Star Rating for Designs (SR4D)

Star Rating for Designs Road Designers Consultation Group was established in May 2022 to provide a road designer’s perspective on the development of the SR4D program and tools. See the Group’s Terms of Reference here.

Advice and feedback may span all aspects of SR4D, for example:

– The road design process and how software is used
– The effectiveness of SR4D tools and development needs
– Training and accreditation
– Communications.

The Group comprises 18 experts with extensive experience in road design and SR4D, drawn from the private sector, public sector and NGOs, from each region of the world.  Their guidance will help inform the development of the Star Rating for Designs tool and global advocacy and action to achieve iRAP’s vision for every road design to have a Star Rating.

Group members, all of whom have generously volunteered their time and effort, include:

– Ahmed Ksentini, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax (Faculté des sciences de Sfax) (Tunisia)

– Christ Furneaux, Arup (United Kingdom)

– Gustavo Arbiza, Intendencia de Montevideo (Uruguay)

– Ilse Malagamba, Safe System Solutions Pty Ltd (Australia)

– Julian Kwong, Chaussees Limited (China)

– Kefalo Getahun, Addis Ababa City Administration Road Traffic Management Agency (Ethiopia)

– Matthew Chamberlain, Matt Chamberlain Associates Ltd (United Kingdom)

– Marko Sevrovic, European Institute of Road Assessment (Croatia)

– Milly Lumumba, World Bank Group (Kenya)

– Patricia Garces del Castillo, Universidad de Cartagena (Colombia)

– Regnald Massawe, Tanzania National Roads Agency (Tanzania, United Republic of)

– Reg Ting, City Transport Development and Management Office of Pasig, (Philippines)

– Srinivasa Jampana, Louis Berger International – WSP (India)

– Stelios Efstathiadis, Transportation Solutions (Greece)

– Syed Yaseen Afshad, NEOM-Corporate Safety (Saudi Arabia)

– Vincent Nguyen, Mott MacDonald (Australia)

– Star Rating for Designs can be incorporated as part of a road safety audit or completed independently.

– Star rating of a design, using the SR4D tool, or through other iRAP processes, can be performed by any suitably iRAP trained road safety practitioner. The design drawings together with other key project fundamentals such as expected traffic volumes and speed estimates can ensure the star rating of a design can be completed from the desk-top with local knowledge.  Road safety auditors are well placed with the skills needed to star rate designs.

– Star Ratings are now being used by many agencies to ensure that safety is built-in to designs for upgrades and new roads prior to construction.

– By providing a means of objectively measuring the impact on risk of various design iterations, the Star Rating design process helps to harness the potential of designers to find creative solutions to challenging safety problems.

– For governments and development banks, the process opens the opportunity to set performance-based targets for vehicle occupants, motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists that not only improve safety but create a high level of transparency and accountability.

– The Star Rating design process has been successfully used in countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Moldova, Qatar and India, in conjunction with existing mechanisms such as Road Safety Audits and highway design standards.

– iRAP has developed standard specifications to undertake a Star Rating of a Design that can be included in your project and a trusted network of trained Design Star Rating suppliers around the world is also available.

– If you need help iRAP can assist in the direct planning and procurement for a star rating for designs assessment.

Including star-rating targets in the tender process raises the competitive bar among design teams.  The open-ended ‘or better’ target invites designers to aspire to higher performance.  A 4.5 star outcome can be given more weighting than a 3.5 star outcome for a very small percentage of the overall project costs.

Project evaluation criteria can therefore include the safety performance of a road in addition to traditional criteria like cost, time and quality.  The star ratings and associated estimate of life-time crash costs associated with each design can provide an objective, evidence based, global standard that can be used in evaluation criteria.  Refer to our simple tables below as a template for action.

For example tenderers could be ranked by their performance across all of the criteria and/or the costs of road trauma expected in their design could be included in the price evaluation.  For example:

From a whole of government perspective, and for commissioning bodies making a long-term investment in roads and subsequent infrastructure maintenance, there is a powerful argument to pay for better and safer infrastructure at the outset instead of retrofitting at greater cost in coming years.