Pothole repair costs - Find a freedom of information request

Following on from FOI Ref: 3797197



1.) Please tell me how pothole repairs are paid for - are the repair costs included in the service contract sum, or are they charged additionally?

2.) Is the work to be done on site detailed and in writing e.g. Remove detritus, cut a neat joint, materials to be used, apply K1-40/K1-60, clean and paint the vertical joint with a suitable compound to give a minimum 1mm thickness of film on the joint (and more)?

3.) Who employs the staff who carry out the repairs? A term service provider (if so which one) or your own DLO?

4. Is there on site supervision and on whose payroll is that supervisor?

5.) What guarantee is given as to the quality of the repair, and how often have you insisted that a repair be repeated FOC (i.e. ripped out and replaced)?

6.) At what stage do lead operatives know the details of each day's task?

7.) Which is the council's preferred method to compact road repairs? If this includes a vibrating plate, please give reasons.

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1. Pothole repairs form part of our Term Service Contract and are individually ordered, based on a tendered price for the repair.

2. There is a written specification for all of these repairs which broadly follows the standard national specification with some minor amendments. Worth noting that Balfour Beatty are the ‘designer’ for these repairs, however, they must be competed in line with the specification.

3. The staff are employed by our term service provider Balfour Beatty.

4. There are several tiers of supervision in place. Direct management of the gang and their output is undertaken as part of the contract with Balfour Beatty and works are then audited by Lincolnshire County Council employees.

5. The guarantee for differs depending on the types of repairs delivered and can be affected by a number of outside factors which may have an impact on the life of the repair. In the main we would expect a saw cut repair, which is not impacted by a further defect of specific conditions to last for 5 years and an infill repair, again not influenced by outside factors, to last for 1 year. If failure occurs before this time an LCC officer will assess the conditions and will instruct the contractor to return. The contractor may also complete a temporary repair to resolve a safety issue and return to complete the permanent repair within the specified timeframe. We do not currently isolate this type of repair from remedial works issued to the contractor and so do not have a figure available to the volume of these types of works.

6. Each lead operative use a tablet device to access the joint system, Confirm, where all works are identified and ordered, before being scheduled and allocated to a gang. The next day’s works are finalised in a schedule at around 3pm and a gang is briefed on their works every morning before leaving the depot to ensure they have the correct equipment. Interruptions to a schedule often occur as priority works are raised based on the appropriate response times.

7. Presumably this question is related to pothole repairs only and not all road repairs, as such the finished product needs to be able to demonstrate compliance with our specification and end product testing regime. Generally works do involve the use of a vibrating plate as we find this can achieve the required level of compaction but a number of factors such as size and type of repair will determine the use of rollers, vibrating plates or tamping bars to ensure a satisfactory repair.