SCOTS - Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland

Best Practice

Best Practice Case Studies

SCOTS regards the encouragement and ultimate sharing of best practice to be one of its most important functions. This website is a particular medium through which it can achieve that aim.

It is our aim that this zone of the site will grow over the coming months. While some material will come from SCOTS itself, we would also like to invite members and their authorities to submit suggestions for projects which they have instigated and where they feel what has been learned could benefit other authorities – and those in Scotland whom they serve. Please contact Ken Morrison if you have any such suggestions.

Best Practice Case Studies

Natural stone surfacing

Street lighting

Roadside memorials

Disbaled Persons Parking Places

Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems for Roads

SUDS for Roads Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon Toolkit

Introduction

Following the publication of SUDS for Roads guidance manual, SCOTS and the SUDS Working Party have produced a Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon toolkit to as an addendum to the guidance manual. The Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon toolkit can be used as part of the SUDS selection criteria to provide evidence to support the appropriate selection of SUDS in different developments.

Overview of the Tool

This toolkit has been designed to allow local authorities and consultant engineers to calculate whole life cost and whole life carbon for a range of SUDS features for highway drainage, including:

Swales
Filter strips
Filter drains
Bio-retention
Ponds
Wetlands
Basins (infiltration and detention)
Permeable block paving

The latest version of the toolkit is available to download here. Users will require Microsoft Excel 2003 or later to operate the toolkit. When opening the toolkit users will need to ensure that they enable macros within Excel. Appendix A of the user guidelines explains how to do this.

Periodically, updated versions of the toolkit may be uploaded to the website. Therefore, users should download the latest version of the toolkit prior to each use to ensure they have the most up-to-date version. It is recommended that the user guidelines are read prior to using the toolkit; the user guidelines are available to download here.

A primary use of the toolkit is to compare the whole life cost and whole life carbon different SUDS approaches for the same development site. To undertake a comparison, users will need to create a new version of the spreadsheet for each SUDS approach, and then export data into a comparison spreadsheet. A blank spreadsheet is available to download here, which provides an example of how a user may wish to compare SUDS approaches for the same development site

Feedback on the toolkit would be highly welcome. Please provide feedback on the toolkit and/or user guidelines, using the feedback form, which can be downloaded here. Please send feedback to the following email address: les.watson@sepa.org.uk

Disclaimer

SCOTS and SUDS Working Party has developed the Whole Life Cost and Whole Life Carbon toolkit to support the SUDS for Roads guidance manual. The toolkit is being made available with the proviso that users understand that SCOTS and SUDS Working Party cannot guarantee the accuracy and validity of the outputs. Whilst every effort has been made to use the best available evidence to develop this toolkit, including the use of industry-standard pricing books, users of the toolkit should satisfy themselves that they have reviewed and are fully content with the assumptions applied.