Workforce In Road   

If any of our previous posts hurt or upset any women doing this very difficult job we apologise from the bottom of our hearts. We do realise that the women work hard and often have to work much harder that the men to achieve the same respect. We realise that our old fashioned beliefs and thoughts are now resigned to a World of the past and we want to make sure that all young or older women are given every opportunity to realise their ambitions. Most of us have daughters that work here and also granddaughters and we would never want to see them restricted in what employment they would want to choose. In future we will try hard to promote women entering the industry and use appropriate language relating to our workforce. We once again would like to humbly apologise especially to Chantel and Rebecca who helped us understand that we where wrong. We have now removed them posts and will strive to re-educate ourselves with the help of our Business Gateway Services in Leicestershire, we are sorry!

As we move towards Christmas I am sure like us everyone is ready for a break, it has been constantly busy and we have not stopped. Our preparations for the New Year have been underway for a few weeks with lots of work going into our ISO9001 certification. Over the break I continue with something that has been dear to me for the past 13 years where I fill a comfort pack for veterans that are in prison for crime born from PTSD effects. I have never been a Xmas person as all it seems to do is cost money so a few people will get Xmas presents and I will hopefully get a break for a few days and watch some television. Don't be expecting a Xmas card.

We now have many hours of experience, and many different scenarios to call on for jobs that we apply our very good 12D knowledge to daily. We ourselves have been guilty of this on posts that we have published, prematurely as now we know. I read earlier that a civils guy died in Newport whilst moving tarmac from the truck to the hole when he was struck by a farm vehicle. The council were fined £2m for the fact that the appropriate TM wasn't installed. Im sure we have all been there whilst doing 12D, I tend to blame soft or inexperienced operatives not telling the civils crew to wait whilst we set the TM up. By the time you get the tablet out after a quick Risk Assessment and fill in your name and sign it the civils are giving you dodgy looks or there in the bloody road, everyone wants to get it done so you all can have an early dart.

In these scenarios however you do see a lot of inexperience and no dynamic risk assessment because of peer pressure. When you choose a Traffic Control method make sure you use the correct width of shuttle lane, more than often I see operatives install 12D work areas likes its an M1 job. Operatives forget all to often that the public are agitated by the works once they see them, then when its their turn to go through them its an opportunity to expel that anger by putting the foot down. If you install a good well balanced shuttle lane at the correct width for your type of traffic at the time you can do what it says on the tin and control the traffic. If you install a 5m wide light aircraft runway then it will act like Siverstone and you will invite scooters, cyclists and even other cars to try their luck and attempt a dangerous manoeuvre. No one knows the reason that this poor man died in Newport as we were not on site but if you are part of a Traffic Management crew on these sites don't sit in your vans looking at your mobiles, watch the backs of the people on the site, interact with the public, marshal the pedestrians and most important of all show a presence so that traffic know their is Workforce in The Road.


Thanks