While it may not in truth be of interest I have an itch to tell of what it is like to work on the roads.
This is from the recent past, NSW has cut the fingers and toes off its own workers and contracted the work out.
And thanks to the odd bottle of Scotch and tickets to the game, to the wrong contractor at twice the price.
Road workers have always seen the out outstandingly good and the useless work side by side.
At every level.
But after about an hour, it takes that long, putting a traffic control plan in place.
Signage flagmen speed reduction and movement plans so every one on site knows where they MUST turn around, or enter or leave site.
A motorist will pull up and claim, spittle going every place, you have no signs up!
Public abuse is rampart even rubbish trowing and fruit juice bottle full of urine hit road workers.
Every effort to get the controlling statutory authority to spend just a bit of its extensive advertising on educating motorist is seen as wasteful.
A shame! if only sitting at their desks those not showing concern could be the target of those juice bottles!

Hi belly, sorry for the delay in replying, I wanted to give you a proper reply, because I think you deserve it for your sincere good intent. As you know I used to work on the roads myself, with over 15 years in the soil testing game. During that time I saw the cost and complexity of traffic control increase massively, with traffic control becoming a separate industry that was legally responsible independent of the group doing the work and traffic control procedures being codified and regulated as a statutory obligation. Personnel became individually licensed and individually accountable, while the chain of responsibility concept was invoked to make everyone involved in the process individually accountable for their compliance with the process. It was TQM gone mad.

The problem in that is that at each point in the development of those regulations, the person responsible for signing off was, naturally, most concerned with avoiding any possibility of having his/her part of the process being found to have been in any way to blame if any accident occurred, so they went overboard. The plans became complex nightmares and spawned an industry as the big contractors made their own risk-management decisions and opted for contracting out.

Over time the plans have become more complex and draconian and rigid as the industry seeks to reduce its exposure to risk by demanding that they only be held accountable for the way they implement the process, rather than having to make decisions that may be questioned later. They also have a financial incentive, since more complex plans cost more and if the plan is mandated, then the contractor can't argue and will simply pass the cost back to the (Government or industry) client anyway. Have a look at http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/doingbusinesswithus/downloads/technicalmanuals/tcwsversion4/tcwsv4appendixdi2.pdf for the RTA's current manual, which is no less than 137 pages long.

A job that used to be done by a labourer with a lollipop under the direction of a supervisor has become an embodiment of bureaucratic risk aversion and the cost is enormous.

Antiseptic I too was around the roads for those 15 years and more.
The last ten became interesting.
Elected as one of but elected the senior Union Delegate to the RTA SBU
Single Bargaining Unit.
We had every form of training side by side with those who made up managements team.
We got a lot done, my award for leadership hangs on my wall.
They did not give awards for being gullible.
We put our hearts in to it,wanting to be the best alternative so we kept our jobs.
They never intended that.
Traffic control first reduced our numbers, and let graft in the door.
For 20 years NSW rail saw family's of employees win millions of dollars worth of never carried out or badly done contracts.
The RTA even had foremen contracting small fleets of 4x4 to the crews they ruled over.
One took 12 months leave, to build a bridge his brother had won the contract for, from his boss the RTA.
TRAFFIC CONTROL FIRMS very often owned by current or former engineers won work, went broke over night and started up the next day under another name.
MY MATES PAID WITH JOBS THEY HELD FOR IN SOME CASES 40 YEAR.

Antiseptic, how does the chronic maladhesion to the temporary speed limits at roadwork sit with those who want to cover their backsides against being blamed for an accident or injury?

If such an accident did occur, due to vehicles going faster than the posted temporary speed limit, with no efforts being made by the department, company, manager or relevant workers to control it, then they would surely have to be deemed complicit in the accident.

And if they are deliberately putting up legally-binding speed limits that are well under the speed that they want traffic to do, then they should be charged with the misuse of this signage and consequently with a perversion of the law.

It seems that the relevant authorities are not doing a good job at all in covering their backsides, and that they would be doing a much better job if strove to put up signage that was always appropriate for the circumstances and then made every effort to get traffic to stick to it.

The very notion that everyone wants to make sure that they don’t get sued or cop a dirty great fine or get the sack over a safety matter, sits in stark contrast to the reality of the whole management regime!

It seems to me that it is more a matter of just plain sloppiness, and an absence of any political will to bring it all into line.

Belly, I remember a bloke down at Yass (I think, might have been Gundagai) with a traffic control business who I thought was ex-RTA back in the early 90s when this whole debacle really took off. Would that be the same bloke?

Unfortunately corruption and jobs for the boys are always with us. It's much easier when the bloke signing the cheque isn't the one with the responsibility for the decision-making and the one doing the decision-making only as to show adherence to the decision-making process to absolve himself of any allegations of impropriety. What went on behind the scenes stays there as long as nobody speaks out of turn.

Qld Main Roads Construction and Maintenance went through a similar process of "commercialisation", becoming Roadtek and it seems to have been fairly successful, although they've also lost a lot of staff.

Ludwig, it doesn't have any impact on them. That's not their job and as long as they tick all the relevant boxes they're right as rain. What you are not grasping is that the only questions regarding responsibility which will be considered in any investigation is "did you follow the correct procedure set down in the rules and do you have the paperwork signed off to prove it". "Thank you sir, you're free to go."

Having investigated, a recommendation will be made that the temporary speed restriction on that site be reduced by 20km/h, thereby covering the bum of the investigator, who will blame excessive speed or driver inattention if possible. After all, a cop's job is to issue offence notices. If anyone hasn't faithfully followed the procedure or can't prove it with paperwork they may be in trouble, but otherwise it's a risk-free activity for all concerned except the road users and the guys holding the stop/slow signs, who aren't able to do anything except stay vigilant.

The cops don't want to be pulling people up in traffic control zones, because it causes a hazard. They will set up a speed camera, but that's about it.