one.network, Skewb and Cadent collaborate to drive innovation

Recently, we announced our partnership with utility and street works sector pioneers Skewb. We’ve been working together for several months now and have teamed up with Cadent, the UK’s largest gas distribution network, to help the latter manage its street works in a completely new way.

Our aims

Before this partnership, Cadent outsourced its traffic management planning for domestic connections, which was costly and created unnecessary delays in the permit approval process.Communications about plans and permit approvals were a lengthy back-and-forth process via email. Plans could take up to 10 days to produce and submit to highway authorities. The average permit review time was four weeks, creating uncertainty on permit refusals and acceptances, and delays to works starting.

Cadent’s aim, then, was to improve its planning efficiency and communication, as well as to accelerate street works permit approvals, with the hope of completing street works faster and as a result increasing customer satisfaction.

Working together

Skewb introduced Cadent to our Planning and Coordination solution, to help them improve communication with highway authorities and speed up permit approvals.Using our technology, Cadent were able to bring forward street works planned in Northampton for the 18th of October to the 6th of September. Further communication via our Plan Share module, meant that Northamptonshire Council requested to bring these works forward even earlier to the 27th of August due to school holidays meaning the works would take place eight weeks earlier than planned!

The added benefit is that this was agreed in just two days, where previously, using traditional email communication, this would have taken up to four weeks.

The results

Together, with our help and Skewb’s, Cadent have been able to:

• Collaborate and communicate to improve and accelerate planning and works start times.
• Reduce street works permit approval times from four weeks to two days.
• Improve customer satisfaction with faster works completion 

Rebecca Payne, the Innovation Project Manager at Cadent, told us:

"Plan Share has revolutionised our communication with Northamptonshire and will continue to improve and enhance our collaboration with highway authorities across our networks."

Cadent are now implementing our technology more widely across the business and expanding its usage to other areas across the UK, with the hope of continuing to improve collaboration and communication with more highway authorities to create a more effective street works planning process.

If you’re interested in hearing more about Cadent’s success with one.network or our partnership with Skewb, please get in touch. We’re happy to have a chat.