Shropshire Council and its highways contractor Multevo have won a second highways award in a week, after scooping the prestigious Collaborative Partnership Award at the Department for Transport (DfT) Special Recognition Awards 2024 in Blackpool.
The Collaborative Partnership Award recognises the different ways that public and private sector are working together to improve the highways and transportation sector.
The award ceremony took place on the 2nd of October with Shropshire Council and Multevo beating 22 other entries involving 123 organisations.
The judges said:
‘We were really impressed with the winner who provided very detailed insights into their partnership impact… by providing evidence of collaborative decision-making, impressive analysis of the collaborative relationship and what it is achieving to ensure impact is achieved across a range of areas including, safety, efficiency, productivity, whilst also scaling their work to impressive levels that might be expected from much larger organisations and partnerships.’
Multevo began their journey with Shropshire Council in 2021. Since then, it has been an upwards trajectory, working collaboratively to overcome many common industry challenges.
Together, the two organisations have reduced repair costs by 75%, whilst also reducing the number of new defects being identified on the network and have increased resident satisfaction in roads by 25% according to the National Highways and Transport Public Satisfaction Survey.
This has been achieved through the introduction of hybrid work methodologies, ensuring the right treatment is carried out at the right time to prevent future deterioration of the network. Jointly monitoring commercials and a focus on defect data capture and monitoring has allowed for better decision making and budget allocation.
Other key points taken from the award submission includes working together to tackle troublesome historic defects, providing flexibility in adverse weather conditions and providing priority defect repair services.
Dan Morris, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for highways, said:
“Following hot on the heels of our Highways Award for team of the year this is further much-deserved recognition of the work that the council and our partner, Multevo, carry out to maintain the county’s road in the most effective, efficient and innovative way. I want to congratulate all the Shropshire Council and Multevo staff involved for this much-deserved award and for their ongoing efforts to maintain and improve the county’s roads”
Josh Sweeney, director of marketing and growth with Multevo, said:
“There is no higher accolade than the DfT Special Recognition Awards for us and so winning the highly contended Collaborative Partnership Award is a very proud moment for everyone at Multevo and Shropshire Council. The entire Shropshire team have now been rightly recognised for all of their hard work, in a short space of time, in two separate national sector awards so credit where it is due, the industry is taking notice. Well done team Shropshire!”
In 2023, the partnership was also the first to utilise the Innovation Procurement System (IPS), which was developed by Local Council Roads Innovation Group (LCRIG) and Crown Commercial Services (CCS) to provide a compliant route to market and encourage local authorities to utilise SME contractors. This was part of the Councils transition to a Mixed Economy Model – a model that is growing in popularity amongst the highways industry.
Multevo established their innovative ‘turnkey’ delivering model thanks to this collaboration. The model sees Multevo take ownership of all back-office functions to support efficiencies in service delivery and assisting with planning and permitting. They now have a permanent home in the County, with 66 full time employees – 95% of which are local Shropshire residents.
If you’d like to learn more about the partnership or Multevo’s ‘turnkey’ delivery model, contact the team.
More about the awards can be found here.