Standards Roadshow Session 1

Recent Developments in TII Publications – Standards, Technical Documents and Training. Recording from Athenry, 2nd May 2024. This session includes:
– Welcome and Introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=1s
– Project Appraisal Guideline PAGs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=414s
– Project Management Guidelines PMGs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=1799s
– Pavement Asset Management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=3040s
– Crash Modification Tool – Road Safety Improvement Scheme Approval Procedure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=1h11m4s
– Junction Design and the Cycle Design Manual: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpfecv71Xo&t=1h26m33s

my name is esta Madden I work in tii in the standards and research Division and um just to let you know that um you’re very welcome here today and we’re going to give you some updates on the standards that we have published over the last 12 months and a little bit about some of the standards and Technical documents that we will be publishing in the near future so just talking about the standards and I think you can appreciate that over the last three years in particular there’s been quite a lot of change um and and there are a number of reasons for that so we have the drivers of change okay first and foremost probably the biggest thing recently is sustainability okay we’re all aware of where we are in the world right now and what we need to do to change that and on top of that then there are ongoing developments in in in international standards and and EU standards so it’s our job to bring those um best practices through standards and into um construction maintenance and operation of our uh infrastructure we also need to comply with the EU regulations and there are lots of technical developments in materials products and systems lots of innovation lots of new things coming so again that’s another reason why our standards do change we also have um a lot of research that happens um domestically here in Ireland even within TI uh Within the EU and internationally and we try to bring that through into our research documents that are published under the technical stream and into our standards we have lots of feedback from the national roads projects and in particular M Mark contractors who look after the maintenance of some of the routs obviously then we have our own policy in tii so there a lot of development around that um and we have to embed that through in the standards as well and on top of that then we obviously have input from industry so from yourselves and from lots of queries that we get in from uh just the General Industry so there are lots of things driving the change of our standards we have to con constantly keep them updated and at best um industry practice in order to do that we have a very small team and we Outsource um quite a bit of this to um our standards commit providers and the Standards Commission at the moment uh has probably about 300 small projects ongoing um we’ve closed out quite a number of them and you can see there’s a huge team behind that broken into five Lots so they look at different areas um of interest to us and at the core there’s ourselves in tii and then each lot then has a leader in tii who um defines the brief and what it is that we want to change or update on each of our standards and Technical documents at the moment um AR are our um Standards Commission providers and then they each have a corresponding lot leader so the tii lot leader and the AR leader work very closely together to make sure that the scope is defined and that the um brief is delivered and then you can see then spinning out from each lot there are a number of different work packages in different areas so things like Road drainage uh Light Rail uh pavement Asset Management um structures and GE techic so and just to say that obviously intii we are a national Vol Authority but we also have Light Rail and Metro as well so we do work in that area too so recent Publications over the last year um you’ll see that we we’ve actually published three completely new standards one new technical document but we have updated 43 of our current standards and two of attacking the documents there’s quite a lot there so we’ll go through a lot of those big changes today to bring you up to speed as to what’s happening um there are about 5600 um standards and 130 odd technical documents live on the system but in the background and then all of the superseded and withdrawn documents are all available as well so when you go to get a particular document you can see the historical um documents there as well so Publications since the last meeting they um cover a wide range of topics um you’ll hear about a lot of them today you’ve got things like Pavements or updates to our Pavements um specifications for Works updates to our structural steel work specifications uh we have a new stand for Passive safety uh for the support structure for road equipment um some other big changes is that we’ve updated a project appraisal guidelines and we’ll talk about that again today and go through exactly what that is um our lighting standards again more in um pavement we have a little bit there um on uh drainage we have the carbon tool which is a really useful tool you’ll hear about that as well today and also guidelines for cultural Heritage and assessment for National Road and Green Wave projects and again there’ll be presentation on that so we’ve tried to to bring a lot of these here today to you on top of that we also do a lot of training um we have a list of training here that we have carried out and will be carrying out in the near future so you can see it’s quite busy there’s lots of really good topics there but we appreciate that potentially there are other areas that training is required so if you have any ideas ideas or suggestions please email infop subs. and we will have a look at how we can develop that training course for you this is the agenda for today um I won’t go through it in much detail but you’ll see here that we have um project appraisal guidelines with Dan Then followed by Virginia with the project management guidelines so just to show how the two of them work together um and then we have our pavement Asset Management um so J OD is going to present that this morning and then we’ll have questions and answers so please hold your questions till the end and then a break so on that note I’m going to hand you over to Jonathan case Jonathan works for AR and our um commission providers and he’s going to chair the event today thank you thank you esta yeah so first up today we have Dan Brandon from tii and Philip Shields from aom and they’re going to talk about project appraisal guidelines um Dan as a Senior Transport planner in tii with 20 years of experience in the planning design and Appraisal of Transport projects he currently leads TI’s transport modeling and Appraisal at work streams including the management and upgrade of the national transport model and project appraisal guidelines before his current role in tii Dan spent over 12 years as a consultant involved in various urban and rural transport projects plans and strategies Philip Shields is a chartered engineer and Regional director for aom who has 18 years experience in relation to transport planning he supported tii in the development and ongoing updating on the tii project appros of guidelines since their Inception in [Music] 2018 thanks Jonathan um Everybody hear me on this okay yeah gr um morning to all so I’m going to just give a quick