The 30th of July 2004, Ensign Highways was awarded a Private Finance Initiative contract for 25 years by the City of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. This project was to deal with the city road network (but not only); 480km of roads with 26% in critical conditions and 22% in failed conditions. The project is fence to fence. The budget of the City could not deal with this aged network. The goal of the paper will be to present the original contract specifications and requirements, to show the work done since the beginning of the contract and to leave a part in the paper to present the owner’s approach, expectations and first assessments after four years of contract. A part will be done by Ensign Highways (COLAS SA and COLAS Ltd) to show the means (equipment, personnel) prepared by the company, the specific approach done to optimize work, minimize the burden to the citizens and to provide the best strategy for the roads issue. Financial aspect will also be presented to see what is at stake. Strategy applied by Ensign Highways is very closely linked to the technical level of the existing road network. Pavement preservation techniques ar very strongly implemented. Techniques and innovations were applied in order to speed the application, to improve long term characteristics; therefore to improve the comfort of the users in an urban environment.
