Productivity Growth in Capital Intense Sectors

Description

We monitor Highways England and its management of the strategic road network - the motorways and main 'A' roads in England. We monitor how they deliver performance, including efficiency, safety and sustainability, for the benefit of road users and the public. Our role involves assessing Highways England against the performance specification and investment plan set out in the first Road Investment Strategy (RIS1); and providing advice to the Secretary of State on the development of RIS2. Benchmarking evidence can be important to both of these, helping inform our understanding of Highways England's current performance and what would be challenging and deliverable in RIS2. We set out our broad benchmarking plan in April 2016 and published progress reports at the end of 2016 and 2017. These documents highlight the potential breadth of scope of our benchmarking remit, covering a wide range of performance areas, as well as the efficiency of many different areas of spend. Our priority is to focus on areas where analysis and evidence are most likely to identify improvements in the current road period and inform RIS2 development. Against this context, the broad objective of this project is to assess how productivity growth / efficiency have evolved in capital intensive sectors, as a potential benchmark for Highways England's capital activities. Benchmarking is one element of the evidence we plan to use in our Efficiency Review of Highways England's proposals for RIS2. Evidence from our benchmarking activities will be considered alongside: • reviews we have jointly commissioned with Highways England assessing its portfolio and programme management, asset management, and procurement and contract management capability - the 'capability reviews'; • sample testing to assess whether individual spending lines in Highways England's draft Strategic Business Plan are supported by robust analysis of efficient costs; and • evidence of the efficiencies delivered by Highways England in Road Period 1.

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