Right First Time: How to Select the Best VRS Repair Partner

Want to know if a VRS emergency repair contractor has got what it takes? Chris Ellis, Delivery Director of Octavius’ regional civils business explains what to look for

  Emergency vehicle restraint system (VRS) repair is high intensity work. The clock is always ticking. For a Category One repair there can be just seven days to deliver a safe, fully compliant fix. And the call-outs keep coming: typically five to six incidents, seven days per week; with no two the exactly same. The stakes are high. Public safety, workforce safety and, to a potentially unique degree, the contractor is the underwriter of the client’s reputation. Which means work has to be right first time. Agility, speed, experience – are all qualities underpinning right first time delivery of VRS emergency repairs; so here’s some pointers to help identify whether or not a potential VRS repair partner is likely to possess the right attributes.

It’s All About People

For this type of work, where agility and speed are key, a partner able to self deliver offers significant advantages. Self delivery is all about people, the confidence of knowing you have the people to hand when you need them, rather than having to rely on others and hope they can provide a team. But it’s more than an assured ability to access people. You need confidence they are the right people. While any contractor can install highway kerbing, for example, installing and repairing National Highways VRS requires specific National Highways Sector Scheme (NHSS) accreditation.  By using directly employed teams a self delivery partner can be confident of their labour’s NHSS accreditation. Even for local authority clients, who do not mandate NHSS accreditation, confidence that teams are certified to this standard represents valuable third-party proof of quality.

Ensure Strength in Depth

Having qualified people on its own, however, is insufficient to provide the ‘right first time’ delivery VRS emergency repairs require. The emergency repair team needs to include people with sufficient experience to ensure client confidence in the outcome when they self certify a repair. There are legal, and more importantly public safety, repercussions if self certification for compliance is incorrectly issued. So you need an emergency VRS repair partner with sufficient strength in depth, in terms of experienced, to give confidence in compliance and self certification. And here too a partner with self delivery capability has the advantage of being able to demonstrate readily the levels of skills experience residing within their teams. Self delivery also offers confidence and consistency in the repair team’s level of preparedness, which is essential to ensuring speed and agility. The approach to buried services exemplifies this. All contractors will have access to the client’s buried services records. To ensure our work is right first time, in addition to the client’s buried service records, our teams will also reach a repair equipped with buried services data from third-party surveys, reducing significantly the chance of unaccounted for buried services hindering the progress of repair works. To sum-up the potential benefits of choosing a VRS repair partner with self delivery capability, consider the old saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte: “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.”

Institutional Knowledge is Key

Following a strike, clients are typically unaware of the exact nature of the damage and what is required to ensure a compliant repair. Consequently they are, to a significant degree, reliant on the VRS repair contractor. So the institutional knowledge of the contractor to assess correctly the remedial work required, understand the client’s legal obligations with regard to necessary actions, and undertake the work to a compliant standard, is essential to give the client the necessary level of assurance. And a contractor with a strong level of institutional knowledge is a contractor able to add extra value. For instance, look for a contractor able to demonstrate the ability to proactively present a range of compliant options for the same repair. This affords the flexibility to work within budget restraints, and also to ensure that longer-term maintenance spending and provisions can be taken into account; allowing a more optimal whole-life cost assessment and thus the most suitable repair.   

Going Beyond the Repair

Another way in which the best VRS emergency repair partners can add value is by going beyond the repair. Wherever feasible, for example, we use the opportunity of working within traffic management to survey all of the barrier within the control area, and then provide clients with a condition and remediation recommendation report. This has the potential to negate the cost and inconvenience of future scheduled condition surveys, but is only possible if there is sufficient institutional knowledge within the repair team to make such assessments. The approach to stock is another good indicator of a contractor’s agility and experience. Holding sufficient stock doesn’t mean yards full of barrier, it means understanding your operating area well enough to know what volume of stock needs to be installed in a given time period and always having that amount available.

Intelligent Stock Management

Intelligent stock management is also about holding the right barrier. There are18 types of beam approved for use in the UK but, as with blood in a transfusion, not all types are suitable for all situations. Some barriers, however, are suitable for more than one type of repair. So, look for a partner who can demonstrate an intelligent proactive approach to stock management.   Key to agility is flexibility, something exemplified in the critical area of traffic management. Different clients and end clients have different approaches to traffic management. Some will want to outsource the booking of traffic management entirely, others manage it in-house. The best VRS emergency repair partner will be able to demonstrate the flexibility to work effectively with every client’s preferred approach to traffic management, have a play book for each client, and will be able to switch seamlessly between plays. With around 20 clients we have found this requires forethought, attention to detail and excellent situational awareness. By its nature VRS emergency repair work is unpredictable. To best manage this unpredictability the top performing, most reliable repair partners, need to nurture strong, trusting supply chain relationships. These supply chain relationships are many, including traffic management contractors, barrier suppliers, plant hire and concrete suppliers. The key here is to look for repair partners who have formed long-term relationships with established suppliers – both indicators that a potential partner is a sound and stable organisation to work with. In the fast-paced 24/7 world of VRS emergency repair, success is the ability to deliver right first time. And while the ability to achieve this is uncommon, the attributes discussed above are all strong indicators of a VRS emergency repair partner with the right stuff.

Get in Touch

Contact us at  tenders.ORCE@octavius.co.uk to learn more.