// RoWSaF Making roads safer for road workers rowsaf.org.uk. RoWSaF Strategy 2015

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1 // RoWSaF Making roads safer for road workers rowsaf.org.uk

2 Working in partnership with clients, industry and key stakeholders to improve worker safety Often working close to live traffic, activities conducted by our road workers exposes them to significant risk of serious harm on a daily basis. The RoWSaF strategy will support delivery of this goal by aiming to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries to those maintaining or working on roads. Delivering this aim will require RoWSaF to work in joint partnership with our clients, key stakeholders, and the traffic management industry to find and promote innovative ways to reduce risk, improve safety and prevent accidents. A competent workforce is key to minimising risk of accidents. RoWSaF aims to increase the recognition of competent workers and maximise the ability for their skills to be recognised and universally accepted across the industry. RoWSaF recognises that it has a responsibility to improve safety of all road workers. Therefore a new aim of RoWSaF is to engage with client organisations responsible for the wider road network, particularly local authorities, in order to achieve greater adoption of innovative traffic management techniques, leading to improved worker safety and bring about a more consistent, safer approach across the wider road network. RoWSaF will work with these organisations to advise them as to tools and techniques which are available in order to support this. Our aim is that as employers, designers and clients, nobody comes to harm as a result of their work for us. 1

3 Progress since 2009 Working in partnership with Highways England in support of their aiming for zero vision, we have achieved a significant improvement in the safety of our road workers over the last few years as a result of innovation and outstanding collaborative working with industry partners. This has been driven by a real commitment to change. In support of the Highways Agency s 2009 road worker safety strategy, RoWSaF has worked in close collaboration with its delivery partners/ suppliers and the Highways Agency to develop and test a number of key innovations designed to improve road worker safety. One of these was to achieve a substantial reduction in the need for workers to cross live carriageways on foot by the end of This target was met. A further focus was to eliminate the need for road workers to cross a live carriageway, where they are most at risk. The Highways Agency accelerated this ambition by bringing forward its target to eliminate carriageway crossings from 2016 to the end of Working with the Highways Agency, we achieved this joint ambition and from 2015 have adopted different working practices to eliminate carriageway crossings on foot by road maintenance workers. This delivered a step change in reducing risk to road workers by removing the need for signs to be placed in the central reservation and was achieved without risking the lives of road users or road workers. Purpose of this strategy Despite these improvements, we still face significant challenges to ensure the safety of our road workers whilst conducting other traffic management or work activities. We remain fully committed to eliminating these risks wherever possible. This will require radical thinking, truly innovative approaches, revising what we consider to be acceptable risk and above all introducing evidence based change to deliver new and safer ways of working. RoWSaF cannot do this alone: it needs to continue to work with key clients and maintain cross-industry collaboration and commitment to drive the ultimate vision of zero harm. The average fatality rate for road workers continues to be one of the highest for employment sectors reported by the Health and Safety Executive. Our commitment to delivering a step change in safety has significantly reduced risk for this work group and we have seen a decrease in casualty levels which is encouraging. However, we believe that one accident is one too many and risk levels remain high compared to other related industry sectors. As a result, we must continue to work with industry partners, Highways England and key stakeholders to decrease risk to those working on live carriageways, the most hazardous workplace on our network. 2

