Background
Medway Council has a dense network of urban roads around its major towns. This includes links to the M2 on the principal road network around the Council’s southern boundary. There’s also heavy industrial activity located to the north that Medway’s highway network accesses.
The Council needs to ensure highway operability, including maintaining the condition and resilience of the structures that support them.
Project Centre was commissioned to perform annual routine inspections of Medway Council’s highway structures. This includes Principal Inspections (PIs) and General Inspections (GIs) for over 130 structures per year, such as highway bridges, retaining walls, culverts, gantries and footbridges.
Process
We actively engage with key stakeholders, such as Volker Highways, Medway Council, the Environmental Agency and our supply chain to plan and execute the works.
When information on assets is limited, we conduct site survey visits for each year’s PIs to confirm access requirements. If required, we agree on dates with Volker Highways for undertaking the inspection, including any necessary access consent, traffic management and special access equipment.
Our expert team determine a safe system of work to complete the inspections and captures it in the Risk Assessment and Method Statement documents. These documents are used to manage site health and safety. Before the inspections, we also review any existing structure information or previous inspection reports. This helps us identify higher-risk areas of the structure.
We also assist the Council during the reporting phase, including the completion of a bridge condition index scoring proforma as well as a photo location plan and defect sketches for the PIs. Our report findings and recommendations are used to develop asset-specific interventions, such as site investigations, feasibility studies or structure replacement.
Our team assists the Council throughout the entire project management, from initial brief and consultancy support to providing technical approval support and being active as CDM Principal Designer during the construction phase.
Outcome
We completed the inspections on time and within budget. Our consistent approach and defect scoring provides an accurate representation of any structure’s current condition. In addition, we monitor the rate of any degradation across successive inspections.
Our collaborative approach with stakeholders and contractors has been key to the inspections’ planning. We employed an initial stakeholder scoping exercise and collaborative plan to identify third-party interfaces and quantify any delivery risks. Likewise, this approach was essential to agreeing on the most sustainable inspection methodology as well as managing on-site health and safety risks.
The Council has given us multiple positive ratings dating back to 2020. They also commented that Project Centre did well on programme delivery, assistance with planning and quality of reporting.
All the years I have worked with Project Centre, I haven’t ever had a Health & Safety issue.
Completed programme ahead of schedule and attendance to progress meetings with regular updates.
Medway Council
