The road development process: plans, specifications and contracts

This chapter describes how road improvement schemes are developed, paying particular attention to the documentation required for construction. The procedures of Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) are taken as the basis for this chapter but these are similar to those used for other roads in the UK as well as in other countries.

Before discussing documentation issues, it is useful to provide a brief overview of the road development process so as to put these in context. In this respect, it should be appreciated that while most highways are publicly owned and publicly operated, they can also be privately owned. Historically, most major road schemes were funded from central taxation, but some were built through public–private partnership arrangements where the initial finance was provided by financial institutions and was paid back over the lifetime of the concession. A recent trend is to manage, improve, maintain and operate major highways by private companies and consortia under such licences or concessions.