Construction Traffic Control Personnel Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Controlling traffic during construction requires a lot of precaution and skill. Every vehicle, plant, and activity poses a risk to life and properties if not managed properly. As a professional traffic control personnel, it is your duty to ensure that everyone and everything is safe.

While you may be exceptional at your job, some situations are difficult to handle. In this article, we’ll be highlighting the common challenges every construction traffic controller can face and how to deal with them.

Table of Contents

1. Minimizing Movements

Limiting movements around the construction site is nearly impossible. Workers have tasks to complete, and vehicles have places to be. Movement is necessary for every construction project.

However, with proper planning, movement around the construction site can be reduced to a large extent. Create a construction schedule that keeps workers and vehicles functioning at different times of the day. Allowing vehicles and workers at the construction site at the same time exposes them to hazards.

You also want to incorporate one-way systems in the site layout. Reversing vehicles are one of the leading causes of accidents in construction sites. But with a one-way system, vehicles never have to reverse to reach their destination.

2. Increasing Visibility in the Work Zone

Construction sites have a lot of obstacles that reduce visibility. There are uneven grounds, excavated holes, water courses, and heavy-duty machines everywhere.

To increase visibility, the construction site needs to be properly lit, and pedestrians must put on high-visibility clothing. There should also be caution signs and tapes around uneven grounds and other areas that are prone to hazards.

Alarm cameras, mirrors, and banksmen should also be available to help vehicles navigate smoothly. With all of these, workers can see clearly and stay alert, especially at night.

3. Skill Issue

Having inexperienced workers on the project can also cause accidents. Workers in charge of plants and machinery, banksmen, and signallers should have complete knowledge and training on how to do their jobs.

Before any operation begins, put them through a competence test and ensure that they all know traffic rules. Let them undergo extra training under your supervision if they have to. Hazards are easier to avoid when all workers are properly trained and aware of the dangers lurking around.

4. Change in Site Layout

During construction, the site layout is susceptible to change. This means that pedestrians have to change their workstations and equipment has to be placed in different locations as the project enters a new phase.

As a traffic controller, you must prepare for these changes and remain proactive always. Your traffic management plan should be updated as soon as there is a change in the layout and communicated to your team.

Provide new entry and exit points, walkways, crossings, and barriers when necessary to avoid accidents.

5. Visitor Activities

From time to time, visiting drivers who have no knowledge of the site layout will be present on the construction site to make a delivery or perform a task. To prevent their innocent and important visit from escalating to a life-threatening accident, you must manage their activities when they visit.

Stay with them always and offer them guidance. Have all workers in charge of navigation on guard and inform pedestrians about visitors. This way, they can all offer professional assistance and keep them up to speed with the traffic rules of the construction site.

Conclusion

The successful completion of the project is in your hands as a traffic controller. So, it is important to understand potential challenges and how to deal with them to ensure that all workers are safe and the construction site is accident-free.