AN independent review of Port Macquarie-Hastings Council’s road construction and maintenance practices has identified a number of key strengths which “bode well for the future”.
The Review of Maintenance and Construction Practices Report was received by the council on Tuesday of last week and tabled as a Mayoral Minute the next day at a council meeting, enabling the contents to be available to the public as soon as possible.
In discussing the review, commissioned in September and conducted by ARRB group, mayor Peter Besseling said the findings were a solid indication of the processes that were working well and those that could be improved.
“As I said in August when the review was first raised, this was about commissioning an independent assessment of the council’s ongoing approach to make sure ratepayers got value for money and to test the council’s practices against benchmarked standards,” he said.
The review, which included data analysis and two days of site visits interviewing staff and inspecting roads, concluded that council’s senior technical staff are highly experienced and have made significant effort to inform the public about the prioritisation process in regards to roads maintenance.
“The recommendations received from ARRB include some very valuable advice about making our data collection and asset register more sophisticated and developing the specifications and standards into one comprehensive set,” Cr Besseling said.
The review also identified that while the council had developed and implemented a state-of-the-art system for prioritising routine maintenance works only the most serious maintenance problems were addressed.
“One of the re-occurring themes throughout the council’s own research and identified by this review is that the available budget is insufficient for adequate maintenance of the network,” Cr Besseling said.
“The council manages over 1400km of rural and urban roads with two-thirds of those being sealed roads and the processes we use to maintain that network within the available budget remains one of our most significant challenges.”
The full ARRB report is available on the council’s website as part of the council meeting business papers. A further report will be presented to the March council meeting regarding how the council will address the recommendations made in the review.
