Construction contract price indices aid efficiency

A new way of working has been launched for the UK highways maintenance and management industry.
February 22, 2012 Read time: 1 min
A new way of working has been launched for the UK highways maintenance and management industry.

2479 Highways Term Maintenance Association (HTMA), Civil Engineering Contractors Association (2993 CECA) and Building Cost Information Services of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (2994 BCIS) have collaborated to develop a set of new price adjustment indices specifically for term contracts in the highways maintenance industry.

Counties Cheshire West and Shropshire in England are the first to adopt the mechanism within their new contracts being issued later this month.

The three organisations have worked together to produce a monthly highway maintenance term contract indexation mechanism that effectively tracks costs to achieve lowest priced bids, fair allocation of risk between client and supplier, and accurate cost profiling.

The mechanism has been put before a client review panel that declared it to be fit for purpose and relevant for today’s industry.

Steve Ashley, chair of the HTMA procurement working group, said: “The industry as a whole has experienced intense periods of cost volatility and it is in the interest of all parties to reflect true costs in order to promote and encourage flexibility, forward planning and efficiency”.

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