overview of the context where we’ve updated our project appraiser guidelines over the last year but also in recent years we know there’s been a lot of updates to them I’ll just do some scene setting uh first of all and then Philip will follow up with some more the details um I’m not going to go into this in detail but uh on the policy side Esther just mentioned the amount of change recently there’s been a huge amount of change in government policy in recent Years and we’re all aware of that and the scale of it and how it impacts on National Ro projects um a lot stems from climate action and that’s backed by legislation and we know that at the moment um against that backdrop the government are updating National development plans and National plan Frameworks um the government is clear I suppose in all of these policies that the the type of transport infrastructure that they want to prioritize investment is infrastructure that facilitates sustainable travel and infrastructure that facilitates reductions in carbon so what does that mean for National Road projects so we believe that means that all investment in national roads should have a multimodal element and therefore our our guidance has to reflect this um it’s not only the policies then that influence the guidance there a lot of plans and strategies that come from all this policy there’s plans and strategies by ourselves in tii by others that they all influence the likes of the project appraisal guidelines and the project management guidelines and then there’s government requirements in terms of uh spending on projects delivery of projects and achieving value for money um there has been a lot of change to these recently as well there’s been multiple circulars and updates from both Department of Transport and deeper over the years and we’ve had the Department of Transport moving from calf to Taff now to transport appraisal framework we have uh deeper moving from the public spending code to the infrastructure guidelines so all of this means change and we’re not just updating pag all the time um for the crack we’re trying to keep up with the public uh government policy and and and keep consistent with all that for for the sake of delivering the projects that that that the state wants to invest in so we know that projects are complex enough to deliver without goalpost moving all the time we understand frustration but we’re trying to accommodate this as best we can um we’re not just trying to blindly transpose um policy and spending requirements straight into pag we have to consider other things we have to consider established best practice and National Road projects over the years and all the the good work that’s been done and what works in the past um we have our own processes uh to align with in tii project management guidelines environmental standards um of course our own vision for the national roads network uh in the future needs to be brought in from national roads 2040 and then of course uh best practice best tools best methods we always try and bring those into to to pag anytime we updated it so that’s the backdrop against which this Mo most recent update has been has been uh completed I’ll just touch on a few key changes um before I hand over so um in the past um the traditional designation of tii projects as major and minor kind of fitted nicely in with uh review thresholds and and Appraisal thresholds and all but it’s not really the case anymore there’s a lot of different uh thresholds out there now in terms of when you need to go to government for review when you need to um you know undertake a more complex appraisal as opposed to a more simple approach where you need to produce certain deliverables um so pag now has these appraisal Pathways they’re kind of broad budget categories where and there’s flexibility around them but gives guidance on on what kind of processes you should go through it’s not strictly tied to the major and minor um designation anymore um just to touch on deliverables um just some some key points here there’s a graphic there of the ti project management phases from 0 to 7 and the and the the appraisal deliverables associated with them and some key changes is at Phase zero the appraisal deliverable is now called a project outline document uh this comes from the Department’s tff it’s a change in name really only it’s still documenting the same process of strategic assessment phase zero that we’ve been doing over the past couple of years since the public spending code brought it in um but it’s less onerous it’s a light version of AAR the SAR report it’s not required to go uh everywhere for review but uh the department will uh insist that it’s done for for projects but again like we and and Phil will expand on this it’s not intended to be a big piece of work at pH z um what we wanted to do um as well is try and consolidate some of the deliverables across projects we know that you know at um particularly at Phase 2 there has been a lot of possibly overlap between appraisal deliverables for options assessment and then PMG deliverables for options selection report so they’re now at phase two they one deliverable between the pag and the PNG called the options report same at phase one it’s a shared deliverable between the two processes called the feasibility report um the main appraisal deliverable remain the preliminary business case at phase three which then gets updated at two points in Phase five one before after the plan and process and before the project goes to Tender and then uh a final update then um after the tender prices come in um I suppose to reflect a lot of the change in approach uh and the change in priorities of government in terms of Transport infrastructure investment um we’ve changed slightly how uh our gu is is given on assessing options um I suppose the department have tried to do this the the main influen is Nifty um the go the the Department’s investment framework for transport and um their priorities in terms of uh the hierarchy of Transport modes and the hierarchy of Transport interventions uh and in t they um look for What’s called the long list assessment report report for the larger projects and transport accessibility appraisal we we’ve considered um I suppose other things in in terms of our our own processes established processes in TI projects and also um eia directive is important to consider here an options assessment which is also part of the key part of the environmental assessment process so we didn’t just um I suppose or sorry the Departments don’t really cover that in t so we had to bring that into Peg so we split the options assessment process now over two uh phases at Phase One we’re looking at very high level we’re looking at identify find what modes uh uh are possible what kind of intervention types can we use the existing infrastructure best on develop options at a strategic level and those options then would be given high level assessment against objectives and for feasibility then before we go into phase two and we go into the traditional process where we you know we come up with spiders webs of roots and things like that and we we have a long list um and we bring it through the likes of the trees and the detail the appraisal process um so that’s just a bit of a change but mainly at phase one uh phase two process is very similar um just before I hand over to Philip then from uh tii strategic and transport planning uh the next steps with regards the pag we’re not finished here um our work continues we have to we focus to date on guidance for larger projects we have to follow that up with guidance for the the smaller projects um