Adam Brookes

Adam Brookes, Telford & Wrekin council service delivery manager. So a bit of boring stuff first really about me. So I started off as in a consultancy Jacobs a number of years ago and then moved to Telford & Wrekin about 10 years ago from various roles within the council. My More recently, probably about 18 months ago moved into highways engineering project, delivery of the council of one of the problems shouldn't say problems. One of the teams I inherited was drainage and the the work that goes along that and the move that we're trying to make towards a risk-based approach. We have got small network, you know, you've talked about Kent having 170,000 gullies a year, were not that scale, I'll talk to that in a minute but we've also got a very small team and has everybody else. I'm sure you struggle to keep order inflow risk managers and you drainage team because the demand on them is increasing across the country. So a bit about Telford. So Telford, we've got 1000 kilometers of highways carriage ways, we've got about 2000 kilometers of foot ways and cycle ways. We now know we've got around we'll just over 36,000 gullies on our network before we start this process which are talking we thought we had 33,000, we don't really know seem to everybody else I think from what I'm hearing today, nobody really knows what they've got. Um National highways gullies we haven't really, we don't really know what our footway gullies look like at this stage but we are going through the process of collecting that data. and we want to run a similar approach to to some of our new town of States. Across across the borough We've got 6.5 million square meters of grass or public green spaces across across the borough. That links into some work we're doing around grass smart which touch on slightly later in the presentation. Telford as a borough we gotta mix a dense of urban and rural. So if you look at the map over the north and the west areas and more rural areas and the central and south areas are more dense urban areas. We've got one dual carriageway, the main dual carriageway that runs through the centre of Telford known as the A44 to Queensway or the Eastern Primary or E.P. Locally or whilst delivering some of the challenge Funding that we've recently was awarded roadwork Central is what has been known as at the moment. Uh New town, Telford is a new town. A lot of our assets, how we assets were constructed around the same time. Sixties seventies eighties. With that comes a bit of a problem that they're all deteriorating at the same rate. And this this feeds into why we really need to think about things a bit differently, adopt new ways of working. So we can prioritize how we deliver some of our maintenance programs. So a bit of the problem then. So as with everybody the budget. So this is the limiting factor for everybody across across the room in terms of what they do and don't do and also probably the driver about how how and why we do trying to do things differently. Um We've got data, we've got historic data. Um It's okay, you know, it's it's some of it's in different formats, some things in the head but it doesn't really give us enough information to set reasonable daily or didn't give us enough information, set reasonable daily targets. We've mentioned that poll we want to do in terms of what's that I put well we were setting outputs based on what we think, not really on data, what service needs were. As a result we are adopting day works approach so we wasn't driving value, we didn't really know what we're doing, it wasn't really being recorded so it wasn't really getting that much data back. As a result operatives buying there wasn't really buying into what we were doing, they were just going out to the same gullies on the same frequency all the time. Getting there, the gullies were clear, they didn't really know what they were going there. So they weren't really buying into what we were trying to do or collecting decent data, multiple datasets, we've got multiple datasets, different formats, whether it's G.I.S shape fall, whether it's an excel most commonly in operatives or officers heads trying to get that over. Not always easy that historic knowledge is one of the challenges we have to face actually because the drainage engineers didn't want to change. They felt like they got the service to a place that was good, why we changed, we've always done it this way. You know, things are running smoothly actually, probably there we go. There is probably improvements to make and we're trying to get their buy in to do that and we did get there in the end a more recent one. Climate change. So there's a wide acknowledgement that the severity and frequency of severe weather rainfall events is increasing and therefore we need to acknowledge that and do something different. Be aware of it, feed that data into where those known hotspots to make sure we're targeting where the need is in terms of the back office, there was a corporate position that we wanted a one system approach. So we wanted all highway assets being managed in one system regardless of the fact that might not be designed to do what we wanted to or work intelligent with the day intelligent with the data, we had, you know, so we got drainage about grass but it was all being delivered via confirm, which is great. You know, all the data there but we couldn't take that data and do anything really intelligent with it. Uh, and that also gives us a limited ability to interrogate that information