The quest for ever increasing road safety measures to reduce the incidence of harm and road trauma is taking another step forward. Austroads have requested IPWEA inform the industry of this new requirement.

Austroads said: “A new national scheme is being developed to ensure the people who design, install, and maintain road safety barriers on Australia and New Zealand’s road network are appropriately trained. Austroads has partnered with Lantra (UK) to develop a national accreditation scheme that will require the certification of all people engaged in the design, installation, and maintenance of any road safety barrier system used in New Zealand or Australia." 

The Australasian Road Safety Barrier Accreditation Scheme Steering Committee met with Lantra on 15 June 2018. The key discussions included:

• scheme documentation and implementation
• terminology/definition of roles
• the scope of quality assurance practice for industry disciplines
• the role of the state road authorities
• review of Lantra training material content for operators and installers
• proposed roll out and transitional arrangements, including the implementation of training modules and state specific requirements
• future steps for state road authorities to facilitate its implementation
• stakeholder engagement and communication.

The following key decisions were endorsed by Austroads:

• Product training modules delivered by Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) should include any road authority specific product variants, irrespective of where the training is held.
• Training modules should be packaged with similar products within a category.
• Training content and completion requirements need to be tailored to industry participant needs (e.g. installers, designers, etc).

This will enable Lantra to implement and improve training modules more efficiently, and rationalise training deliverables for participants, by:

• streamlining the delivery and auditing of the training program
• mitigating the risk of knowledge gaps on products and open opportunity for further capability development
• ensure the RTO appointed, will provide consistent training to all installers and ensure costs will remain reasonable
• communicate and administer training updates as appropriate.

The Austroads committee will reconvene within the final quarter of 2018 focusing on:

• work crew structure and role descriptions (e.g. installers)
• training modules packages
• accreditation management system
• identification of appropriate RTOs
• Quality Assurance Framework and governance structure
• finalisation and implementation of the roll out transition plan.

Details may be obtained by contact the Steering Committee Secretariat Clint Portelli at BAS.secretariat@austroads.com.au

Robert Fuller 
CEO, IPWEA