Buckinghamshire Highways Asset Management Strategy 2021

Buckinghamshire Highways (BH) will take a 3 step approach to dealing with the risks associated with highway infrastructure assets. The 3 steps are:

• determining levels of investment
• prioritisation of works
• contingency planning

To inform Investment Levels BH will continue to undertake Life Cycle Planning to advise the budgets required to reach desired performance. These Life Cycle Plans will also determine assets to be targeted for treatment to ensure the most efficient application of treatments to minimise the potential for sub-optimal performance.

Prioritisation ensures that schemes are carried out in locations that have the highest benefits. BH will continue to ensure that multi-criteria analysis is carried out to meet the Asset Management Objectives and to minimise risk. Multi-criteria analysis is essential as it considers the hierarchy of the road amongst other factors such as flooding and maintenance history. The hierarchy sets higher standards for maintenance and performance for the most critical routes that provide key transport corridors across the County, ensuring risk is minimised.

Although BH will minimise risk as far as practicably possible through investments and prioritisation, incidents may still occur, in which case BH will invoke contingency plans.

BH’s Business Continuity Plans set out the response to emergency situations that may impact key receptors across the network. The Business Continuity Plans will be used in any situation that requires immediate response on the highway infrastructure network. By following the guidance set out in the Business Continuity Plans any situation will be responded to with appropriate resources to minimise any impact.

In addition to the above measures BH will also react to hazards appearing on highway infrastructure assets to mitigate safety risk and address accessibility issues. Regular inspections ensure that BH is aware of the condition of the assets on the highway infrastructure network. BH’s ‘Fix My Street’ tool allows members of the public to report any defects they may see. BH’s Highway Safety Inspection Policy sets out inspection frequency and defect response times.