Over the past year, two Nebraska Department of Transportation workers have been killed in work zones. On any given day, there are thousands of work sites on roads and highways across Nebraska. At a work site on Highway 6 in Milford, Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson talked with Project Manager, Bob Hinrichs about worker safety.
Dale Johnson: Tell me about a close call that you've had in your 24 years of working at construction sites?
Bob Hinrichs: Well, I would say probably the closest call is when I was about 10 years in and we were north of Fairbury and a bull hauler came up to a flagging zone and wasn't paying attention or got distracted, and didn't get slowed down or stopped behind the flagger and hit a vehicle in front of him, tore the side of his trailer out and killed some cattle and had cattle all over.
Johnson: How much control do you have as a project manager over safety at a work site?
Hinrichs: We start a project, in the off season we put together a traffic control plan, which is approved by our traffic engineers, and then that is presented at our pre-construction meeting to our prime contractor. They also have a sub, they set up everything out on the project. If we see something that's not right, we can step in there and we can suggest that things are done a little different on the project. But if we see something any day, we take care of that for safety. Our director’s really, really hard on safety.
Johnson: And you were telling me you could have as few as three people here, or you could have as many as 30. Today on this site, we have somewhere in between, more complicated to deal with safety when you have more crew?
Hinrichs: Correct. A lot of times, like in an urban project, we'll have four crews working at one time, and they might be spread out through this situation where you think you'd be safe because it's closed off. Just two days ago, we had somebody drive through the barricades that said “road closed,” pass some barrels and all the way up to where the crew was working. So you're not always safe just because it's a closed road.
Johnson: Do you talk with your crew about safety every day?
Hinrichs: We have a safety meeting every month, once a month, and then we don't talk every day. But it's quite a bit that just little thoughts are thrown out there to be safe. I know last year on the interstate, I tried to tell my guys each day, you know, you need to really be safe, because those people are going 75 mph and they're not paying attention to what we're doing.
Johnson: Bob, how do you combat complacency?
Hinrichs: What we say is look before you step. When you're on the side of the road and you're looking, you're doing what you need to do for inspection work, taking tests, before you take a step out into that lane of traffic, you need to always look.
Johnson: This Highway 6 project through Milford involves an intersection that requires the need to maintain traffic flow in a number of different directions. That can confuse drivers, and the last thing you need as a project manager are confused drivers.
Hinrichs: You know, it's not always just the people from out of town. It's the people in town that use this road. They've used this road for 10 years. They only know one way to get from one spot to another, so it inconveniences them. It may only be a block off that they have to go, but a lot of them don't understand that, or don't want to take the extra five minutes just to go around.
Johnson: Has Google Maps and similar on-site maps made life easier or more complicated for you?
Hinrichs: Well actually, this intersection that we're at right here, it is a main intersection that goes, it's a cat paved county road. So Google Maps takes people off of the interstate, pushes them to here so that they can go to Highway 43 and by Crete. So I guess Google Maps is good at times, but it's also bad at times for us, because sometimes it pushes traffic our way. Our operations center, if we get ahold of them, they can contact Google Maps and let them know that certain roads are shut down, so then they can shut that off.
Johnson: And take a moment, Bob to talk about a tool that you found to be beneficial to motorists, and that is updating a Facebook project site that includes a chat page.
Hinrichs: I know a lot of the younger generation is on Facebook. They're on social media, and so when we got here, there was a Milford chat community chat page, and I kind of got on that and in an urban area, you want to try to get along with everybody, see what's going on in the town. And so I just thought, you know, maybe this is someplace we could post, get out to everybody what we accomplished the week before, what they have looking forward to the next week as far as construction and any closures that we're going to have that may be opening, or new closures that are shutting down. So that's been a pretty positive thing in this urban area here.
Johnson: Bob, thank you very much. Be safe.
Hinrichs: Alright, you're welcome. Thank you.
Johnson: Bob Hinrichs, joining me. Project Manager for the Nebraska Department of Roads here in Milford, Nebraska. I'm Dale Johnson Nebraska. Public Media News.