanding and priorities, action, and learning from the outcomes of the work we do.
Captured in figure 4, this is a cyclical model. Actively engaging with people affected or involved to get their perspective so we can understand what matters most to them is vital. That information is then taken forward into the understand stage, alongside other data, and research. Communicating our intentions when decisions have been made and continuing to engage with people affected by our plans is important so that people can have confidence that we will do what we say. Therefore, communication is shown as a continuous element of the model.
This cyclical model reflects our service vision and influences how we design, adapt, and improve all our systems and processes.
3.3.1 Stages 1 and 2: Engage and understand
To deliver our vision we need to find out what is important to people using our services and the highway network in Devon. This includes people that live and work in Devon, and people that visit or travel through Devon.
There are two parts to developing understanding of what matters: seeking information and using our data and information. We will:
- seek information from people that use or are affected by our services to inform our decision making.
- use the data and information we hold to inform decision making.
3.3.2 Stage 3: Decide
The decision process applies professional expertise and strategic priorities to the information to identify options, considering risks, impacts, and costs, as shown in Figure 5. Policies and plans provide guidance for these decisions. We will:
- Prioritise sustainable options that support delivery of the Council’s climate emergency response.
- Prioritise options that protect and enhance the natural and historic environment.
- Apply professional expertise to decide what to do, making best use of the resources we have.
Figure 5
3.3.3 Stage 4: Do
We need to communicate with people affected by our decisions and let them know what we intend to do. This applies to all areas of service delivery and service improvement projects. We will:
- Say what we intend to do and what we are not doing
- Do what we said and explain if plans change
3.3.4 Stage 5: Learn
Our service vision and ambition to improve the service requires us to learn from our work. We need to know where things have worked well or not, understand why that is the case and carry the learning forward to the next piece of work.
Therefore, we are concentrating on performance management to provide insights that will help us see how we are doing. We will concentrate on understanding and doing the right thing to achieve the right outcomes. We will:
- Use meaningful performance measures that give us insights that will help us improve service.
- Check we are meeting purpose when we review working practices.
- Test redesigned working practices to check they deliver intended improvement outcomes.
4. Highway and Traffic Management Strategic Goals
To help us meet our vision, we developed HTM Strategic Goals. The HTM Strategic Goals are designed to give us clarity on what is important and where to focus our effort to improve. The goals were developed and refined with colleagues in a variety of roles from all areas of the service.
Four themes emerged to become our HTM Strategic Themes. These are business operation, people and community, service delivery and improvement, and environment.
Figure 6
There are currently nine goals across the four themes, as shown in Figure 6. The goals are intended to be ambitious and aspirational to encourage us to keep learning and improving what we do.
The work we do to meet the ambitions of our strategic goals is detailed in the Service Performance Plan and Team Action Plans. The Performance Plan details the qualitative and quantitative data we capture that will give us insights to help us see where things are going well, where improvement plans may be needed, or where an area of work activity is no longer meeting service priorities.
The insights from the Performance Plan measures will be reported to senior leaders regularly and reviewed periodically so they can be refined as necessary to reflect current performance, priorities, and operating conditions.
5. Using the service plan in daily work
The service plan only has meaning if we use it in our daily work at Devon County Council.
This simple checklist will help bring it to life and guide us to prioritise and make good decisions that fit with the ambitions and commitments we have made in our service plan.
Service Plan checklist:
We will ask ourselves:
- Does this work meet our service purpose?
- Is the work a service priority? (connection/safety/environment/economy)
- Are we doing the work according to our service culture and commitments?
- Are we doing the work according to our business management approach and commitments?
- Does this work fit with and move us towards our strategic goals?
When the answers are yes, we know the work is important and the right thing to do.