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.

Safer roads will pay for themselves!