Mark Armstrong and Nigel Griffith attended Auckland Motorways recent ‘Safe Working on the Road Induction,’ a mandatory workshop required by the Auckland Motorway Alliance for anyone who has to work on the motorway network.

Mark thought the content was excellent and detailed, “There was time to discuss issues and examples raised by attendees as a group, providing answers on what to do and what not to do in the future.”

Key areas covered included Health and Safety responsibilities both as an employer and as an employee; qualifications, powers and responsibilities of the STM; emergency incident procedures; Traffic Management Plans and why they are important; minimum levels of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) required; garments and types of flashing beacons allowed; safety of plant left on site or on the road side out of hours; mobile and special operations and Operational Requirements and Auckland Traffic Operations Control ( ATOC)

Every six months we get together to look at what we’ve achieved over the last six months, to plan where we want to go in the next six, and to strengthen the sense amongst all the staff that we are part of the same team and working towards the same goals.

For our most recent planning day, we participated in a charity team event called Build My Ride. All the challenges were themed around cycling and successful completion of each challenge earned the team parts for a bike. The final task was for each of the four teams to assemble their bike and have it checked over for safety by a qualified bike mechanic.

As enjoyable as all the challenges were, the final activity – handing those bikes over to deserving kids through the Refugee Service – gave massive satisfaction and significantly added to the sense of community within the individual teams and amongst us all. At the end of the day, we had shared in an experience that made us feel good about ourselves and each other, and we all felt truly touched.