it’ll be the same process but obviously more streamlined reflecting their value um deeper have recently updated Shadow prices of carbon we’re currently bringing those into our appraisal tools and there should be an update very soon on that um the Departments have told us not to go updating uh for consistency with the infrastructure guidelines yet until they update T so they’re doing that at present we expect that to be published soon they’ve told us that changes won’t be substantial I suppose we’ll see and anything we need to update into Peg then we’ll do that and then um we’d like to to hear from yourselves um we’re planning uh to go around and visit your offices over the next year hopefully and get some feedback from yourselves on uh issues you’re encountering on Project Specific issues and uh and just have face to-face chats and then there will also be Technical Training sessions on Project apprisal guidelines rolled out as well uh for for more technical staff uh that’s that’s it for me then I’ll hand over to Philip thanks morning folks I’m Philip Shields a regional director with aom and I’ve been involved in Project appraisal for with many of you on many of your projects over the years and have been involved since the project gu was first published in 2008 so I’ve seen the changes that have happened I’ve seen the challenges that have happened as a result of those changes what I want to focus on today maybe is more the opportunities in terms of these changes Esther and Dan focused on all the changes that that have happened that are that have been updated you know we can use this then as an opportunity to make improvements in what we do so lots of change like I mentioned and lots of opportunities to improve in that change and as that mentioned it’s very important that as we go through this process we get as much feedback as possible and doesn’t matter how big or small that feedback is it’s very important to us as kind of writing the guidelines provide the information that we work together as an industry to try and improve that what I’m going to focus on today is some of the key changes we’ve made mainly in the early stages of Pik in terms of getting schemes moving from the Strategic option stage up to Preferred option and as part of that um I’m going to focus on three uh key areas the the phase zero phase one and phase two but we have updated many pag units of hard this process you’ll be aware of the economic appraisal you know the standard industry uh information on economic parameters CBA Financial appra they’ve all been updated as part of this recent updates but I’m going to focus on three of the other options today so phase zero project outline document as Dan mentioned this replaces the Strategic assessment report and is the new phase zero deliverable I think the key thing to remember here in terms of maybe the message we get today is that what has happened maybe over the last couple of years in terms of stre sess reports and you know phase one previously the uh project brief was that quite large documents were being provided to TI for review you know they could be in excess of 100 Pages the kitchen sink was effectively been thrown into these documents trying to put too much information in there really want to move away from that and that has been happening but that needs to continue to improve the target really is around that kind of 30 pages and that’ll all depend on the size of the scheme and the complexity the scheme is going but the key messages can we try and keep these documents concise so that they can be reviewed and they can be written by yourselves and by your consultants in a more concise manner we want to focus on what are the key messages what are the key issues here and more importantly what are the key opportunities that we can address as part of this this project so really it’s about keeping keeping the message clear we do do need to start including a outline of project objectives early on it now we don’t again we don’t need to dra the kitchen sink this again to use that phrase what we need to do is make sure we get what is the key objective here is it safety is it active travel you know is it environmental you know we don’t have to put everything in there what is the key message we’re trying to do so really the whole phase zero project is getting that message across and then do we have we actually have a project here to proceed with to phase one so once we proceed to phase one we now have the feasibility report and the key message there D was saying now it’s it’s a combined pag and PMG deliverable which is really important because what we found over the years is that the you know the appraisers would have one report the engineering side would have another report the messaging might be slightly different because you’ve got different AIT reviewing the documents and challenging again so if we have one document that all parties are working on together we’ll have a more concise document we’ll have a more a better narrative around what we’re trying to achieve and we’ll have a group working together better and produc them on document for the scheme in Phase One what we’re trying to do then is move from those kind of outlined objectives in Phase zero into slightly more refined and smarter objectives so you’ll have gathered more information at this stage you’ll understand your issues better you can start putting a bit of refinement on your objectives so what are we trying to achieve are they smart so can we measure them are they accurate are they timely we’re not just trowing objectives just for the sake of trying to take boxes and put them all in together so again put that process of maybe some logic pth mod modeling or something similar and how that process of how we identify the objectives and the key performance indicators so it’s that early stage thinking about how we actually do that so one key element here and again back to what D was saying in terms of multimodal solutions we just don’t have roads anymore we’ve got multimodal Solutions we need to look at what are we doing for the area we’re putting a road through for instance so if looking at Ro made to be does it go to particular towns does the bypass what can we do to improve the overall transport context not just getting from people from A to B on a road can we do something for the local schools in terms of improving connections can we do something for healthcare in terms of access to hospitals can we improve access to public transport as part of what we’re doing it’s a wider remit but it’s looking at that wider transport context which we should be doing as practitioners we’re trying to deliver for Ireland in terms of improved safety in terms of improved efficiency across transport networks so let’s look at all these areas when we’re looking at these projects so to do that we really need to understand what’s happening within that area so that’s the transport context and the baselining do we understand the demographics do we understand the type of employment we have in the area what are characteristics of the people who live in this area what do they actually need and there could be work out they done already as part of local transport plans as part of area based transport assessments a part of you know NTA work on Regional models or Regional strategies all that information is good information we got great information from the censes from GE directory in terms of so it’s bringing that all information together so we actually understand what are the issues and again what are the opportunities for making improvements in this area that will all lead to the development what we’re