and drive the service forward further issues we face is a perception issue. So gullies not empty for years. That is a common complaint. We got from the public. They might be right in some instances they might be wrong. In some instances we didn't really know going back to the day works with the data wasn't there to prove or disprove what they were telling us other issues. We had council is not doing its job solve the flooding problems. I've been telling them this for years. The council's reputation is important to us. It's important to me as an officer but more important to our members. They want to make sure that that that's not the type of comments we're getting. So we want to try and change that approach by doing the right thing in terms of flooding people and that solve the flooding problems. We know we're never going to solve all the problems is always going to be a flood risk but we can we can try and manage that and we can target the areas where those high risk areas are. This all feeds into the risk based approach. We were trying to get to the reality of what was happening. So the data had been collected, we did have a lot of data in various formats, We didn't really know what to do with it. We couldn't really use it effectively or intelligently because we didn't have the system to do it. We're trying to use this one system approach. It didn't really lend itself to do what we wanted it to 200,000 spend annually on routine reactive might not sound a lot to some of you but for the size of our network is a reasonable budget probably we don't really know is it is the right man? Is it too much? Is it too little? But it's the budget, we've set budgets all we've always had and we weren't really able to challenge it because we're just working the way we do it on a fixed cycle. We were cleansing over 50% of our network each year on it. It was on a 6 monthly to three yearly cycle, depending on the years, but on average it was around 50% of our gullies were being cleaned every year. Was that okay? We don't know. I'm gonna go back to that same challenge. It's the way we've always done it. So why change? That's what we get regularly from the drainage engineers when I inherited the team, this is what I got what we know it's working, we've done it all this time we've done in the last 20 years. Why do we need to change it? Well, things need to change, we've got budget pressures etcetera etcetera. So we need to work more smartly. So it was time for a change and a new system new approach. So going back probably five years now we went for a process, we started to re tender our highways contract within that we decided right, we we knew we wanted to take a new approach to drainage cleansing work towards a risk based approach. So within that contract we built in the tender for for the first two years of the contract, Each one of our 33,000 gullies approximately would be visited cleanse and data recorded. So we knew what the position was and what the change was over that 12-month period. Uh, that means we have a good set data set that we can then develop the risk based approach taken all the data we know but still at this stage thinking about using confirm which is the system we we adopted at the same time we whatever we did, we had to integrate with the existing system, confirm whether that because our contractors always also embedded with with that system really so and that was that was across highways that was grounds and cleansing. That was enforcement. So we need to make sure it all fit together. So what did we do? We want to adopt the risk based approach. So the first steps and around the room some of you will be in different stages of this. Some of you already adopted this pro collected data, some maybe think about doing it. So all the drainage assets. As I said, we're going to go around all 33,000 gullies for the first two years of the contract that 66000 visits and collect that data understand you know what what needs clean, what needs to go out what got grass over etcetera etcetera. So we can understand what the need is, what the risk is. We were, we were then going to feed an additional data, flood risk zones, road data speed limits, etcetera, etcetera. So you can understand the risk this was the intention would have worn at this stage, learn from our mistakes I think particularly well. So what we're doing at the time we were, we wasn't using KaarbonTech at this stage, collect the data. We didn't have a system designed for it. So what we found out and Doug feels the pain on this because he's still working on it a little bit is that we're getting duplicates. They were recording new assets, They're recording the data against the wrong asset just because they didn't have the system there to allow them to do it intelligently. So we went through quite a big process of trying to de dupe as the date. People call it that information to try and get to a stage where we, we felt reasonably confident. I'd say we're in a good position now in terms of data, I wouldn't say it's perfect. I don't think data is ever going to be perfect and it's going to take time to get there. So we've got the data. Next stage is to use the data and move and this is where we thought right, we need to do something different system isn't there isn't really giving us the answer we need. This is where we moved towards KaarbonTech and I should have said earlier, the drainage team always remind me they've been banging on the door about KaarbonTech for about two or three years. We