High Friction Surfacing

An unusual request from David Hughes at Balfour Beatty’s Weatherhill Depot allowed Hi-Way Services to demonstrate that our capabilities go a long way beyond white lining and that our surfacing teams can deliver client solutions that go beyond the highway.

One of David’s colleagues, Guy Hollingworth, had the challenge of ensuring a safe environment for his employees around diggers and other plant they may be working amongst on-site. The standard approach is to demonstrate using colour coded diagrams which indicate the no-go areas when a digger is operating; the sight lines of the digger operative; and safe distances to stand when trying to attract the driver’s attention.

Guy and David wanted to bring this important safety training off the desk and into the real world. “It’s all very well showing the guys a picture but if you can demonstrate with a real digger then they get a much better feel for scale. It all becomes much clearer, more memorable and consequently more effective!”

David called on Hi-Way Services to take the diagrams out of the book and re-create them in the depot yard. Danny O’Reilly Hi-Way’s Contracts assistant takes up the story. “David briefed us on what he wanted to do then took us out into the depot yard. The surface was concrete and in quite poor condition. We would normally use cold applied high friction surfacing for a job of this description but because of the condition of the surface we used hot applied high friction surfacing which is thicker and regulates itself to an even finish, even on a poor terrain as it was in this case. The finished result turned pretty well.”

David was very pleased with the job commending Hi-Way for their professionalism on-site and the effectiveness of their team work. He was and even happier with the feedback from his trainees who all agreed that this approach was much more effective in getting the safety message across.