calling strategic options strategic options are about looking at okay what are what are we trying to do here you know can we deliver a road with with public transport we active travel you know do we have it to the west of the town the north of the town the East trying to understand that context and then look at those different strategic options and there could be many of them against those project objectives so do the take the box are we actually trying to to will we achieve what we’re trying to achieve by bringing this strategic option forward are we just bringing it Forward because we need to think because we think we need to do it you know we think it’s the right thing so it’s going through that step process in addition to the assessment of strategic options against the objectives there’s a kind of two-step process in this phase there we can have many strategic options but are they actually feasible you know is there a tunnel under a lake is it true through a mountain is it really feasible from an environmental perspective from an engineering perspective from a political or financial perspective so it’s a two-step process it’s strategic options against objectives and then it’s the feasibility of those options and Virginia will may be going to that b in a little more detail her presentation so at the end of all this we have our strategic options and then we can bring them forward to phase two but just the final point on the bottom there is really um for projects over 200 million the department require what’s called a long list assessment report what we’ve done in terms of the guidance is writing the guidance to make sure now that this feasibility report for phase one will satisfy those requirements so there won’t be a separate long assessment report the phase one feasibility report for products over 200 million will satisfy that requirement okay to the final one in terms of the options report so once you have those strategic options identified they they take a lot of boxes against the objectives they’re feasible you bring them forward to phase two in terms of options now this is where things haven’t changed a huge amount we still have the Tre e process that a lot of these will be familiar to that’s been kept we still have that kind of three-stage process stage one stage two and stage three in terms of the uh the process you go through the key thing here is that you you may only bring two or three strategic options forward to this phase so therefore you may not need to do the three assessment you can go straight through to say phase two and did your project pres matrics for projects where you have lots and lots strategic options coming through and you need to identify alignments off there you can then use your tree process just stage one so there’s flexibility each project is different there’s flexibility around that you’ll still have your similar process in terms of detail appraises you still have your cbas and your your Cobalts and your tubas and your different bits and pieces that’s all still part of about and the MCA process is is still there in terms of how you score that obviously you know um it’s important to remember that look the MC process doesn’t give you the answer kind of it helps you inform the decision making process and which are specialist feeding into that we don’t want the outcome to be everything’s decided on on on the MCA and all that it’s about subjectivity that’s why you hire all environmental specialist presal Specialists is to have that uh subjectivity that judgment in terms of decision- making processes so it’s important to remember all that the final bit I’ll touch on here which is actually on the next slide really is around MCA and the introduction of What’s called the transport and accessibility appr this was introduced by the department as part of Taff some of you as I know are kind of struggling with it at present where sling with ourselves in terms of just trying to figure out how best to do it we have provided guidance now in pag on that but the key message from today really is that TTA or ta sorry is just an MCA process it’s just rebadged it’s been badged by the department but it is just an MCA so it’s not a separate MCA and then a separate TAA it’s all in the one it’s just the house being badged by the department so in terms of how TI have always done their MCS that process is still there it’s just been set out in a structure proc process for the department and that’s the key thing to remember the other thing to maybe touch on is you have seen maybe cost Effectiveness analysis brought in as part of this Tia and really the message again today is all about CA CAE CAA is when you can’t monetize benefits that’s a process of using assessment when you can monetize it like a lot of TI projects you can Monet monetizes whether that’s you chba Cobalt the team tool Etc you should use CBA so really you know prioritize CBA over CIA in this process yes you can include it maybe to to satisfy the requirements of the department but the guidance now in pag is prioritize CBA over CA if you can monetize your benefits okay final slide in this I just want to maybe remind people maybe flag some of the appraisal tools and some of these have been updated and will continue to be updated as that mentioned in terms of the shatter price of carbon changes as well so they’re they’re continuously evolving the tool for economic appraisal of active modes the team tool um obviously some will have used that maybe on some of your active travel scheme and some of your greenware schemes and the key thing here really is that you know this can be used as a standalone tool if you’re just looking at an active travel scheme or a greenware scheme it can be used in conjunction with a road scheme as well so you could use your tuuba to do your cost benefit analysis on the road section you can use the team tool to then do your CBA on the active Travel section the green M section you can combine them and that brings out your overall benefits and there’s quite High benefits in the team tool in terms of you know health benefits after benefits Etc which can be quite beneficial in terms of the business case for your project the cycle route uptake and scenario estimation of the cruise tool which was development was led by suan me is a tool which looks at different scenarios in terms of cycle uptake so it doesn’t predict what the future demand will be but it will say under X scenario y scenario that demand may increase by 10% 20 so what does it actually mean in terms of that road so it gives you that kind of range of scenarios or potential demand uh on cycling on different sections of of the road Network and again that can be used in terms of in in inputting into your team tool it can be use supplied context in your scheme in terms of what the potential demand will be so that’s an online um link is cruise. bike you can link at that you can play around it’s quite informal it’s quite intuitive and it’s quite useful in terms of just kind of that overall picture potential demand potential scenarios the road emissions model RM um most us will probably used at this stage probably around about 2 years and it’s been kind of continually evolved and improved obviously that looks at the operational impacts of carbon so you know your tail pipe emissions it’s a really really useful tool in look in terms of CO2 equivalent also look in terms of air quality and really really beneficial in terms of you know understanding the carbon impacts we have all a change in terms of cap how are we aligning with that how do we maybe mitigate against some of the negative that this might might flag