should have done this in the first place rather than at this stage and then we might answer these problems. We got there in the end and now we're now we're with the KaarbonTech so we, we've got this this 36,200 something gullies now that we're in the system, we've been putting the flood zones, road hierarchies silt level from those two years of data, road specific details of speed limits. For example, you can set your parameters as a slide show earlier in terms of you can, you can set the parameters and wait those different parameters based on local needs and wants in terms of you know, your network, how do you want to waive these, once you've done that you can then run some scenarios. Is that is that is that does that meet the needs? Is that too many? Is that too little? Is that budget sitting with the budget needed? Actually do we need to increase the budget? Is the budget too high? These type of questions you can play around with once you start running these scenarios. Once you've done that, you can set where you want to get to and set your sails rollout commenced cleansing Start refining the information as you go with us. The data confidence, we talk about good data, quality data is okay. Not brilliant. So we're going to, we're going to go for a review period. It might be 12 months, it might be two yearly, it might be six yearly. No, come on to what our regimes look like in a moment, but it could, it could take five years. It could take 10 years to get to a good dataset where you reviewed every gully a number of times depending on where you get to. But we're going to go through a review period and rerun rerun the risk module if you like. Once we get to it as the data improves as we go through it. So using risk SMART. So this is where right now we've got there, we've, we've got run some scenarios and were implanted this now with our contracted this year in year three of our contract, it should have been year three, but we are where we're at. So we've run loads of scenarios and as you can see there, we've got a five yearly cycle that is a result of a friendly challenge from me in terms of trying to get those yearly numbers down because of budget pressures. So we did, we did set on a three yearly cycle and that the number was about 18 or 19,000. Can't quite remember the number, which was a little bit above where I personally want to because within that, you're going to have grass overs, you're gonna dig out that is where the contractors make their money when they go around these over time. That will reduce, we might be able to move to a three yearly cycle in the future once we understand the need, As you can see that we're going to get to around 15,000 cleanses per year across the network, that's slightly below the 50% that were doing previously. So if you think back to the budget pressures, actually going through this process, it has worked. We've reduced that number and actually that, that 50, that's just under 50% now. It's not the fifth same 50% cleaner previously. So something has changed. What the good thing now is, we've got justification for what we're doing. We understand why we're doing it rather than just doing it because we've always done it. So we've been implemented this system and also what it means that the contractors and operatives know, what what they're working towards In terms of value added data quality and we keep mentioned this data data quality throughout today's session, we didn't have a quality, we're getting there. Now, we've got the silk slider there previously. When we were collecting the data over those first two years, we were just using a percentage. So not 25, on a 25% increment. And as that poll showed earlier, everyone assesses that a little bit different. So is the data any good in terms of if 1 operator said 50 cent one said 75% 25%. It could all be the same. Everyone's got a different opinion. But we found with the silt slider operatives prefer to use it it's easier for them to use and actually the data quality and accuracy significantly improved interrogation. That's the key one really. In terms of range engineers going back to what I said earlier, they wasn't buying into the process. They didn't want to change now they're fully embedded with the system. Love it in their words and it's great and they can really use and see the benefit of it. They can run reports and I think we're going to be about performance management later on the session around. We can use it to KPI monitoring etcetera with our contractors so we can see the performance of our drainage network. We can also see the performance of our contractors going forward live if we wish to operatives ease of use. So it's it's built that it's easier to use. And on site recently we started using it and we asked, we went up to the officers what what do you think? It's great. It's really easy to use makes our jobs easier. It's quicker. So we'll go and then we go back to the contractors management. We talk about oh it's much longer. It takes much longer. Actually, no, it doesn't because we spoke to the, to the lads on site and they said it's it's much better easy to use. They're willing to use it because it's easy to use. So hopefully we won't get any of those that rogue information where they sat in the truck overnight because they don't want to use the system because it's quick and easy for them to use. I talked about perception earlier, this system allows us to be more responsive and provide good information to our customers. We know we know