Focusing on road safety

03/02/2017

Our Downer Infrastructure Services business is proud be part of the National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP).

The NRSPP offers a collaborative network for Australian organisations such as Downer to share, build and implement effective road safety strategies in the workplace to develop a positive road safety culture.

“The NRSPP is designed to help businesses keep their employees and fleets safe, productive and sustainable, through the reduction of road injuries and resultant compensation payments,” said Mark Collins, General Manager Zero Harm, Infrastructure Services.

Participation in the NRSPP is an opportunity to network with other Australian companies pursuing the same road safety goals, to learn and share experience and initiatives and to access leading road safety research.

“Our business has identified reversing, both on worksites and roads, and the loss of control of vehicles, either on the road or parked, as our most frequently occurring high potential incident types,” said Mark.

“We have been working over the past five years to develop solutions to address the underlying causes of these incidents, and participating in the NRSPP helps us not only share our knowledge but also learn from other organisations on their effective strategies – all for the benefit of improving road safety in our industry.”

Current initiatives developed in our Infrastructure Services business include:

• Review of Exclusion and No-Go Zones to separate operating vehicles and mobile plant from all pedestrians.
• Investigation of pedestrian detection systems to identify workers and other pedestrians in proximity to worksite traffic and mobile plant.
• Driver training and competency assessment.
• Vehicle Load/Unload training to ensure vehicles are loaded/unloaded correctly and loads effectively restrained.
• Specification of standard safety features for fleet vehicles including the highest vehicle safety rating.
• Handbrake alarms to prevent vehicle roll-aways.
• Engaging with our contractors to achieve uniform vehicle safety standards and driving competencies on our worksites and public roads.
• Spotter training to control vehicle movements at our worksites.
• Critical Risk programme and management involvement.

"We have already started sharing some of our learnings and initiatives such as the Downer Great Drivers program and there is also high interest from participating organisations in our Mission Possible strategy that includes working with a charity to promote prevention of low speed run-over incidents at home, work and in public areas like car parks,” said Mark.

“A recent webinar the NRSPP ran featured London’s strategies to improve the safety of vulnerable road users from the impacts of construction vehicles on their city roads, and there were some interesting learnings we could look at to implement in our business,” added Mark.