Prioritising safety on all infrastructure projects should be paramount to the design process, and this guidance describes the approach that designers should take when developing their designs to include planning for resource and vehicle movements for a construction site to reduce its impact on the road network and local community.
Given the current Government targets on infrastructure growth, and the industry-wide initiatives to encourage off-site build and modular construction, it is timely to embed strategies into the design process to mitigate the impacts of construction traffic, in the same way that other health and safety impacts are routinely addressed.
All CDM duty holders, but specifically Designers and Principal Designers, have a unique opportunity to address this known risk using the CLOCS Standard to achieve the following benefits:
- Safer roads for pedestrians and cyclists, seeking to eliminate the possibility of HGV collisions
- Reduced congestion caused by HGVs, particularly during rush hour and in local hotspots
- Improved local air quality following a reduction in volume and duration of HGV journeys
- Reduced embodied carbon contributing to Net Zero targets
Implementing CLOCS requires the Designers to use forethought as they develop their designs to include planning for resource and vehicle movements to and from a construction site in order to reduce its impact on the road network and local community. As off-site and modular construction becomes a more popular method of building infrastructure, truck movements and unusually large loads are likely to increase. Planning for resource and vehicle movements also reduces the environmental cost of the construction project.
This guidance was developed by CLOCS Strategic Partner, the Institution on Civil Engineers, working with CLOCS and other commited stakeholders.
There is a pressing need to regulate the impact of construction vehicles on UK roads, and prioritising safety on all infrastructure projects should be paramount to the design process.
The national Construction Logistics and Community Safety (CLOCS) Standard, developed in 2013 by the construction industry as a response to this problem, is a set of requirements for all parties involved in procuring, delivering and operating construction vehicles and construction traffic, designed to eliminate collisions with vulnerable road users and mitigate the negative community and environmental impacts of construction traffic.
Your legal responsibility
Under Regulation 4 of the 2015 CDM regulations, clients and principal contractors have a duty to ensure that the construction work they procure is carried out, so far as is reasonably practicable, without risk to the health or safety of any person affected by the project including the wider community and all vulnerable road users.
