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The score also came with top marks in three specific areas: social value, stakeholder engagement and customer communications. Highways News said the latest review identified progress in governance, insight, reporting, performance management, workforce engagement and continuous improvement. Laura Davis, National Highways’ customer experience and supplier practice lead, called the result “a fantastic accomplishment” and said it showed Kier’s continuing work on customer experience and maturity. Kier, for its part, said the rating reflected work across its Infrastructure division and its effort to keep customers central to decision-making while trying to leave a broader community legacy through the schemes it delivers. (highways-news.com)
Why that matters becomes clearer when the assessment itself is examined. Construct magazine reported that National Highways began asking suppliers in 2020 to measure their customer maturity through 23 questions spanning five themes: governance; culture, behaviour and social value; engagement; systems and processes; and continuous improvement. The same feature said the roads body’s target was for every supply-chain partner to reach 3.0 by 2025 and 4.0 by 2030. In that context, Kier’s 4.2 suggests it has moved ahead of the longer-term benchmark that National Highways had previously set for the wider market. Donna Dind, National Highways’ customer experience and supplier practice lead, said suppliers had “driven targeted improvements through their Customer Centric Action Plans”. (user-h0ifnki.cld.bz)
The process is not a one-off badge exercise. A National Highways contract attachment published through Contracts Finder says consultants and, in some cases, joint-venture members must undertake customer maturity assessments with the client’s supplier performance improvement team every two years unless told otherwise. Those suppliers must then produce a Customer Centric Action Plan and review it with the client every three months. The same document makes clear that “customers” in this system go beyond motorists, extending to communities and community groups, tenants and leaseholders, and the public using the service. (contractsfinder.service.gov.uk)
National Highways has also tried to formalise the support behind those scores. In a company LinkedIn post announcing a refreshed Supplier Development System, it said the programme was free, open to existing and prospective suppliers, and built around e-learning modules, videos and development tools. It described the system as scalable to the size and maturity of each business and said it gave suppliers access to National Highways’ latest thinking on safety, customer maturity, productivity, sustainability, digital delivery and modern methods of construction. National Highways’ annual reporting has similarly said the system’s reach had been extended and that it was seeing growth in supply-chain maturity, capabilities and skills. (linkedin.com)
For Kier, the 4.2 rating fits a longer pattern rather than arriving in isolation. In August 2023, Highways News reported that Kier Transportation’s A43 team became the first to score 8 out of 10 in National Highways’ Customer Assurance Framework across the interfaces with HS2’s main civils contractors. That work involved a new bridge structure in Northamptonshire to carry the A43 over the route of the new railway via a temporary diversion. The report said the team’s score was helped by regular contact with parish councils, repeated updates on closures and diversions, several full closures carried out with 100% compliance, and a wider package of social-value activity. National Highways’ Tim Coffey described the framework as “a really important tool” for managing complicated stakeholder activity. (highways-news.com)
The result also lands as Kier’s highways business expands elsewhere. In October 2025, the company said it had been appointed to Norfolk County Council’s highways and infrastructure term services contract, worth £700m over up to 14 years, with a start date of 1 April 2026. By April this year, Kier said the contract had gone live, covering 9,836km of highway network and bringing 100 staff across under TUPE arrangements from the previous contractor. The company said the work would include surfacing, drainage improvements, bridge and structures activity and routine maintenance, while also backing community engagement, local jobs, active travel and programmes for care leavers in the county. (kier.co.uk)
That wider backdrop helps explain why National Highways places so much weight on customer maturity. For a contractor running long-duration public works, the test is no longer confined to whether a scheme is built; it is increasingly about how it is communicated, how disruption is managed and what local value is left behind. On the evidence published so far, Kier’s latest score suggests it has become one of the stronger performers in a system National Highways intends suppliers to revisit repeatedly, rather than pass once and forget. (user-h0ifnki.cld.bz)
Source: Noah Wire Services