4 Delivery against our road worker safety targets: Target Status Progress by December 2014 Target 1a: Substantially reduce the need for road maintenance workers to cross live carriageways on foot by December 2011 Target 1b: Eliminate road maintenance worker live carriageway crossings on foot by Dec (Target brought forward 2 years to December 2014.) Target 2: Aim to eliminate the need for road workers to be on foot on a live carriageway by December 2016 Target 3: Substantially reduce the risk to those working on the rear or around works vehicles on live carriageways by December Achieved and implemented Achieved by December 2014 implemented by January 2015 Partially achieved Partially achieved Following on-road trials, the temporary traffic management signs simplification technique was introduced which eliminated 40% of the advance warning signs required for short-term (relaxation scheme) road works. This enabled a substantial decrease in the number of carriageway crossings made by road workers, estimated at 46% of all crossings being eliminated. Data from our delivery partners showed that over a million live carriageway crossings were eliminated per year as a result of the changes delivered to achieve this target. The off side signs removal (OSSR) technique eliminates all central reservation signing at short-term (relaxation scheme) road works. This technique has been trialled successfully on-road and developed to the point where over 95% of short-term (relaxation scheme) lane closures can use OSSR. The remaining closures where this technique cannot be used are being undertaken either as a monitored roll out of OSSR to expand its application further or by the use of temporary workarounds pending delivery of innovative solutions that will eliminate the less common types of carriageway crossing. Published guidance (supported by the Health and Safety Executive) means road workers should only be on foot on a live carriageway when setting out traffic management from the hard shoulder on motorways or installing temporary traffic management within lead-in zones (chicanes) and around junctions (splitters). In all other cases the road workers should be protected from oncoming traffic by an impact protection vehicle which effectively closes the lane. Work is proceeding to find solutions to eliminate remaining scenarios where workers still need to be on foot in a live carriageway. Significant progress has been made to eliminate the risk to road workers on the rear of works vehicles on a live carriageway. Protection of the works vehicle by an upstream impact protection vehicle substantially reduces risk to the road workers on or around the works vehicle. In addition, significant effort has been put into reducing the time taken to install road works and so reducing the time road workers on works vehicles are exposed to risk. Innovations such as the off side signs removal and the alternative cone taper layout have reduced risk exposure time by around a half. Updated Highways Agency and HTMA guidance has enabled improved road worker safety through better use of impact protection vehicles at the approach to road works. Work is proceeding to reduce risk further by improving IPV awareness and eliminating or reducing the time road workers are exposed to risk though alternative road works design strategies. 3

5 Our priorities going forward We have significantly reduced risk to road workers but this is not enough. We must continue with our vision of no-one coming to harm during their work for us or when working on the road network and our priorities need to reflect the ongoing work that will finally eliminate remaining major sources of risk. In addition to our ongoing trials programme, we will focus on some new road worker risk areas and also prepare for planned increases in roads investment. These new risk areas are grounded in the day-to-day risk of harm that is faced by the people who work for us. These new risk areas will present a challenge, as they will all require a change in the way we deliver road works and/or traffic management. In some cases there are some elements of these risk areas that are not under our control or that of our delivery partners or suppliers; for these we will need to work with stakeholders from across the road transport sector, the breakdown / recovery industry and local government to drive an improvement in driver behaviour and encourage safe practice. We will be working with client roads authorities and the traffic management industry to develop interventions to improve the occupational health for those who work in the industry as well as building and promoting excellence in road worker behavioural safety. We must ensure that our workers think safe, act safe and stay safe 4

6 Key objectives and goals for our priority areas going forward: Topic Key objectives Activities Road worker live carriageway working Vehicle incursions into road works Occupational health, skills/competence and behavioural safety Improve driver education Involvement by local authorities Communications and knowledge Minimise risk to road maintenance workers by eliminating work on live carriageways by December Drive a significant improvement in the number of incursions. Improve the skills, competence and occupational health of road maintenance workers. Promote the adoption of positive behaviours and culture across the traffic management industry. Improve drivers respect for road works minimising risk to both road workers and road users. Engage with local highway authorities to maximise awareness of RoWSaF interventions and support their wider adoption. Increase visibility of RoWSaF interventions to achieve a wider understanding of them by the industry and roads authorities. Review outcome of work to eliminate carriageway crossings (December 2014 target) and resolve any outstanding issues to ensure that the highest level of worker safety is achieved Complete delivery of work to eliminate the need for road workers to be on foot on a live carriageway Achieve substantial reduction in risk for those working on the rear of or around works vehicles on live carriageways Publish raising the bar best practice guidance Understand the issue of incursions by improving intelligence year on year Make recommendations on future incursion projects incursion improvement programme Introduce a suite of performance measures to monitor progress against incursion improvements Identify the top five occupational health risks to traffic management workers Define specific interventions to eliminate or reduce these health risks Implement these interventions and make them good practice Promote good behavioural safety by delivery partners Support improvement in behavioural safety eg via raising the bar guidance Promote excellence in safety culture where good behavioural safety becomes the norm Develop procurement criteria to assess industry occupational health performance Develop contractual performance metrics to monitor occupational health performance Working with Highways England road user safety team, improve road user understanding of how to safely drive through road works Work with Highways England on its improving customer experience through roadworks project to maximise synergy and outcome benefit Build engagement with local authorities to share and influence take up of safe practice for road workers Build on legacy of Roadworks Summit October 2015 Develop and implement a RoWSaF knowledge centre and link to others Develop and implement RoWSaF communications plan to promote a wider awareness of, and support for, RoWSaF interventions by both clients and the traffic management industry 5 Highways England creative team Bedford S Please quote the Highways England publications code PR13/15