Tender Advertisement #1229180

Background:
Digital roadside advertising signage has been around for many years. The purpose of digital advertising signage, and other forms of roadside advertising is to broadcast information and messaging to a broad audience in a place-based setting. From an advertising perspective, the advantages of digital roadside advertising, and roadside advertising generally, are that they provide relevant and immediate messages, including road safety messages, at a glance, to a broad audience. They also generate revenue for road authorities. However, from a safety perspective, digital roadside advertising may have the potential to distract drivers, create clutter, interfere with road user perception of traffic control devices, and create other safety issues. Appropriately designed and located roadside advertising can minimise the potential for negative safety consequences.
At the present time there does not exist an Australian standard for:
• the appropriate design and location of advertising signage on road corridors
• evaluating, from a safety perspective, the impact of digital roadside advertising signage on driver performance and safety.
As a consequence of this lack of standardisation, there is wide variation between Australian States and Territories, and between countries, in the process of assessment and the baselines used to determine:
• the suitability, from a safety perspective, of erecting digital roadside advertising at any given location
• the possible impact of digital roadside advertising signage on driver performance and safety.
This lack of standardisation, and use of different methods and metrics in different ways, yields data that are open to interpretation as to the safety of digital roadside advertising in terms of its design, location, placement and/or operation. See the Austroads Research Report, 'Impact of Roadside Advertising on Road Safety (2013)' and the Outdoor Media Association's response (Austroads, 2013; Outdoor Media Association (OMA), 2013). See also Appendix A of this brief. This often results in disputes between the advertising industry, road safety authorities, and other stakeholders, that end up having to be resolved in courts; at considerable cost to both parties and to the community generally. To address this issue, a nationally coordinated research group has recently been formed: The National Research Committee on Roadside Advertising (NRCRA) (further detail is provided below).
The Committee’s aim is to scope and oversee delivery of a program of research with the following objectives:
• to recommend a standardised method, or best combination of methods, that can be used to validly, reliably and cost-effectively:
a) Assess and rate the potential impact on driver performance and safety of proposed digital roadside advertising signage
b) Assess and rate the actual impact on driver performance and safety of installed digital advertising signage
Another aim of this research is to identify what further research and other activities are required to improve the validity and reliability, where required, of the methods (including rating criteria) recommended above.

Purpose:
The purpose of this request for tender is to identify a researcher or preferably group of researchers to address the objectives above; the development of a research methodology or methodologies for a program of research (operationalised as Stage 1). The methodology or methodologies may then be used as the basis of a program of research to address the second objective above, the delivery of which will be tendered for in a separate process (operationalised as Stage 2). This second objective, Stage 2, is currently out-of-scope for the NCRCA.
The vision for how the evidence from the eventual research program would be used is: To develop a research program which provides a better evidence base for development of policy around roadside advertising, particularly in relation to digital advertising and driver performance.

Research deliverables:
A project report containing:
• A review of existing and other potential methods, that can be used to validly, reliably and cost-effectively:
a) assess and rate the potential impact on driver performance and safety of proposed digital roadside advertising signage
b) assess and rate the actual impact on driver performance and safety of installed digital roadside advertising signage
 
• Recommendations for a suitable method, or combination of methods, that can be used to validly, reliably and cost-effectively meet each of objectives (a) and (b) above. As discussed above, the above list of items must be addressed using a suitable evidence-base from the literature and expert opinion from the international expert panel.
• A review of (or reference to a review such as the Austroads, 2013 – see reference list) existing guidelines to determine which criteria should be determined as critical for regulation, as well as the criteria that research suggests is likely to be critical but is not regulated or mandated (gap analysis for which research is needed).
• A structured program of research for implementation of the recommended methods (timeline): Recommended Stage 2 plan. This program of research is to provide suitable details on each research study, indicating its priority, costs (itemise per study and in total for the entire research program) and issues discussed in the above list of items that require consideration. This will allow the Committee to put forward an appropriate program of work to ITSOC and ITM.

Also included as part of this tender are the following documents:
• Master Services Agreement outlining our Terms and Conditions. Please note that our Terms and Conditions are not negotiable.
All submissions are to be submitted as a PDF at a maximum size of 10MB.
All submissions are to include a completed Tender Proposal Coversheet.
The naming convention for submissions is: [your Company name] – [Project No.] – [any internal reference numbers].
All submissions are to include a statement as to how the respondent proposes to undertake the work, and keep to the agreed deadlines, given the current and proposed requirements and restrictions due to COVID-19.