QuikSTATS has won a £9m (US$11m) National Highways contract in the UK to provide its underground utilities mapping service, helping groundwork teams to save time and cut costs on major projects.
From this month, the QuikSTATS service will be rolled out to all teams involved in design and groundwork operations across National Highways’ 4,500 miles of motorways and major A roads.
The contract will run for three years, with the opportunity to extend for a further year – and makes QuikSTATS, which is part of Kier Group, National Highways sole service provider for C2 utility stat searches.
C2 searches identify the underground locations of utilities and infrastructure to PAS128-D standard and aim to protect the workforce and public by understanding the risks associated with underground and overground utilities before breaking ground and planning accordingly to reduce the risk of utility strikes.
This is often a manual and timely process, involving approaching various utility providers for data. The new contract requires QuikSTATS to return most information packs within 30 minutes of them being requested.
Nick Hearne, utilities delivery manager at National Highways, said, “This new national service will improve early value engineering for major schemes, saving time and reducing costs on projects. The simplicity of adoption and the flexibility of the service will provide us a cost-effective solution, providing a consistent approach to identifying utilities assets in and around our motorways and major A roads. First point of failure is in the planning and as such can help against strikes. We sought a solution to ensure data was comprehensive, detailed and timely while streamlining the process for all users of this service.”
The service combines the latest available utility service data with user generated input, and additional risk reduction and intelligence layers such as Preservation Orders and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, which exceeds the C2 standard.
By encouraging user insights, the new contract will further enhance the services’ data quality to help inform future works and create a fuller picture of the underground network assets in National Highways’ operating areas.
Richard Burdett-Gardiner, business director at QuikSTATS, added, “It’s fantastic to build on our partnership with National Highways, which will unlock new ways of working for operational teams. This process will mean all teams can benefit from a rapid service instead of days or weeks, with a comprehensive level of detail that puts workforce safety first. It also accelerates scheme designs and allows teams to arrive on site faster, meaning efficiencies are felt by the wider public too.”
QuikSTATS was awarded the contract following a competitive tender, and has already been in operation on approximately 5,800km of the National Highways network since 2022, across five regions. In the past 12-months, QuikSTATS has delivered over 10,000 National Highways C2 packs.
