New safer road workzone practices

In the UK, the construction business Connect Plus Services is implementing new practices that reduce the need for crossings of live carriageways. These practices are expected to save the lives of road construction workers. Connect Plus Services is the company that has the contract to maintain, operate and upgrade the M25 motorway around London over a 30-year period. The contract is carried out on behalf of the Highways Agency. The firm has developed a new method of managing traffic approaching road construc
September 15, 2014 Read time: 2 mins
In the UK, the construction business Connect Plus Services is implementing new practices that reduce the need for crossings of live carriageways. These practices are expected to save the lives of road construction workers. Connect Plus Services is the company that has the contract to maintain, operate and upgrade the M25 motorway around London over a 30-year period. The contract is carried out on behalf of the 2309 Highways Agency. The firm has developed a new method of managing traffic approaching road construction zones, with the aim of saving the lives of site personnel. The method, which has now been approved for use on the English motorway network, will prevent millions of crossings being made by site personnel across busy live carriageways in front of traffic travelling at fast speeds.

Road maintenance is one of the riskiest employment sectors to work. Trials carried out by Connect Plus Services, with the support of RoWSaF (an industry body which develops ways to improve the health, safety and welfare of our road workers), the Highways Agency and the Transport Research Laboratory (777 TRL), have shown that improved overhead electronic signage and nearside signage removes the need for temporary central reservation signage as a way of encouraging motorists to slow down on the approach to roadworks. The method was piloted and implemented on over 1,000km of the network over a two-year period by Connect Plus Services, (a joint venture partnership between 1146 Balfour Beatty, 3005 Atkins and 2643 Egis Roads SA), with support from 1530 Balfour Beatty Mott MacDonald, and has already saved over a million crossings by personnel.

The removal of the need to place central carriageway signage across live carriageways applies to carriageways of over three lanes and will be a major contributor to the Highways Agency’s target of eliminating all live carriageway crossings by roadworkers by December 2014.
Highway & Network Management

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Amey’s hard-hitting safety DVD supports Highways Agency Safety Week
    October 21, 2013
    Amey is playing a leading role in the fight for zero harm at road works sites with the launch of a hard-hitting DVD in support of a national radio advertising campaign to coincide with the UK Highways Agency’s ‘Safety Week’ (October 21-27 October 2013). The public and regulated services provider’s DVD ‘Changing Behaviours – What Does It Take?’ features powerful scenes of near misses and accidents on the motorway and is designed to make employees think about what more they can do to make they keep themsel
    Read More
  • Financial close reached for A9 Gaasperdammerweg motorway work
    November 25, 2014
    Financial close has been reached for expansion of the A9 motorway near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. BNG Bank, DZ BANK, ING, KBC, SMBC and Société Général have made available a short-term debt of US$174 million (€140 million) and half of the long-term debt of nearly $509 million (€410 million). The European Investment Bank will provide the other half of the long-term debt. Mott MacDonald is the lenders’ technical advisor to the consortium IXAS Zuid-Oost, which has the public-private contract to expand
    Read More
  • UK village deploys SWARCO mobile signs to improve road safety
    May 24, 2016
    A village in the UK county of Derbyshire is tackling the issue of speeding drivers by installing the latest Moveable Vehicle Activated Signs (MVAS) from SWARCO Traffic. MVAS are ‘self-deployment’ signs that are designed specifically for parish councils to improve road safety and encourage safer driving speeds. The latest generation of SWARCO’s “Your Speed Is” signs are lighter than previous models and feature improved battery life. The signs are portable, allowing them to be moved easily from post to
    Read More
  • Widening for key section of UK’s A11 route complete
    December 12, 2014
    Contractor Balfour Beatty has completed the €132.4 million (£105 million) upgrade of the last remaining single carriageway section of the A11. This section of the route runs between Barton Mills in Suffolk and Thetford in Norfolk. The work involved dualling nearly 15km of carriageway on behalf of the Highways Agency.
    Read More

Highlighted Content