Oh Jesus, this is going to make me popular, not really but it may be a start.

Well, last week l mentioned several ideas l was bounding about in my head and after speaking to a few colleagues higher up the food chain l came up with a few things. My head is like a bag of spanners at the best of times but l'm one of them that can't switch off, when l read it makes it worse with idea after idea. I was challenged by a TSCO a few months ago on Linkedin reference a three way set up l had installed with a mini 7105 and a Safety barrier defining my longitudinal safety area, it was one of the best things that happened to me in, it was a wake up call. Never will l be challenged again and not know an answer or where to find that answer, knowledge is everything. Traffic Management and Civil Engineering doesn't take massive brains if we are being honest, its lots of common sense, knowledge of Chapter 8, a good understanding of TSRGD, innovation, graft, diligence and respect.

I meet many 20 yr plus people in both industries, l automatically think why is this person not in a Senior Management position, it's a long old stretch. Them people are happy to inform you of their 20 yrs + and what l have noticed is that if you are a few years into the game they are quick to show no respect. What gives us a big edge against our competition is that we rely on this snobbery, its a lack of this respect that is destroying the bigger companies in Traffic Management & Civil Engineering. The old saying of "your only as good as your last job" relates to these two industries more than most. If l see middle management staff working for the same company and they are not significantly improving the fortunes of that Company, project managing, constantly innovating training, keeping up with industry changes and building solid team infrastructure and staff CPD then l wonder why are they are still being kept on, get rid of them if they are marking time. Get fresh faces in there so that you don't stagnate as a company, staff upskilling is part of the competitiveness that drives team spirit and the true bond that makes the team a place to belong, something everyone needs. I will be doing my Engineering course (ihe) in January & February and this is all whilst l continue on a part time Civil Engineering course l started a few weeks ago, this is in preparation for our next steps as a company and we will need a few of us to have this skillset. This moves me nicely onto the next part of my article....

Who is responsible, where do we start?

I needed to be educated on this and went to another person higher up the food chain. Our roads are owned by us, the public own everything except for about 40k private roads. National Highways maintain our nationally important trunk roads and the government funds everything including maintenance. Remember our government has no money except our money. Now the A and B roads, local authorities take care of these with 50% of the bill for A roads coming from government and 30% for B roads. Local Authorities look after other local roads. This path has led me to an understanding now about the madness of the United Kingdom, our tax money which should be massive for what we pay and our population explosion is not fixing our very tired roads on the scale or speed that we need, our NHS is beyond tired and our own elderly are not getting the service they deserve, veterans are mentally messed up and sleeping on the streets, our infrastructure is broken, we have one rule for British people and different rules for others and our quality of life is really bad compared to several years ago. This madness can't be right in any country especially a country with our great history. 🏴 🇬🇧

Ok, lets get back on to the subject, enough of my personal issues with the idiots making decisions of how we run our country. We know who looks after and maintains our roads with our taxes that we pay each week. If we then go down the management line to the first point of contact, its the Traffic Management Manager which l will have all the names for soon. It will take little to get all these names and then to challenge them for a response in what they feel their responsibility is, we will know what their actual responsibilities are and we will evaluate their competency through various options. I am reading through The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 at the minute, it will take a bit of time but that will play a crucial part in challenges we will require to make. Also quite important to us will be Section 16 of the Traffic Management Act 2004, all in all we have many options that can be deployed to force action from Local Authorities, after all we own the roads.

Shame, Embarrassment and Peer Review

Three things in the title of this paragraph, these are things that really grip me the wrong way, these matter. l like to think of myself as an ordinary bloke with simple needs nowadays, there was a time when my needs were much more but l'm mellowed out now with grandchildren and Simon and Nathan also have young girls who are like additional grandchildren. If any of us three were to put a job out individually and it was shite then lets just say we are getting it in the neck from all angles from each other. If one of our staff do it then they know whats coming from me and interestingly their peers, the shame works more effectively than any punishment. The peers part is born through team spirit and we actually will look at jobs in the training room during toolbox talks to see what could have been done better on past jobs. When l done my assessors course l knew straight away it wasn't for me, l wanted to train people as it was a skillset l had being taught in the army and l was good at it. My good friends at Up To Speed can take care of that side of it and they're good at it with a great infrastructure system and understanding with Lantra and many competent assessors available. I understand meaningful collaboration is extremely important for continued success, bringing or trying to move everything in house with the wrong people doesn't work out well, ask around!

Once again l will make this offer for anyone who requires or wants it. I'm not expecting anyone except ex army to know or understand this, whilst at my Section Commanders Battle Course at the Infantry Training Centre a long long time ago l was approached twice to join the Small Arms School Corps (SASC), these people were responsible for training small arms and support weaponry. It was a highly sought after roll, (about 30-50 people in the British Army(120k) at the time) only for people who could competently train soldiers, l turned it down three times over the next few years. If you want to send people to become trainers of Traffic Management send them to us FREE OF CHARGE, what have you got to lose, if the person/s you have now should not be training your staff get rid of them. Stop the rot now, the offer is genuine and in complete discretion. Anyone responsible for appointing training staff come and see how we do it, it works and it starts a prospective staff member on the right path learning the correct things. Complete discretion will be given.

