{"id":63420,"date":"2015-10-29T09:06:19","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T09:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=bbf5b2cbe8afd07662ee258d64f80921"},"modified":"2015-10-29T09:06:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T09:06:19","slug":"press-release-its-a-dream-job-the-road-workers-who-toil-while-you-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=63420","title":{"rendered":"Press release: ‘It\u2019s a dream job’ \u2013 the road workers who toil while you sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As the clocks go back and dark nights loom, Highways England is hoping to shed some light on the way it works in the West Midlands. <\/p>\n

A small army of staff from Highways England and our contractors work around the clock to keep our major motorways and A-roads flowing.<\/p>\n

Since 2014, our contractor Kier has overseen a total of 1.7 million hours of work in the West Midlands \u2013 with more than 700,000 of those worked overnight. <\/p>\n

In that time, while most drivers were asleep, we\u2019ve laid 435 miles of new surface – enough to create a new road from London to Manchester and back. And we\u2019ve painted almost 600 miles of white lines: which would cover the distance from Warwick to John O\u2019Groats.<\/p>\n

On top of that, we\u2019ve worked on 113 miles of drainage by the roadside, and we\u2019ve replaced 388 bridge joints on important structures. <\/p>\n

Now a video has been produced, giving a flavour of some of the overnight work carried out by Highways England.<\/p>\n

With \u00a31.8 billion to invest in roads across the Midlands in the next 5 years, and lots of activity planned to deliver huge improvements to journeys across the region, Highways England is hoping to help drivers to better understand why we work at night.<\/p>\n

Highways England\u2019s Midlands Regional Director, Tim Harbot, explained:<\/p>\n

\n

There are hundreds of staff working for Highways England through the night in the Midlands to help meet the challenge of running some of the busiest motorways in the country.<\/p>\n

This invisible army of road workers, traffic officers and control centre staff work through the darkness to deal with incidents, repairs and maintenance. Their dedication helps to keep drivers moving throughout the Midlands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Road worker Richard Phillips, 28, from Bromsgrove, has been working nights on the roads in the Midlands for the past eight years.<\/p>\n

\n

They are anti-social hours, but I love my job,\u201d Richard said. \u201cI have a fianc\u00e9e and two young kids, so working nights all the time does affect my social life.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m lucky, in that my partner is excellent and really understanding. Sometimes, I get home and just need to sleep for eight hours or so, and she\u2019s always fine with that.<\/p>\n

My other mates aren\u2019t so sympathetic. I get a lot of stick. Quite a few of them play rugby, and drive to games around the country. Whenever I say my back aches or something, they\u2019re always like \u201cWhy? You don\u2019t do any work!\u201d They\u2019ve got no sympathy. I do have to tell them that most of our work happens at night \u2013 very few people seem to understand just how much we do every night.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Richard understands that working through the night means his work often goes unnoticed.<\/p>\n

\n

I don\u2019t mind that,\u201d he said. \u201cI take a lot of pride in my work, I\u2019ve been to college, I\u2019ve done the qualifications. I always want to do the best job, and we\u2019re always really gutted if a night shift doesn\u2019t go to plan.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

We work with a really good team here, and everyone pulls together when we need to: there\u2019s a lot of commitment to getting a good job done, even when things go wrong. Most jobs, we aim to be finished by about 3am, as you start to see the tidal flow of lorries at 4am, 5am, and they\u2019re always making long journeys. We try to get done and off before the traffic gets busy again.<\/p>\n

A lot of what we do has time constraints. If it looks like work\u2019s going to over-run, there\u2019s a real team spirit here. It may be that your crew is back in the yard, filling sandbags or doing something there, and we hear that a team has had problems \u2013 we drop what we\u2019re doing and get out there to help.<\/p>\n

Our whole team is totally dedicated to the highways, and working at night lets us get a lot of work done, safely, without affecting busy traffic. It\u2019s a way of life, but it\u2019s a good job and it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big commitment, you have to be ready, whatever the time.\u201d – Steve Yates, gritter driver, Kier
\nSteve Yates, 55, from Coleshill, has been working on the roads for 11 years.<\/p>\n

A typical night depends on what work we\u2019re doing: we do litter picking – there\u2019s always a lot of litter on the motorway – we do daily repairs, potholes, resurfacing jobs, emergency jobs,\u201d Steve explained. \u201cIf there\u2019s an accident, and there\u2019s fire damage or a diesel spill, we have to put out a closure for that and help manage the work to repair the road.<\/p>\n

We do a lot of fixing barrier damage \u2013 the concrete barrier in the middle reserve. We go out and put on the closure, and if there\u2019s good enough light, we\u2019ll get other jobs done, like clearing vegetation or picking litter.<\/p>\n

A lot of routine tasks are harder to complete in winter: with wet weather making it difficult to get concrete or road surfacing to set and be safe in time for the morning peak.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As a result, many staff from our Coleshill depot go out in gritters instead.<\/p>\n

\n

In the winter, the roads aren\u2019t the best place to be. There\u2019s lots of spray, it\u2019s cold and rainy and there\u2019s ice. Winter\u2019s definitely the worst time to be out on the road during the night,\u201d Steve said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as big an issue for me, as I\u2019m on call 24\/7 for the gritting service.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a big commitment, especially at weekends, you have to be ready whatever the time. I\u2019ve been called out at 3am, 4am. I\u2019ve been called out to do a treatment at 2am then back again for 5am.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t much like being out there in the winter, when it\u2019s cold and raining, but it can\u2019t be helped. It\u2019s a very important job and the team here are all totally committed. You\u2019ve got to be.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Highways England currently has scores of roadworks schemes on the ground in the Midlands which utilise overnight shifts.<\/p>\n

But our commitment to night working doesn\u2019t end with roadworks. Our customer contact centre is staffed around the clock \u2013 so anyone can call to get the latest information on their journey, at any time. And our Traffic England website gives drivers live traffic information, no matter the time or day.<\/p>\n

Our traffic officers patrol motorways around the Midlands through the day and night \u2013 and are there to help deal with incidents and keep traffic moving.<\/p>\n

Our regional control centre, based at Quinton, has staff monitoring CCTV screens 24\/\/7, and we provide traffic updates to drivers via our website and Twitter feeds, and keep traffic information services up to speed with the state of our network.<\/p>\n

For the latest traffic information, you can visit www.trafficengland.com or follow one of Highways England\u2019s Twitter feeds (@HighwaysWMids for the West Midlands) for the latest updates.<\/p>\n

The Highways England customer contact centre is also available 24\/7, 365 days a year. You can get traffic information and enquire about our work by calling 0300 123 5000.<\/p>\n

General enquiries<\/h3>\n

Members of the public should contact the Highways England customer contact centre on 0300 123 5000.<\/p>\n

Media enquiries<\/h3>\n

Journalists should contact the Highways England press office on 0844 693 1448 and use the menu to speak to the most appropriate press officer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022\tMajority of Highways England\u2019s roadworks in West Midlands are done overnight
\n\u2022\tAlmost 1 million hours worked overnight in last 12 months alone
\n\u2022\tWe\u2019ve laid enough new surface to create a road from London to Manchester and back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}