A traffic management plan can be technically sound and still be knocked back. Not because of what is drawn on it, but because of who drew it.
It is one of the more frustrating ways to lose a week on a project, and it happens often enough that it is worth understanding properly. The confusion sits in a single distinction that a lot of people in construction have never had explained to them.
Table of Contents
Two tickets, one letter apart in most people’s heads
In Australia, temporary traffic management works under the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management, usually shortened to AGTTM. It sets out separate competencies for people who design traffic management and people who implement it on site.
The unit contractors most often name is RIIWHS302E. It appears on a lot of resumes, a lot of site inductions, and a fair number of traffic management plan submissions.
RIIWHS302E is Implement traffic management plans. It is the on site ticket. It qualifies someone to set up and operate traffic control in accordance with a plan that already exists.
It does not qualify anyone to prepare one.
The design side sits under a different unit entirely. RIICWD503E, Prepare traffic management plans and traffic guidance schemes. Different unit, different competency, different assessment.
Both are legitimate qualifications. They do different jobs. And submitting a plan prepared by someone holding only the first one is a reliable way to have it sent back.
The designer ladder
Design competency is structured in three tiers under the national framework, usually referred to as TMD1, TMD2 and TMD3.
TMD1, skill set RIISS00063
The entry point for design. Covers urban streets and lower volume roads, and contains the RIICWD503E unit mentioned above. This is the minimum to prepare a traffic management plan at all.
TMD2, skill set RIISS00064
Steps up to higher volume roads, where the consequences of getting a layout wrong are considerably greater.
TMD3, skill set RIISS00065
Motorways and freeways. The highest tier, and a specialised field in its own right.
There is a matching ladder on the implementation side, which is where some of the confusion comes from. RIISS00062, for instance, is a motorways implementation skill set. It sounds senior, and it is, but it is still implementation rather than design.
If you are checking someone’s credentials, the question is not how many tickets they hold. It is whether the tickets are design tickets and whether they cover the class of road you are working on.
The layer almost nobody knows about
Here is where it catches out even experienced contractors.
For roads managed by a state road authority, individual qualifications are not the whole story. The business preparing the design has to hold its own accreditation.
In Victoria that is Department of Transport and Planning Temporary Traffic Management Design accreditation. It is granted to the business, assessed against the business, and it is what allows plans prepared by that business to be used on state managed roads and to support a permit application.
Other states run their own arrangements. In South Australia, works on arterial roads are administered by the Department for Infrastructure and Transport through its Roadworks Portal and Traffic Management Centre, and anyone submitting plans through that portal needs a current workzone traffic management card. The names and the mechanics differ between jurisdictions. The principle does not. If you work across state borders, check what applies where you are working rather than assuming the arrangement you know from home.
You can engage a designer with every individual qualification available. If the business they work for does not hold the accreditation, the plan cannot be used on those roads.
That is not a loophole or an oversight. It is deliberate. The accreditation scheme exists so that a road authority is dealing with an accountable organisation rather than an individual certificate. It is also why a number of operators can handle council work perfectly well and cannot touch arterial roads.
What this means on a live project
Three practical consequences.
The rejection often arrives late.
Nobody checks the designer’s credentials when the plan is drawn. It gets checked when the permit application is assessed, which is usually the point at which you have already scheduled crews and booked plant.
Fixing it is not a redraw.
If the plan was prepared by someone without design competency, it does not get amended. It gets prepared again, by someone qualified. That is a new job, not a revision.
It is entirely avoidable.
This is a five minute check at the point of engagement rather than a two week problem at the point of approval.
What to ask before you engage anyone
Four questions. They take a phone call.
- Which design skill set do your planners hold, TMD1, TMD2 or TMD3?
- Does that cover the class of road my site is on?
- Is the business accredited with the relevant state road authority, and to which categories?
- Who will be named as the preparer on the submitted document?
Anyone doing this properly will answer all four without hesitation. Hesitation on the third one in particular is worth paying attention to.
The wider point
Temporary traffic management sits in an odd position in construction. It is heavily regulated, it is on the critical path for a surprising number of projects, and it is routinely treated as a box to tick rather than a design discipline.
The qualification framework reflects the first two of those. Plenty of procurement processes still reflect the third.
Closing that gap is mostly a matter of knowing which questions to ask, and asking them before the permit application rather than after it comes back.
This article was contributed by the team at OnPoint TGS Plans, an independent traffic management planning consultancy based in Melbourne. The business holds Department of Transport and Planning Temporary Traffic Management Design accreditation for Categories 1 and 2, and prepares traffic management plans, traffic guidance schemes and swept path analysis for construction, civil works, utilities and events across Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory.
