Paul Thompson Introduction
I’m Paul from Little Hulton, I work for a traffic management (TM)/roadworks company as a TM Supervisor. It’s recently changed to a dual role with some Health & Safety thrown in, such as, tool box talks; tweaking the risk assessments and method statements; and auditing our crews etc.
As a company we install Traffic Management; road markings and install loop inductors (eg for traffic light control). We also do some highways related civils work, such as, installing speed cameras (including the new Vector SR cameras that they don’t seem to like very much in Wigan!!).
I’ve worked on the roads for about 16 years. My best role so far was on the Highways Agency Incident Support Unit from 2009-2012. We dealt with RTC’s and network defects, such as, potholes; damage to crown property; litter; sharps, etc.
Roadworks – and the Impact Protection Vehicle (IPV)
The Impact Protection Vehicle (IPV) is required on motorways and dual carriageways, of 50mph and above, to be able to install traffic management from the live lanes. It protects the smaller vehicle in front while they install the cone taper and/or warning signs; the 2 vehicles should be 75m apart (+/- 25m).
On the motorways, before we go ‘live lane’, we must have set our signs and signals with the National Highways Regional Control Centre, the traffic count must be below a certain level and visibility should be good. You will see that the rear of the vehicle is designed to concertina to absorb any rear impact.
The Impact Protection Vehicle is an LGV Cat C (the old HGV class 2), you need to have some additional qualifications to operate them.
Our most hazardous roads to work on are high speed dual carraigeways; they are often unlit, usually without signs/signals and have gaps in the centre reservation and lay-bys, farm entrances, etc.
I took the photo (left) on the A555 in Stockport while I was auditing them. You can see the IPV is protecting the 3.5t van as they were collecting their advance signs.
The second photo shows when it goes wrong (the company & dual carriageway location is not known).
.
Paul Thompson