up in terms of potential impacts so it’s again that narrative that story how do we tell that we are accessing carbon properly what are we doing to mitigate against that and then the final one is is the carbon to which is the embodied carbon so the whole life cycle we have the RM doing the operation with have the carbon tool doing the embodied carbon so we’re getting that life cycle impacts of carbon again look at the carbon in terms of the maintenance in terms of construction so we can tell that overall story and that overall narrative in what we do okay thanks very much [Applause] thanks Dan thanks Phillip um so next up we have Virginia Kangley who’s going to go through the um project management guidelines uh Virginia is a chartered engineer with 23 years experience in the road construction industry she’s currently a tii senior engineering inspector in the west region having previously worked in kildair national roads office and 15 years in Design [Music] consultancy This good morning uh can everybody hear me yeah okay um good morning welcome to aai I’m going to talk through some of the PMG updates um any of you who spend your life watching the uh TI Publications website as I’m sure we all do probably have noticed that there is no update there at the moment that’s because we’re currently working on it um and but I’m going to talk you through some of the changes anyway and bring in some other points um this is just to go through a small bit of the context and structure of the pmgs uh and why we the guys have touched on this a bit already but the the pmgs are basically TI’s mechanism for transposing um the capital Works management framework into a document on how we would like um projects delivered but still complying with the cap Works management framework and they’re divided into two and the pag which basically transposes all the public good public spending code now infrastructure guidelines and uh the Taff and then the the pmgs and what we’ve been working on as the guy said is trying to make those documents talk to each other a little bit more make sure there’s no inconsistencies and we’ve been working very closely with each other internally to get that all working a bit more harmoniously and there two major sides to the pmgs the miners and the majors minors being 5 to 20 million we acknowledge that that 20 million now is difficult to achieve um schemes given inflation given everything just natural growth in costs of materials and costs of Labor um so what I would advise is that you always just keep keep the Le and going with your senior engineering inspector and with your regional manager on which is the most appropriate path for you to be following and sometimes it’s a slight halfway house between the majors and the minors manual um what’s best suited you can have a small scheme that’s relatively you know standard form for what we what we do in tii but might have an very expensive geot technical solution or could have an very expensive bridge that tips it over the 20 million but but it’s still kind of not a complex scheme so it’s more appropriate to use the Minor’s manual but just just bear in mind that there’s there’s potential for a little bit of flexibility in that and speak to um your inspector and your regional manager about what’s most appropriate for your scheme um there is the phases that we’re all very familiar with not going to talk to them because you all know them the only thing I mention on this slide is that when we’re reviewing the miners manual there is the potential that we might introduce uh an additional gate or two in that manual we’re still debating that internally you feedback on that to infop pubs if you have any thoughts on it the reason being is just what I’ve said in the last slide that a lot of the miners are now a lot larger than when that miners manual was originally written when we thought they would all be in the around 5 to 15 kind of bracket and we’re not getting a lot of schemes for 15 million anymore um so we we’re kind of debating that one at the moment to whether we throw in a couple extra Gates couple extra checkpoints I don’t want to really call them whole points checkpoints on the schemes um also just to point out I’ve had a couple of questions on this recently so for if you have a scheme under 5 million it should be going through this process the design procedure for road safety Improvement schemes urban renewal schemes and local Improvement schemes a lot of people think this is just for safety schemes it’s not it’s for all schemes under 5 million this is the process you should be following and the idea of this separate process is that it’s a lot less onerous and reflects the value of those schemes um I just wanted to touch on there are two really good guidance documents on the ti publication website that um really 90% of the questions I would get asked in an average week relate the answers are in one of these two documents so there’s a huge amount of very useful information in this in the environmental planning on National RS and guidelines there’s that’s an enormously helpful tool to um for project managers and then there’s a guide to implementing sustainability for TI projects and that really is like a it’s kind of a a methodology for walking you through how to align yourself to the recent changes in government policy uh neither of these are uh manuals they’re not like strict adherance they’re guides to help you in the background in your project um so phase one a new approach the guys have touched um on this already in from the pag perspective I’m going to touch it on a little bit the PMG perspective but there’s a lot of overlap um but what we were doing here was making the phase that phase one deliverable a more meaningful document and we’re really trying to hone in on proving the viability of the scheme that goes forward at this stage uh so we just want to bring in the definition of feasibility so you’d be producing a feasibility report so there there was a lot of debate about what we called the report and we we stuck with feasibility report it’s a term you’re all used to anyway but the eia directive gives a definition of reason of reasonability and it says ultimately Alternatives have to be able to accomplish the objectives of the project in a satisfactory Manner and should also be feasible in terms of technical economic political and other relevant criteria that ba is the basis of what you’re trying to do in Phase One you if nothing Falls if none of your strategic options F fall out at the end of phase one that’s fine if they all fall out it means maybe there’s not a solution that we can really deliver to the problem as identified um but all the two or three might fall fall out they all might fall out none might fall out of the process but it’s a high level review of constraints and a high level review of their ability to meet the objectives of that scheme but what this new phase one approach really hones in on is the importance of the objective setting and it’s about this now scoring or it’s not scoring in a in a one to term it’s scoring in a red green approach against the project objectives and this really goes back to the importance of setting re honed in objectives that are related to the problem you’re trying to solve and are not just generic objectives that you copied from the last 10 projects that you’ve worked on or that you’ve just dreamt up to to have something under each of the Taff headings of the objectives um and the as an example of that like if you’re out doing a safety scheme because you have a particular safety problem on the network and that is your primary objective then watering