Traffic Management Workshop – Ballarat

Dr Elizabeth Gibson, reports on the Traffic Management Workshop held in Ballarat.

THE traffic Management Workshop was held in Ballarat on 1 May, 2014 and was facilitated by David McKelvie of DMcK Management. the sponsors were Landair Surveys and Walsh Quarries, Ballarat.

The objectives of the workshop were to provide participants with:

• awareness of the regulatory requirements
• insight to the extractive industry incident data
• understanding of how a risk management process can be used to establish and successfully implement a traffic management plan specific to their site requirements
• knowledge and tools required to establish a traffic management plan specific to their site requirements
• realisation of WorkSafe’s expectations

The morning commenced with a brief presentation by Landair Surveys who outlined their product and application to traffic management in quarries/ recyclers.

Chris Walschotts from WorkSafe spoke comprehensively on traffic Management in Quarries, the hierarchy of controls and showed statistics where 34% of Quarry Improvement Notices in Victoria are issued for traffic management/site security.

David McKelvie ran through the risk management process and the objective of the traffic Management Plan which was to achieve separation of mobile equipment, road trucks, light vehicles and pedestrians; whilst creating a safe, effective and smooth traffic flow through the site in the most efficient and economical manner possible.

Steps for the traffic Management Plan included:

• an aerial survey or drawn plan is required
• form a consultative team to decide on the scope of the plan
• identify all vehicles on site: light, heavy, regular, occasional, deliveries
• identify and understand current traffic movements that align or don’t align with the site operations, i.e. turnaround times, blocks and barriers
• consider all traffic elements
• establish desired traffic flow
• conduct risk assessments on traffic flow

After a break for lunch, the group was broken up into smaller groups to workshop their way through the risk assessment process to identify hazards on site and subsequent controls.

A bus then departed for Walsh Quarries Ballarat where traffic management was observed at their quarry site which ended the workshop.

A draft Guideline for traffic Management will be developed by CMPA.

Some of the comments from the Workshop participants were:

“Gave me some good ideas to put forward to our manager”

“Very informative presentations for future reference”

“I was provided with plenty of information some already known, some of it very informative”

“Clarity of specific requirements for formal Traffic Management Plans”

You must be logged in to post a comment Login