Collaboration Reduces Carriageway Ironwork Whole Life Cycle Costs for Kent C.C
Collaboration between Saint-Gobain PAM, Kent County Council Highways, Transportation & Waste and Amey contractors has solved a problem of failing and noisy access covers on a heavily trafficked carriageway, which serves as part of a dedicated Fastrack bus route.
Says John Reynolds, Highways Engineer for Kent County Council Highways, Transportation & Waste, “We were having continual issues with access covers failing particularly where there was heavy loading and turning in one location. I decided to approach Saint-Gobain PAM so that we could trial a new solution. They suggested both a new access cover which incorporates an elastomer gasket to help absorb pressure from traffic travelling over it and addressing the actual installation of product.
“We decided to trial their solution at the location where we had the most issues with a failing installation. It has now been in situ for 18 months and we have had no complaints in that time from residents. The previous solution from another supplier would get numerous complaints and needed replacing every 3 months.
“As a result of this collaboration we now replace any failed access cover with the Saint-Gobain PAM Pamrex cover on our A and B roads, or those carriageways which have particular issues and insist that we only use Amey trained contractors for its installation. To date there have been no failures on the 30 plus new covers that we have since installed on our roads.”
Saint-Gobain PAM estimate that the council will have a total cost of ownership saving of almost 60 percent over five years using the solution when compared to the previous installations.
Concludes Reynolds: “As owners of the assets we need solutions that give us long term cost savings over the life of a product. Clearly collaboration between all the different parties bringing in specialist expertise to solve an issue pays dividends for us and ultimately the tax payers.”