The Mineral Products Association (MPA) has published its Contract Surfacing Operational Guidance aimed at helping to deliver Members' Zero Harm commitments for their asphalt laying operations. The principles and detail in the guidance are recommended for adoption by road owners, operators, main contractors, and surfacing teams seeking to make highways construction and maintenance sites safer.

Ian Gibson, Senior Programme Manager, Environment Health and Safety, said: "MPA Members are wholly committed to the health and safety of their workforce and others who their operations might affect. This publication has been prepared to share thinking on ways to achieve best practice and examples of systems to deliver that. As new and improved systems are developed, so we will continue to review and update the guidance to reflect progress and best practice."

Welcoming the report, Chris Hudson, Chairman of the MPA's Health and Safety Committee said: "Safety practitioners and operational managers from across the MPA membership have worked hard together to create this guidance document for surfacing operations. Surfacing operations occur at night as well as during daylight hours which gives an added dimension to the risk involved by the teams working on these complex maintenance contracts."

Director of MPA Asphalt, Malcolm Simms, said: "The movement of plant, people and materials in sometimes congested sites, allied to the risks associated with passing traffic present unique challenges for everyone on road construction and maintenance operations. This guidance aims to encourage contractors to reconsider and gives examples of how to address those challenges. With new technology coming on stream all the time to firstly prevent incidents and then protect workers in the worst-case scenario we continue to work to ensure that everybody goes home safely having been in or past an operating highways site."

The guidance is applicable to a range of roads operations, not just asphalt surfacing, and as such further demonstrates MPA Members' commitment to client bodies such as Highways England and initiatives including 'Raising the Bar' to collaboratively deliver enhanced roadworker safety.

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To download the MPA Contract Surfacing Operational Guidance, click here