National Highways Supply Chain Development

We are the government company charged with operating, maintaining and improving England’s motorways and major A roads. Our strategic road network totals around 4,300 miles – carrying a third of all traffic by mileage and two thirds of all heavy goods traffic.

We work to provide free-flowing, safe, serviceable, accessible, and integrated roads. Our network helps drive economic growth across the country, creating jobs, supporting businesses, and opening areas for development. We are committed to cutting our carbon footprint, and fully support government’s drive to achieve net-zero carbon by 2050.

In November 2024 we launched our refreshed  Supplier Development System.  This will prepare our supply chain for effective delivery of the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS3). It consists of a capability assessment for organisations to benchmark and build competencies across a range of priority issues. We invite all suppliers and sub-contractors in the wider highways supply chain to use this important tool to develop their business.

Improving the quality of design and construction – Pause for Quality Campaign  View and Share the Pause for Quality Toolbox Talk. 

National Highways is leading a campaign with our supply chain to renew our focus on improving the quality of what we design and its construction.

A message from Paul Doney, Director of Quality, Research & Innovation

“A lot of what we do is done well and right first time, but industry research tells us that we could be losing up to 20% of project costs on quality issues, so there is huge opportunity for improvement.  Quality costs us, not only in regard to making a mistake on a job that has to be reworked but also this is about the service life of our assets.  If an asset, such as road surface, only lasts half as long as it was designed to last and needs to be renewed, then this means it is costing us twice as much – in money, carbon, disruption to our customers and of course safety risk exposure of our workforce.  Studies have found that 39% of construction injuries occur during rework activities.”

So, together with the companies who work with us, we have launched the ‘Pause for Quality’ campaign to highlight the opportunity for improvement and encourage everyone to, well, just pause and think:  take a deliberate moment to reflect before starting work and ask yourself………. Do I know how to do the job?    Do I have the kit and materials I need to do the job?   Are the conditions right to do the job?

This really does matter and as I have said, most of what we do we do well, but there is much we can improve upon and we should seize this opportunity to improve safety, delivery and the service we provide to our customers. Please share this toolbox talk, that we have developed in collaboration with our supply chain partners, with your teams. This marks the beginning of the Pause for Quality campaign and we’re counting on your support.”

Other support from National Highways

For more information on our work with the Supply Chain School please contact:

Andrew Wilson [email protected]

(07736 685588)

National Highways Supplier Development Group Leader

Stefan Jastak [email protected]

(07857 663191)