How South West Water is minimising disruption from roadworks

Commercial and Streetworks Manager, Steve Williams, talks about minimising disruption while keeping water flowing and roads safe

Roadworks are a bugbear for road users and we all know how frustrating it can be when all you want to do is get home and your normal route is blocked, writes Steve Williams, Commercial and Streetworks Manager for South West Water.

Unfortunately, roadworks are essential for the repairs and maintenance that we carry out every day on our network, to keep the taps flowing for our customers and to protect the environment from spills. Roadworks are put in place to help us complete this essential work.

Above all else, their main purpose is to protect road users and to protect our teams who are working on the ground.

Last year we carried out over 2,900 jobs which required roadworks and thankfully most of the time we manage to complete these works without much disruption to our customers and road users.

But unfortunately, sometimes our works do cause traffic delays or issues for local residents when they have to be carried out on busy roads.

Reducing the risk of impact

We have detailed plans for all of our planned work to try to reduce the risk of impact to the public as much as we can.

This involves careful planning which takes into account the mitigative steps we will take to avoid disruption. Each plan needs to be approved by the council which can take up to 12 weeks. Without this, we can’t begin the works.

However, much of the time we need to act more quickly in response to an incident, such as a large water main burst, at which point we have to apply for an emergency permit.

When this happens, we need to take immediate action to avoid danger to the public or significant damage, which may mean we cannot give advanced warning and decisions need to be made more quickly.

Even then, we do all we can to complete jobs quickly and to keep disruption to a minimum by pulling in extra crews and working out of hours.

Adjusting plans accordingly

As part of our plans, we will fully engage with local stakeholders to make them aware of the upcoming works.

We have dedicated Stakeholder Liaison Officers who meet with our stakeholders to discuss the project, listen to any concerns and adjust our plans accordingly.

Where we can, we will look to carry out the works at times that avoid the tourist season and, where appropriate, we will only work during the day so that residents are not being disrupted by loud noises during the evening.

Where we have customers who are directly impacted by the work, we do everything we can to engage with them well ahead of the work, to ensure they have all of the information they need on road access, diversions and alternate bus routes.

Steps to minimise disruption

We’re always looking for new ways to make our roadworks more efficient.

We’ve invested in innovative technology such as smart traffic light systems, which use artificial intelligence and memory of traffic conditions over the day to optimise the time they spend on green, amber and red.

We’ve also joined the One Network platform which is a UK-wide map of roadworks and traffic disruptions, which is free-to-use for members of the public to allow local customers to see our planned works in advance.

Unfortunately, in many situations, roadworks are necessary to ensure the safety of our teams and road users, and cannot be avoided.

Rest assured, we take all the steps we can to minimise disruption where we can and aim to get roads reopened as quickly as we can as soon as it is safe to do so.