Construction sites are one of the most hazardous work environments. The use of dangerous machinery and vehicles means you need to have a site traffic management plan to keep your construction site safe.
If you’re wondering, what is traffic control management? You’re in the right place. In this blog post, we’re outlining what construction traffic management is and how you can best implement it on your construction site.
What Is Traffic Control Management?
Construction traffic management is a system whereby you manage the vehicles, machinery and pedestrians on your construction site. Using crowd barriers, visible signs and ensuring your staff are correctly trained are all contributing factors to the safety of your construction site.
This management aims to keep everyone as safe as possible and ensure your site runs smoothly without any health and safety concerns. Before beginning work on a construction site, a site traffic management plan should take place.
This plan ensures the construction site manages both its pedestrians and its vehicles in the safest way possible. An effective site traffic management plan reduces the risk of injury and ensures everyone understands the health and safety precautions that need to be taken on-site.
How Can I Implement Traffic Management On My Construction Site?
There are several ways you can implement traffic management on your construction site. These different elements all work together to optimise the safety and productivity of your construction site. In this post, we’ve outlined what you need to do to implement a successful site traffic management plan.
Keeping People And Machinery Separate
Keeping machinery and pedestrians separate is imperative to your traffic management plan. Most accidents that occur on construction sites are the result of collisions between pedestrians and machinery or vehicles. To reduce this happening, you should keep these two crucial elements of your site as far away from each other as possible.
Having separate entrances and exits for people and vehicles, designated car parks, and vehicle marshalls are effective ways of segregating pedestrians and vehicles. To make these designated spaced even clearer, utilise crowd control barriers and signs.
Employing Trained Professionals
Specially trained professionals are something you can not compromise on. It’s imperative that you hire competent, qualified, health and safety-conscious individuals. By failing to do this, accidents may arise, and you will be the one facing the repercussions.
Individuals working on your site need to have legitimate up-to-date permits and licences. It’s your job to check these before taking on workers and if you hire during the project. It’s also essential that you undergo a risk assessment before the project begins.
To maintain this high standard throughout your project, regularly check in with your staff and make sure you’re providing relevant up to date training.
Being Seen
Visibility is high-priority on a construction site. Part of your site traffic management plan needs to focus on increasing visibility. This visibility relates to both pedestrians and vehicles and machinery
To make sure machinery and vehicles are always visible, assign them dedicated spaces and pathways. Mark these areas out using signs and crowd control barriers. Making this distinction tells people where they need to be and ensures vehicles and pedestrians never cross pathways.
All pedestrians on-site need to wear high-vis clothing to maximise visibility. In addition to this, it’s also a good idea to instal CCTV and mirrors on your construction site.
Using Signage And Barriers To Make Things Clear
As mentioned previously, signs and barriers are a useful tool for organising your construction site. The combination of signs and barriers tell and show people the rules and regulations they need to be following. For example, barriers can block off pedestrian-only areas from vehicles, keep machinery safely out the way, and carve out walkways. Adding clear signage to this set up makes these things abundantly clear. Signs can inform people of one-way systems and inform them of where entrances and exits are.
Maintaining A High-Standard Throughout
We mentioned how important it is to maintain high standards in our ’employing trained professionals’ point. This critical point doesn’t just stop with whom you hire; you need to apply it to all aspects of your construction traffic management plan. There’s no use having a high-quality and well-structured plan before you begin work if you don’t carry this on throughout.
As a construction site runner or worker, you need to be making frequent checks to ensure you’re managing on-site traffic to the highest possible standard. As well as checking staff relations, you need to make sure signs are in the right places, designated areas remain blocked off, and all employees are abiding by the traffic management systems in place.
The work of traffic management is never a done job; it’s something you have to maintain whilst the construction site is in use. To avoid accidents, increase productivity, and make your staff feel safe, construction traffic management is vital.
This article has explained what is traffic control management is. By following these simple steps and creating a site traffic management plan for your construction site, you’re doing the best you can to avoid danger and keep people safe.
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