that primary objective down with the potential of 10 environmental objectives or an objective to improve capacity which for some reason seems to creep into a lot of schemes unnecessarily or improv Journey times when that had absolutely nothing to do with the problem you were out there to fix in the first place which was the safety issue that has the potential once you start marking your strategic options against those objectives that you’ve ruled out the best solution to the actual problem you were trying to fix because it didn’t score well enough against the objectives that had actually nothing to do while you were out there in the first place so the best advice I could give you when you’re starting off a project is to try and bullet point your problems and then bullet point the objectives that fix those problems and after that put down the tough criteria and see which one of those objectives how they align to those which they slot under those headings and one objective might slot under two of those headings and you might have one of those headings that there’s just not a relevant objective and that’s fine don’t invent objectives just for the sake of putting an objective against every heading because you could end up striking out options the best and potentially the best option to solve the actual problem um so how are we going to do the the actual feasibility assessment we’re going to do this against constraints risks and opportunities um for the scheme so it’s intended at phase one that the constraints will be done uh mostly by free data so windscreen surveys you know drive through the area what do you notice what’s what’s the LIE of the land what does it what’s the area look like um available online mapping resources there are no end of free mapping resources available online from different government departments and from ourselves County development plan I find that this is an extremely untapped resource in finding out what’s going on and what’s planned for the future of that area Census Data an amazing source of information is a lot of uh TI data online mapping data that you can use and then again as always talk to your regional manager or your engineering inspector there is the potential if you’re worried about some discrete location you could do a small survey small traffic survey they tend to be able to knock out a a small traffic survey for by five grand um and discrete area to see have you got any showstoppers that you in the area what we’re going to be giving a lot more guidance on in this update of the pmgs we’re all very familiar with the constraints and we tend to hone in on that and it’s something we’re comfortable with but I also want you to look at the risks and start uh developing your risk register and this is not to rule out options but it’s to be aware of the risk of the Strategic options that you’re currently looking at at this phase um so it’s identification of environmentally protected sites and what not just saying oh I have an Sac there of an Spa there but what is the actual qualifying interest of that site and how relevant is that to the Strategic option that you’re looking at and what are the the ssos for those not familiar with that that’s the SES specific conservation objectives um and that can be very relevant to whether you’re actually going to have an impact on that SA or you’re not going to have an impact on that sa so it’s just identifying the risks it’s not ruling options out because of those risks some some risks are manageable and mitigable some are not and known archaeology and potential for contamination these are things we familiar with the uh more new area is examples for opportunity I really want you to be looking at these more in phase one as the opportunities that the scheme can deliver for the local area and what you’re talking about here is TR the potential for transport Hub inclusion that’s for greater uh mod Shure parking it off robust locations use of quiet roads for active travel um provision of enhanced linkages between residential areas education areas and all also given where we are with the climate action bill you really at Phase One need you to start thinking about your carbon reduction opportunities and your carbon minimization opportunities and what kind of strategic options would align to that um we’ve mentioned several times already that we have worked very hard together internally going through the pmgs and Pags together eliminating necessary reports you’ll already be aware that the project brief at Phase One vanished over a year ago more um so we are doing and we’re combining reports now with these latest updates we are doing our best on our side to reduce the burden on what has to be delivered uh by the project managers and by the teams but we also need you to work back with us on the burden of what’s been put out to stakeholders put into tii and put out to our biggest stakeholders which is the general public and not having overly burdensome documents a 1 kilometer scheme does not need a 500 page report of phase one just doesn’t um so just some examples up there on how you can reduce your work count and what you can do use tables wherever possible instead of pages and pages of text watch out for repetition between Specialists we see this all the time that the geotechnical people the environmental Specialists and they you know a long list of environmental Specialists that everybody starts off by giving the same introduction to the scheme and the same introduction to the study area why one describing the scheme or describing the study area once at the start that’s it um do not this is a big bug rare for all of us do not extract sections of TI documents or policy documents and just paste them for bom into documents to TI deliverables that’s we’ve all read the policy documents we don’t need you pasting them into the reports that we receive just reference them out Footers great way of doing that put in links to a document that you’ve referenced there is absolutely no need to put half of the national planning framework document in the front end of your ti deliverable uh State the alien points and move on H don’t describe elements that can be put into Maps or figures a picture says a thousand words we all grw up at that saying go with it um and adapt the size of the report to reflect the nature of the scheme I think we’ve been through that before uh so just one other point that I wanted to give give a bit of advice on because we’re seeing a lot of errors in the interpretation of nifty and how it should be brought into projects so this is just a small bit of advice on the use of the modal hierarchy uh so the way it’s kind of been dealt with at the moment and a lot of projects where we’re seeing the errors creeping in and then the reports are going back out to you is that they it’s been done in a will enhancements to active travel fix the problem and if it won’t then we drop drop all active travel Solutions and move on to the next will rail fix the problem no won’t forget about it move on to the next will public transport fix it no it won’t forget about it this is the wrong approach that’s not how you’re supposed to be using Nifty how Nifty is was designed to be used was What proportion of the problem can be addressed by active travel enhancements and then once you’ve addressed that proportion of the problem What proportion of the elements can be fixed and move down through your moral hierarchy and that’s how you get your multimodal solution at the end it’s not active travel doesn’t fix the entire problem so I’m just going to drop it you still need it in um how What proportion can be addressed