One of the most important aspects of road maintenance is the process of collaboration. As road maintenance is so vital in ensuring our infrastructure is safe and user-friendly, this combined effort and expertise makes these projects especially rewarding. One such project that we are fortunate enough to work on is collaborating with local authorities as they apply surface dressing to their road each and every year.
What is Surface Dressing?
Surface dressing is a simple and cost-effective way to maintain a road and prolong its lifespan, without the need to spend excess time and money repatching entire stretches of road.
Surface dressing describes a process by which stone chippings are pressed into the road. This helps to increase skid resistance and protects against frost and water damage in the long term, prolonging the life of the surface by approximately five years.
The process takes place once a year throughout the summer months on a set number of sites – and our role at Hi-Way Services is to install the road markings and road studs following the surface dressing.
The Preparation
The collaboration process during these projects takes place long before the roads are treated. In January/February, Hi-Way Services will visit each individual site to survey the line markings and studs to produce the Local Authority with an accurate Bill of Quants.
This includes photographing the site, giving us a detailed visual reference for when the time comes to re-line the new road surface. We work closely with the client in the months leading up to the project to ensure that the work is completed as smoothly as possible.
The Project
Once the preparations are complete, the surface dressing team will prepare and treat the road in question, with our team following on approximately ten days later. Once the line markings have been completed, Hi-Way Services will also replace all the road studs, which must be removed in order to surface the road.
After months of preparation, the final product provides a significant quality of life improvement for the local roads. It ensures that travellers have a safer and more pleasant experience – and is a project that we are proud to work on each and every summer.