Jesus Christ l do go on l know. Right, let's put meat on the bone to my idea. The people above us, the old boys and girls clubs are only brought out of the morgue when they have too, member of the public dies action needed, the DfT asks for a change in proficiency or its time to get a pay rise and we need to show that we actually matter. I care for Traffic Management and Civil Engineering, its survival and continued dedication to professionalism is important to me. I'm ashamed if the public have to keep enduring our nonsense works, embarrassed if people call us out on stuff and if our peers question our quality or compliance we are horrified. My next step is a professionally run reporting Website for non compliant works, defective groundworks, unprofessional working activity, suspected Health & Safety Issues, Footway Issues, Bus Stop issues & unethical permits. I have no idea how this will look in a few months but it will only be a few of us reporting things that need rectifying immediately, this will not be directly accessible to the public but they can email concerns. We don't want spiteful rectric or unfair reviews of solid works This idea may sink quicker than the Titanic but we will give it a good go, research has already been done and company representatives will have full access and be asked to supply a phone number so that issues can be reported to the companies firstly. Companies like Chevron (The New Amberon) are not contactable out of hours or in hours for that fact so issues with repeat compliance issues will go up the ladder and there will be advice given on who they should report issues to and how you can escalate the issue to HSE. Trust me, when the public starts to report to higher echelons said companies will start answering calls and actually giving a shit about the people who OWN THE ROAD. I may get them to remove them non compliant FOOTPATH CLOSED signs in Thame soon, l can bet good money on that happening this week.

Lots of fancy positions popping up. (Virtue Signalling explosion)

I was reading some old articles in relation to carbon reduction the other day and was surprised by the literature and have now started to catalogue it, l just have a funny feeling we will be talking about it in the future and it will be good for discussion sooner rather later l would say. Some of the wording is hilarious and it will be a big bite on the ass that comes down the road before anything good from comes from Net Zero. I have lost count of how many times we have being approached in the past three months to lead somes reinstatement teams for EV works, no thanks. That boat has sailed for us already and with numbers under £15 a metre floating and just above day rate for installation l would rather gouge my left eyeball out with a rusty fork. The dig and reinstatement teams have hurt themselves or should l say the bosses have, you will pay for wages, insurances and vans but you will not do much more. EV installation have stalled and no one wants it, be interesting to see what happens with it over the next 4 months.

Every one loves a promotion and some of these job titles getting bounded about from Core Highways are exciting, makes me feel like doing a packed lunch, flask of tea , a tent and setting of by foot to Core Highways Central. Now we are all aware that Core needed this rebrand to bring the umbrella over the decent companies they bought and then try to slip Amberon out the back door. Just think of Amberon as Joe Biden, now as with Joe as president you could wheel him out and make sure he doesn't say anything, but now just imagine you have him on an IPV as the Foreman with an Amberon badge doing a 4k stretch on the M1 with a splitter and a merge your thinking ffs get him back to the Depot sharpish. No disrespect to Core but Amberon is a smell that aint going away quick, people in the Upper echelons of the game may be saying it's all forgotten about but the Traffic Management has to reciprocate the literature and it is not atm. The Stronger Together hashtag, the Carbon Reduction and that Technical Centre of Excellence bringing together TOP TALENT, why does no one say nothing, this sets you up to have a bigger fall than good old graft and people actually doing the damn job. You stated "We are excited to unveil a PIVOTAL development at Core Highways". What l would have advised your clearly incompetent communications team would have been to start that article like so, " We have not being providing our best Temporary Traffic Management in the past few years, we have purchased a few competent companies and rebranded, Core Highways will be the dawn of a new era. Amberon is no more and we really apologise for what it became, we knew we had to change, we now have plenty of fresh talent, we have listened. Innovators, keen operatives who care about the Principles and Objectives of Traffic Management. We will work tirelessly to regain our customers confidence and our management teams have a new mission, to provide you the best Traffic Management so we can deliver Traffic Management."

I do have a soft spot for GTM which makes this difficult.

No doubt about it a good and decent company and why l hate this part of the article. I seen a monstrosity in Northampton the other night and it was confirmed by one of my mates when l ended up on shift with him at Stoke the other day. He had seen the same job whilst on maintenance for Martins on the M1 and popped to the chippy. I am not going to quote everything wrong with this job but l am positive this is not the Contract Specification, key things were unsafe for the public and here is some of the more serious non compliance points that need addressing Go Traffic Management Limited (GTM) Ltd .

• The approach road should have had a CDB system starting with a paddy at 300m.
• Wickets on that roundabout with the paddy are not sufficient for the driver.
• Other approaches should also have terminals.
• Start of safety barrier guarding excavation 610.
• Excavation of 1.5m less than 500mm to the footpath, wind was expected (double sandbag).
• What is going on with that 4 lane wicket, l lost confidence in you when l seen this.
• Two 610's with non compliant 7105's.
• The storm on Sunday was expected, most of the site was down leaving it extremely unsafe.

There were many more but i will leave the pictures for your own judgment

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