when it's going to be cleansed, we know when it when it's been cleansed, we know what the information, we know if there's any defects and we can find that direct to customers with confidence and it hopefully builds their confidence as well. We know where the flood risk zones are. So we're gonna be going out and cleansing their them more frequently anyway, so they will need to come to us and tell us and we've seen inquiries over the last six months because of that two yearly cycle, we've gone through the number of inquiries have dropped off significantly. Yes, we had a couple of wet years. So inquiries were up, but this time compared to those creatures that they're dropping, they're dropping down, which is showing it's working increasing confidence and knowledge on our network of our data. We we know it's good. We know it's going to get there and we're confident now rolling out and we're doing the right thing. Making sound decisions rather than doing just what we've done always what we've done. We want to move towards a digital street. You mentioned something similarly in terms of that public facing information, our vision is to have a digital street and that's not just strange. That's all highways assets. That's all public inquiry type of information that they can just go on what we call Mike Alford, which is the portal they log into. They can see, oh this, this is my, this is my rodeo. That gully, that's outside my house. So that was clean last week. Actually that's going to be cleaned in three months time. It's not really that major an issue. That's where we're gonna get to. And using the carbon system is allowing us to take approach to get there. And the big one is the budget setting process. We can be flexible. We can either set a budget and tweet the scenarios to meet our budget or we've got justification actually to go and ask for more for more money. We want to higher quality service. But if you want that service going back to politics, well, we want to do that. We've always done that. You're not changing that. That's fine. But we need to do this and we can still do that. But you need to increase the budget by this to allow us to do that. So it gives you that knowledge and that understanding to allow you to do that integration. I think dogs going to touch on this a little bit later. It's not without problems or it's not, it's not a smooth ride always. But we have got the grass smart which were running as a trial that successfully um, integrated, we've confirmed our system that one system we're still trying to achieve and gullies, we're almost there as well. So it's not been pain free but we are, we are almost there and now we can manage all our assets in confirmed. We can raise jobs and confirm, we can raise them on the back of a public inquiry so that means we still get the end to end process. So because we've got front end crm system, they log an inquiry. There's a defect. There we go and inspect it raised the job, gets complete feedback to confirm, close the job down and then they get that closure email saying thank you, we've completed this now etcetera or there's been a delay because the vehicle over etcetera etcetera. So we still got that end to end approach. Using KaarbonTech via confirm the benefits it brings, maintains that endurance solution. I mentioned earlier that our contractors are embedded into this confirmed system as well. So we couldn't integrate the system. It might mean to wholesale changes across the various various contracts. We don't need to do that because everyone can continue to use the system they were using But we're going to get assets specific software to allow us to do that. Which means we can all work more intelligent and deliver something. Some of those benefits. I've talked about Telford the next steps. The grass smart trial I've talked about it is a trial at this stage, but the feedback we're getting is good and I haven't got all the details but Rob Morris my colleague over there has been a bit more involved in that. So if you've got any questions around, I'm sure Rob be more than happy to have a chat with you. But so far the feedback is good. And we've touched on some of these already tree data. So we are collecting tree data right and not confirm we've got we're getting gaining that data and we want to feed that into KaarbonTech We can tweet the risk based module so we can feed we know where the trees are leading onto that sweeping program. Make sure it's all linked together. We're not we're not doing in different orders were incorrect or not considering some of it to make sure it's all pulled together. Gully sensors is one thing we have looked at. We haven't gone for it just yet because we want to embed the risk based approach first. Once we know where those high risk areas are, which we will be able to visualize through KaarbonTech that we might target some areas of the sensors. I think technology is developing internet of things is a buzzword at the moment. All that sort of stuff that working at the moment. And then we've also looked at grit bin sensors again, you know, we were looking at carbon savings where we every year we go and fill every grit bin or after a winter and we go and fill up the grit. Is that the right thing to do? What's, what's the full levels? Can we adopt a risk based approach, produce those carbon sense and create some carbon savings. Everyone's declared a climate emergency. So you gotta think outside the box thinking about doing things differently. We've also looked at