1-1051 DBFO Tranche 1/1a Contract Completion

Highways England are looking to set up a contract for the provision of technical assessment to support the Handback process for the eight Tranche 1/1a DBFO Contracts The Contracts require an Initial Inspection around 5 years from contract expiry and a second inspection around 18 months from contract expiry. The first inspection would require the inspection on site of in excess of 45,000 individual assets within a six-month window. The second inspection would require the inspection of in excess of 250,000 individual assets within a three- month window. This is undeliverable in terms of the network occupancy that would be required and the technical resource to undertake the inspections. The DBFO Contract Completion Programme team have developed a more efficient Handback process that provides a Residual Life definition for each asset type and a process that makes use of existing asset inspection data to take a risk-based approach to the assessment of the Handback requirements. This is aimed at reducing the number of inspections to less than 10% of that previously required. Other benefits are the significant reduction in network occupancy requirements during RIS2 and the health & safety benefits of not carrying out onsite inspections. An early start on the Handback assessment will begin in April 2020.