Overview
Detailed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have been developed over the years for safety, reliability, and value for money/ economy of road networks, often concentrating on the economic aspects. These have been very helpful in understanding the performance within National Road Administrations (NRA). However these currently do not provide an overall strategic and holistic picture of the performance of the road network managed by a NRA. To gain this picture NRAs need high level indicators including more environmental and social performance indicators.
To support NRAs, this project proposes a voluntary Benchmarking Framework to cover the development of KPIs. This would allow NRAs to manage their Environmental and Social Performance better and gain an insight into the performance of other NRAs with the aim of driving up environmental and social performance in Europe.
This would involve:
- Wide European based consultation programme engaging with NRAs, and other key Stakeholders.
- Development of a Benchmarking Framework for developing, reviewing and reporting on Environmental and Social KPIs.
- Identification of existing good KPI practice throughout Europe/Rest of World.
- Development of an initial set of KPIs identifying o Existing useable KPI o Core (Universal KPIs) which can be applied to all the Strategic Road Networks. o Regionally significant (KPIs) which may reflect geographic, constructional, management or developmental differences in the European regions
- Trial use of the Benchmark Framework and KPIs over a 6 month period
- Feedback and dissemination of results to NRA and Key Stakeholders and
- Further refining of the Framework and KPIs and publication of a final report and the tool.
Results
The Strategic Benchmarking and Key Performance Project (SBAKPI) was tasked with working through those challenges. The project has created a framework that NRAs can follow to develop new KPIs by investigating the ability of NRAs to complete KPIs developed for key topic areas. Following tasks were delivered to achieve this goal:
- Literature search – identified KPI reporting methods and topic areas of interest to NRA
- Consultation – establish an agreed set of ten topic areas to investigate further and trial the implementation of KPI in NRA
- Trial phase – Tested the use of the KPIs in real world conditions to understand if they can be implemented, how they would be adopted and whether NRAs could benchmark performance.
- Refinement phase – Identified the strengths and weaknesses of the KPIs both in how they were developed and how they were used, thus informing the development of a Benchmarking Framework.
- Reporting/dissemination – Providing a Benchmarking Framework for NRAs to use to create KPIs and report on the results of the trail.
The literature review and consultation identified ten KPI topic areas to focus on for the trial. This included six Environmental and four Social topics: Noise, Air Quality, Water Quality, Waste, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Stakeholder Satisfaction, Safety, Development and Travel. Eleven KPIs were developed; two for noise and one for each of the other topics. EU legislation or international commitments were incorporated where possible, so that measurements common to NRAs in Europe could be incorporated.
A three month trial program was developed to investigate whether the NRAs could complete the KPIs, whether the KPIs could be used to benchmark performance, what problems they may have in completing the KPIs, if they had any recommendations for improvement and how relevant the proposed KPIs may be. The trial documentation requested for the NRA to come up with their own ideas for amendment or replacement if they did not think a KPI was suitable.
Twenty eight NRA from across Europe were invited to take part in a trial of the new KPI. Six were able to participate and provided comment or completed KPI information. Responses were received from Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, France, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, who between them produced results for Seventeen KPIs and commented twenty three times on the other KPIs.
The results of the trial provided information on the challenges faced by NRAs communicating environmental and social issues and highlight two key points:
- To benchmark across Europe a greater engagement in social and environmental KPIs is required – Twenty two of the organisations contacted were not able to take part in the trail. Reasons given included: already collecting data for a trial such as EVITA; lack of money or time; not responsible for any of the proposed KPIs; not currently collecting data relevant to the proposed KPIS; being on leave for a year; a change in government;
- A process is required to identify common measurements and metrics before KPIs can be implemented - Out of the ten topic areas chosen five of these indicator areas; Water Quality, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Safety & Development could be adopted by NRA’s following feedback from the trial members however more work is required to develop clearer definitions.
There is a significant variation in environmental and social understanding, commitment, and implementation at a strategic level across European NRAs and this reflects in the ability to commit to supporting the KPI project and to identify the data needed. This lack of engagement with the workshops and the trial could be due to the knowledge of environmental and social topic being spread over several people within an NRA which makes it less practicable to identify or send one or two representatives.
For full details, see the final report in the "Documents" section