trash screen sensors. A lot of trash screens are on private. They're not asked. However, we have to pick up the pieces when they don't maintain them and things go wrong. So it's another avenue we're looking at and the road surface temperature sensors. So, as as a council were quite forward thinking, we want to try these out. We're happy to take on trials and what we're going to look at and it's great to see some of the, some of the ideas coming out today that will be sure to adopt. I think that's it from me. Any questions. Thank you very much. Always authorities moving forward is the procurement side. So how did you get around that if you were embedded with confirming your contractor was as well. So, fortunately, so you mentioned it actually going for negotiation piece on race and stuff. So similar to you, we've, we've done the same on that with Balfour Beatty our contractor because they might come a bit keen on the rates. We acknowledge that we're not going to get the level of service. So as part of that was alright, let's, let's collectively agree to do something different. As part of that. We said Balfour Beatty, You going to precure the system, the KaarbonTech system to precure the system on our behalf. And we buy into and then the cost that's built into the new rates that we're going to agree with that is the main route and the same thing that we've done before because map 16. But yeah, you have to get your term is contracted to buying it and go on the journey with you because it's probably the only way to procure it. I think everyone's got to be willing to work with your contractors as well. And not just, it's easy to say what they're the rates to stick to the rates. You never, you just appreciate things change. You might not get the quality of service you're after. So, you know, you work with them, change things to adopt the approaches and then everybody will be a winner and you'll get better service. We're going to go into another session where we talk about risk and trying to get maybe a bit a bit of detail about what, what is useful for you from risk. Let's try and get some of that documented will shorten this just to touch to try and get back on time. Um before we do we've got that poll going out now. So let's just answer a couple of questions. We're going to our round tables and then we will be back in I think about 10 minutes time just to cover off some of these bits. Let's have a quick review. I'm conscious of time and I'm conscious of trying to make sure that we get to lunch on time. Look at that. Oh yes, well I'm definitely going for lunch on time. Um So that has got a lot of debate so we definitely need more time really to thrash that through but I'm going to go through these really good stuff. Good to understand from KTS what the highest risk factors definitely. We're kind of pulling this information, we're constantly adding to it and creating these lists but that's something that we do intend to share. Um some quick fire stuff over here, digitizing property, flooding, personal injury claim, vehicle right off small in number but big in importance um vicinity to watercourse could be another one which was useful. Um and then the number of visits, reactive visits in a period of time. That was an interesting one that I thought came out the section 19 flood reports was also pretty interesting. Um and then the that's the problem isn't it? The absence of road attribute data that's a real issue Some authorities struggle with. Some authorities will talk to you. They want to do a risk based approach and we look at the data they've got and it's just pour it is really poor and it's very difficult then to work with stuff and you then go back to having digitizing yet. But bearing in mind once you have this road data by the way so I just drainages everything that that volume of data can be used much wider and a lot of people because of the work that we do with our system and bringing the data together to come into the risk modeler a lot of the people take the exports out of that to use somewhere else on a service because we've done that work to join it together. Um It takes time to acquire the data to be able to run the risk matrix. It does um I think that goes down to cost versus time and that's what surveying often comes in is we don't have it we need to make decisions, chunk of money. You could throw money at that kind of a problem and get surveying quite quickly. Um Most of the other things that desktop exercises. Um And naturally desktop data collection joining stuff digitizing paper records is much cheaper than physically boots on the ground. So you can do quite a lot to digitize data. A lot of it you can do in house. The problem is resources, whether you actually have the people with the right mentality to do to, to give you the right output that you're looking for. Um So ah confidence in data built over time yet it goes without saying it is a journey. The risk based approach, constantly, asset management is a journey. The more you know, the better you will manage is straightforward. Um Speed limits, play a big part of rest. They do so and there's speed limits and then there's average speed. So we've got average speed going into to Kent as well because someone on a 40 mile an hour, oh, but no one drives a 40 mile an hour drive at 70 miles an hour and therefore arguably that's more dangerous than a 70 mile an hour road because 70 mile an hour already built for it. So bringing in speed in both of those are quite important. Um Cool.