Highways England will take control of maintenance areas 3 and 9 under its controversial Progressive Assets Delivery model to work-out existing maintenance deals.

PAD has been a year in the planning and will provide a link between the traditional Asset Support Contracts and the Asset Delivery model set up to put Highways England in direct control of asset management, maintenance and other services.

Under the new regime, Highways England staff will take a growing number of decisions over maintenance spending and are looking to engage more directly with Tier 2 and 3 contractors further down the supply chain.

Kier is now operating under a £250m three-year extended contract to ensure the smooth transition of services to the roads agency in the regions.

This safety net will ensure it is ‘business as usual’ while allowing Highways England to explore new and more efficient ways of working as it moves towards Asset Delivery.

The new contracts target 13 business objectives which include setting up regional operations centres as Highways England-controlled single deployment organisations responsible for incident and congestion management.

Also such areas as asset data collection, non-technical inspections, planning and managing technology assets, customer and stakeholder engagement.

Kier Highways executive director Dave Wright said: “We have a long history of working in Area 3 and Area 9 and we are proud to have assisted Highways England in mobilising this next contract – Progressive Asset Delivery.

“As the first service provider to support the client in this way, we would like to thank our teams for working so hard in such a short space of time to achieve a shared goal. This is the true definition of collaboration.

“We are also extremely proud to be mobilising the new Area 9 Technology Maintenance Contract which is a highly specialised field and we look forward to the next three years working alongside our colleagues in Highways England.”

Midlands Divisional Director Catherine Brookes said: “This is a huge change to how we will provide our services in the West Midlands.

“We are taking the controlling role in asset management and investment decisions but also continuing to build on the great collaborative relationships developed over the past five years in our contract with Kier and the wider supply chain.

“We see this as a journey and will be working hard to learn and develop our capabilities and the right approach for future delivery.

“The progressive nature of this contractual arrangement will allow us to gradually develop and enhance our delivery approach over the three-year period.”