Roadworks – security guards?

I’ve recently noticed that there’s often a person sat in a car in the cones of traffic light controlled roadworks on A roads, even at night.

I can’t remember seeing this before – has there been a change in the rules? Are they there to stop people nicking the cones and lights or falling down holes?

Possibly to prevent theft of tools and materials?

Potentially there to react everytime the traffic lights fail and cause more chaos. That’s what we had on a road near us recently. All through the day too even on Sundays when no one else was around. Just a person slouched in the front of a van looking very bored each time we passed.

Yep person there in case lights mess up. Easiest/most boring job in the world?

Yep person there in case lights mess up.

They couldn’t give a stuff about them messing up! it’s to stop them getting pinched. They’re much more expensive than you might think!

I see it all the time in Matlock – often a young lad just sat in a flat-bed van all day.

Not sure it’s security as they seem to drive away late afternoon and not there overnight.

As above, re: traffic light failure. I have an ex work colleague who does exactly this

Yeah we did a job by a road, council said you must have traffic lights for safety. Which was fair enough

Tm company set everything up and we had a gadge in a van for two weeks watching Netflix in his cab.

When you apply to the council for the road closure notice, the council will specify what traffic management is required and what times. It does feel like councils are getting more stringent with their requirements.

My rule of thumb is ‘will someone from the council stop their van and have a word if I work here?”

If the answer is yes, then I’ll probably need some tm

I guess at some point there was a risk assessment done.

Then someone had to choose between spending public money, or be on the hook for saying not needed if something did go wrong.

It’s most probably a traffic safety control officer, they are there to ensure the traffic management is ok, eg the lights work, cones in place, all signs are up etc.

However thefts from sites have gone up, you cannot leave tools, batteries, small equipment lying around unattended. We had a water bowser stolen from one of our sites, it was found near a camp intact. I presume they thought it was a fuel bowser!

I’ve used a lot of short duration TMs. I’ve finished my works, told them they can stand down and they leave it set up as if they finish and head back to their yard they get sent out again.

Speaking to one guy he had been on site for 5 days as he’s only at work when he was setting up or maintaining. While he was sat in the van he was on call.

I wish they had these people around here. The local set of lights keeps dying and leaving massive rush hour queues waiting for lights that don’t change, until people start taking matters into their own hands and driving through the red. *shockhorror* drivers are capable of managing this themselves, I mean the works don’t take more space than a lorry parked at the side of the road. Even when it’s “working” you’d better hope no one presses the pedestrian crossing button, apparently people need over a minute of red lights to cross the road. Not to mention the fact that when they don’t need the road blocked so much and there is plenty of space, they leave the lights there for no apparent reason until they get back to work (weeks later).

Grrr

yes they are there to look after the traffic lights.  The supervisor I had a moan at said they are supposed to be manually controlling the lights during busy times to aid the flow of traffic.  In a week of a guy parked outside my house all he did was sleep and browse on his phone.  The actual dig bit, and fix a water meter was less than half a day but we had traffic lights for 10 days and this guy paid to sleep…

Quite a lucrative business supplying traffic control if what I was  told was true ( no reason to disbelieve ). At the height of Covid injections, there was a set of lights controlling traffic in and out of a local(ish) establishment with a 3 man team sat in a drop side most of the day. All for the measly sum of some £80k a month. Guessing that was billed to the NHS

It does feel like councils are getting more stringent with their requirements.

Good?
Had a set pretty much abandoned outside my flat in Derby. The works took a week. They left a pair of lights and the trailer there for over a month plus all the barriers to close off one lane for 10m. All that happened is the guy from the traffic management company came by regularly to refill the generator.

One of my neighbours got fed up and tidied the whole lot away and rolled it over to a layby. Was gone the following day.