The Highways Agency operates 200 vehicles – Land Rover Discoverys and Mitsubishi Shoguns – and is on call 24 hours a day, every day.

The heavy mileage means the vehicles need to be serviced every six weeks.

Maintenance and repair is outsourced to Babcock.

Babcock used to be responsible for more fleet management at the Highways Agency but the new government procurement process has reduced the need for some of its services.

The main responsibility of a Highways Agency traffic officer is to make safe an area following a breakdown or accident by alerting oncoming traffic and managing the traffic flow.

A close relationship with the police is key.

Traffic officers are in most cases first to the scene.

Working only on motorways and major trunk roads, traffic officers’ routes are closely monitored at one of the 36 regional control centres around England.

Considering the number of miles travelled by the fleet, accidents are low with, on average, 17 vehicles a year involved in incidents. The majority of these are minor bumps and scratches.

Driver behaviour is a key area when it comes to reducing fuel costs, but Rowley admits it’s hard for the agency to measure and he is not looking to implement eco driver training because the nature of the job means hard acceleration and high speeds are often required.

“We encourage drivers not to get fuel on motorways but we are not looking at driver training at the moment. Our drivers need to accelerate hard to get off the hard shoulder so it sometimes will not work for us,” Rowley explains.

All new drivers go through a full training course which they must pass to be able to work for the company. In addition they must have no more than three points on their licence.

Employee licences are checked annually, which includes office staff who may never drive for the company.

The Highways Agency’s two-year replacement cycles enables it to take advantage of any improvements in engine technology as soon as they are introduced.

As a result, its CO2 emissions are constantly in decline. Fuel savings and safety are also beneficiaries of this policy.

Rowley is reassessing funding methods to identify whether outright purchase would be a better option because of the potential re-sell values.

“We are re-evaluating the lease versus buy decision because we are still not certain which is the most economical for us,” he says.