The challenges of designing a work zone starts with the people. Workers, road users, and pedestrians will be interacting with each other in close conditions with normal safety infrastructure modified or missing. Road users must be properly warned and notified of detours, disruptions, speed and lane changes, etc. These would be challenging enough to implement during ideal daytime conditions, but work zones must operate efficiently during night-time and rainy conditions.
There are numerous steps to creating a work zone, beginning with the planning and budgeting phase and moving toward setup and implementation:
- Securing a budget by developing a business case
- Consistent and standardized work zone designs
- Understand best practices and standards
- Determine application / area of use
- Determine work duration, location and type of road
- Establish enforcement systems
- Maximize visibility and improve traffic mobility to reduce accidents
- 3M retroreflectivity
- Wet retroreflectivity
- Durability
Learn more about the challenges involved with creating safe work zones by reading 3MTM’s Work Zone Safety Challenges, Trends and Best Practices. 3M Work Zone Safety Ebook
Since 1966, ATS Traffic has helped organizations and communities keep workers, motorists, and pedestrians safe on our roads. ATS Traffic provides complete traffic control for communities across Canada. As a 3M™ Authorized Fabricator and Certified Digital Fabricator, ATS Traffic is Canada’s leading sign and barricade manufacturer as well as an award-winning provider of installation services, flagging, lane closures, asset management, ITS solution architecture, data capture and analysis and smart intersection enhancements. For more information, visit www.atstraffic.ca.