by public transport that’s about looking at the potential for transport hubs that’s looking at the potential of how close um um your strategic option goes to current um Bus locations or current locations where people are trying to get to and would that attract a change in M share um and move down to it and then the new road is only for what’s left over at the end it’s your last resort not your first Resort um so that’s just a a small bit on that um then apart from that within the pmgs uh we’re changing the name of s pod obviously we’re fixing a couple of little lurs that have creeped in over the years these things happen don’t know how they got in there if anybody knows of any more please let me know before we finish the update i’ love to fix them all find them all um and we’re trying to ensure common use of language between the Pags and the pmgs uh to make life easier again for yourselves and make sure that there’s no potential for or uh misinterpretation between the between the documents um in phase two then the guys have really gone into that I’m not going to go into it in in a lot of detail it’s still the three-stage process that you used to starts off with the three e the three e are potentially optional in phase two because if you only bringing four or five options into phase two at Phase One there’s not a need to refine them down you can generally bring four options the whole way through the phase two assessment and it’s a combined PMG pack deliverable again because we’re trying to reduce the the level of repetition required and then finally I just want to say so we could really do with your feedback on the pmgs um anything that you’re finding within the document that’s not working for you um anything that you find ambiguous or that you’d like greater um EXP ation on or training on anything at all feedback um I’ll be here for the next while you feel free to come up to me today and talk to me and give me feedback or in the Q&A session just now or send uh emails into infop pubs um at ti. at any time and they’ll get directed to me and we’ll try and address uh your concerns within the next update at the PMG but now is your time while we’re doing this update to get what you want out of these documents so that we can deliver our projects thank [Applause] you thank you Virginia so next we have um Jed OD who’s going to talk about payment Asset Management um J is a chared civil engineer graduating from University of gway in 2011 he has 13 years experience in engineering design and consultancy major road planning asset management and pavement condition assessment he joined tii Network Management in 2022 as a senior engineer in Asset Management having previously worked in the private sector with Arab and PMs limited he currently leads an active travel asset management team along with responsibilities for delivering a pavement renewals program on the high-speed pivate Network thank you Jonathan and good morning everyone and welcome to the very saturated fields of a Andro in my homey County um so today I’m just going to give you a quick overview of TI network Management’s approach to Pavement asset management and also more generally transport infrastructures Ireland transport infrastructure Ireland’s approach to Asset Management uh more generally uh so for the next 15 minutes or so I’ll just give you firstly a quick introduction to network management tii uh for those of you who are not familiar with our structure I’ll talk about a new uh technical document that was published in 2023 uh called the pav and asset management guide and then I’ll talk about some upcoming revisions to the amav suite of documents uh in response to various updates that have occurred since uh their publication and then today I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk to talk to you about some uh Innovations uh that we’ve been working on in in in the space of Greenway and active travel renewals so for those of you who are not familiar with network management it is one of seven departments within tii among Business Services Capital program commercial operations uh Corporate Services CEO’s office and Professional Services uh so the network map shown here is uh approximately 5,300 km central line of Roads made up of motorways dual carway and single carriageway with a ranging from uh 1500 to 150,000 um so a large proportion of that network is Legacy roads which can lack clear and consistent engineering and are often constrained by physical or environmental conditions and I’ll talk a little bit about that in a moment or two um so the National Road single carway Network as most of you are aware is primarily managed by local authorities uh the motorway and dual carriageway network is managed under Mark or PPP concession companies sorry um so the TI network management division uh is responsible for management operation and maintenance uh including the following so overall PL plans for Network management uh operation and maintenance of the motorway and dual cardio Network including the Dublin and Jack linch tunnels uh operational oversight of our ppps traffic management uh including our Traffic Control Center its policy and speed limits maintenance including winter and uh network operations Asset Management which I’ll touch on today in terms of of our Pavements uh approval of new structure designs and development and maintenance of physical and performance data so just to step back for a minute minute and look at Asset Management uh in general uh and at its most simple uh the iso 55,000 definition uh defines it as the coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets uh and realizing value will normally include a balancing of costs risks and opportunities and performance benefits um so the term asset management is often more used to refer to financial assets as opposed to physical assets where infrastructure Asset Management is the more common term for the kind of activities that tii undertakes so if you look at the life cycle diagram here uh in the slide um you’ll see that the national roads Authority as it were in the early to late 2000s were originally focused in the asset creation space uh of infrastructure assets and particularly with the construction of the major inter urbans um up to the late I suppose 2009 2010 uh space so tii has become more involved in the operation and maintenance since the Inception of the Marx in 2013 so it’s about keeping the assets at their highest value um keeping them in circularity for as long as possible through operation and maintenance asset renewal and replacement in line with our sustainability and circar economy objectives so now that we’ve just touched on uh what asset management is uh how is it applied within tii So within our statement of strategy we have an existing infrastructure goal which sets out to operate maintain and extend the life of national roads and light Railway infrastructure to ensure the safety and efficiency of our transport networks ensuring appropriate management of environmental resources contributing to a low carbon and climate resilient Society so it’s a bit of a mouthful but our approach to Pavement Asset Management aims to encapsulate a lot of what’s set out in this uh strategic goal so State the strategy establishes a commitment to protecting the significant investment that has been made in our transport networks so in line with that commitment uh tii has established an asset management policy which fits beneath the statement of strategy and it sets out that assets will be managed in a sustainable manner through the development implementation and maintenance of an asset management approach that is