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Why does it feel like groundhog day when potholes are mentioned?
Monday 01 August 2011
Wilma Paxton Doherty
Wilma Paxton Doherty, Managing Director of Habanero Business Consulting, wonders why it feels like Groundhog Day every time potholes are mentioned? Time for a rethink over maintenance 

Every year there is widespread coverage in the media about the state of our roads. The last two years have been worse because of exceptionally cold winters - freezing temperatures accelerate the depreciation of our road surfaces. Was it always thus? When speaking to highways engineers getting close to retirement age, I would argue not – but I’ll come back to this. When you study individual highways systems controlled by councils in England – you find that budgets are
increasingly being used to fire fight. If the bulk of the budget isn’t spent on ‘potholing’, temporary fixes – it’s spent on ‘patching’, which is supposed to be a permanent fix. The net effect is reactive, with a belief that prioritisation of the worst cases is the best approach - is the context they find themselves in. And the thinking of the leaders we’ve seen is that this is all they can do within the financial constraints they experience. They
are right of course - if they continue to try to solve the new set of challenges they face by using the same thinking. An over used quote, but relevant in the circumstances I feel, is from Einstein who said something like “We can't solve problems by using the same thinking that created them”. So what could be achieved if leaders could solve the problem with a different mindset?

            

              

            


            

              Across many public sector systems there has been a gradual move towards reacting to the highest priorities or even crisis rather than the prevention of the issues in the first place. For example, in many Adult Social Care systems, customers who believe they need support are ‘signposted’ away to other organisations unless they meet a set of strict criteria. The thinking is how we ration our scarce resources rather than how to solve problems at the earliest opportunity.
              However research undertaken by the Scottish Government Finance Committee clearly demonstrates the cost benefit of shifting the focus of investment towards prevention in the people focused public services. This, we believe is also true for other systems, like highways.
            


            

              

            


            

              Many years ago this was the conventional wisdom in highways. The focus was on proactive maintenance programmes – to prevent many potholes forming in the first place. What has happened then? There clearly has been a overall reduction in the amount central government is investing in the highways infrastructure and the result in many authorities is that the focus often appears to be on how to fix the worst of our problems rather than prevent them occurring in the first
              instance. In effect, how do we avoid being sued by members of the public who hit potholes or trip on uneven pavements! Over the years, there has been a focus on a reductionist* approach to management promoted by successive governments with its narrow focus on small teams being created all with different objectives, hierarchies and budgets. Each team quite naturally becomes focused on how to achieve their particular outcomes and protect their budget – without necessarily
              understanding or worrying about the effect of their decisions on the wider system. The original thinking was to simplify the system into its component parts and make it easier to manage and control but the effect is to create a narrow focus on small parts of the system versus the whole generating significant bureaucracy, duplication of effort and waste. Far from simplifying things this has driven up the cost of running all services including maintaining our highways.
            


            

              

            


            

              Government funding has not kept pace with the costs of running services in this way – ergo prioritization of the urgent (potholes) at the expense of the proactive maintenance of our roads. It becomes an ever decreasing cycle – with the belief that the only way to get out of the problem is to spend much more money. The current estimate is £10.7bn!
            


            

              

            


            

              In contrast to the current reductionist mindset, I wonder what the effect on the road network would be if everyone within the system became focused on how to work together to make sure the roads “work” for the public. Therefore instead of small teams protecting their individual budgets and objectives, the mindset changed to how to get the road network up to the best possible standard within the overall resources available. How much bureaucracy and waste could be
              removed and how could that energy and capacity be redirected to creating better roads? I look forward to a time when it doesn’t feel like Groundhog Day when the condition of our highways is discussed.
            


            

              

            


            

              

            

          

        


        
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