National Highways is tasked to deliver the objectives of the Government’s Road Investment Strategy. The previous strategy (RIS1) ran from 2015 to 2020, at which point RIS2 launched - an ambitious 5-year strategy with a total budget of £27.4bn - almost twice as big as RIS1.
In light of this huge budget increase, making effective investment decisions would become more complex and challenging, particularly as the overall size of National Highways (at around 6,000 employees) would not increase significantly; hence a requirement to achieve more with the same.
Increasing complexity coincided with a requirement for enhanced collaboration – both with partner supply chain partners and internally across the separate directorates within National Highways itself. RIS2, for example, includes a broad range of complex, technical projects such as the £9bn Lower Thames Crossing and Britain’s longest road tunnel.