risk-based and data driven um and I’ve highlighted data driven here because that’s the key point in in in terms of our pav Asset Management approach it’s very very much data driven so you’ll see from the structure here we’ve developed an asset management structure which is aligned with ISO 55,000 uh and it adopts the hierarchial line of sight approach um so as I said we have our asset management policy and our strategy so below our policy we have a strategy that outlines the range of assets that are managed and their value it describes the importance of asset management and it’s linked to our strategic objectives and of other tii department of transport and government initiative so it also introduced the concept of life cycle planning so beyond that then we have our asset management framework which sets out the ultimate objectives that we uh will aim to achieve through our through our asset management processes beyond that again we have the Strategic Asset Management plan level and these are specific to light rail local Authority roads and um are managed and Concession roads and finally we have these group level Asset Management plans which are Asset Management specific uh to likes of say Pavements or structures so you’ll find um all of these documents down to the framework level on our website at ti. Asset Management we’ve recently published a strategic Asset Management plan for the managed and Concession roads uh and also one for the light rail network last year so that will also be going up on our website uh in due course so you can keep keep an eye on that so that’s Asset Management uh generally speaking I suppose an TI’s approach to Asset Management so today I just wanted to touch on one new new uh standard or technical document that was published in uh February 2023 and that’s the pavement Asset Management guide so you can scan the QR code here if you like if you wish to download it or you can find it on TI publications. at am660 so the Pam guide serves uh aims to serve as an overarching reference or manual to direct users to key sources of information including references out to standards and specifications so the Pam guide is primarily aimed at TI network management Personnel but may also be beneficial to implementation authorities design organizations and other interested parties to help promote a more consistent and effective pavement Asset Management approach by all stakeholders uh so today I’m just going to introduce the document I’m not going to get into any great detail in particular other than just to make you aware of its existence and happy to take any questions you may have afterwards so so this is the contents uh of the documented seven uh Main chapters some of which I’ve touched on in terms of the introduction and our approach to paven Asset Management uh we talk about Network definition and inventory uh so how our data is aligned to a linear referencing system and how we inv inventor eyesee all of our data that’s associated with that uh I’ll talk a little bit about our pavement condition and skid resistance surveys um but I won’t get into the detail of the data management how we secure the data validated and process it our pavement asset management software dtims I’ll touch on um we Al look at program planning and scheme development uh Network level reporting and kpi so how we monitor our pavement condition annually through our strategic and tactical kpis uh there is an appendix with the relevant TI Publications that is useful which will provide hyperlinks out to all of the relevant uh standards and specifications that are relevant to pav and asset management so as I said tii is responsible for a full Suite of network assets however the pavement assets are the most fundamental element of the National Road Network when you look at it from a gross replacement cost point of view um our Pavements are predominantly made of layers of flexible and flexible composite materials that are designed to be strong enough to support uh the loads over their lifespan uh for 20 to 40 years um so the pavement asset management team within Network management is responsible for the Strategic Management of our Network Pavements through our pavement asset management system which I’ll touch on in a moment or two uh monitoring the structural and surface condition of Pavements through our annual pavement condition surveys monitoring and managing the skid the skidding uh condition of our Network Pavements and updating and developing standards construction specifications for Network pavement materials which is the topic of a lot of what we’ll be spoken about today in this afternoon so you can see on the right here we have quite a diverse Network as as you can see we have we’ve broken that out into five sub networks from a pavement Asset Management point of view we have subnet zero which is our motor Angel carer Network subnet one is our engineered single carage weight two is our urban areas three and four then are our Legacy networks so our lower volume uh single carage with network um primarily dotted around our Western SE Western Seaboard so as part of TI’s pavement management procedures um an annual survey is undertaken of Our National Road Pavements utilizing an array of electronic laser and digital video equipment mounted on Specialized vehicles and I see some colleagues here from PMS limited here today as well which is great to see so year on year these surveys measure and record a range of network condition parameters including uh longitudinal profile roughness rutting cracking and skid resistance and together with the recorded traffic volumes uh the rate of deterioration can be projected to enable a prioritization of Maintenance interventions programs uh established on best practice asset management principles uh so the Pam guide aims to walk the The Reader through the process from beginning to end in terms of how schemes are identified how the condition data feeds into the overall process uh of identifying schemes and bringing it forward then to from Network level to project level assessment so I think some of you may be familiar with um our current or the key amp documents 0649 and 06050 which are the old hd30 and hd31 uh in terms of our pavement asset repair and renewal or par in its acronym format so protection and renewal refers to maintaining the physical infrastructure of the transport Network in a safe and adequate condition so a robust and continual protection and renewal plan for the existing Road network is necessary to ensure that it upholds its function uh of providing safe and convenient travel to people and goods um so these are just some of the key steps that TI network management take in the identification of pavement protection and renewal schemes um and a lot of this is encapsulated within in our pavement asset management system dtims where we look at identifying the overall need for the intervention determine the level of funding needed select feasible funding options and strategies and determine the impact of different options and condition and level of service so looking at it at the sub Network level as well we have different levels of service depending on the type of network as well and develop the preferred funding option and strategy and so on and so forth I won’t go go into the detail of all of these points but the as I said the Pam guide aims to I suppose take you through the process that we we go through within Network management to identify these schemes so that’s it in terms of the pavement Asset Management guide I’m just going to talk to you about some upcoming revisions to other pavement Asset Management standards uh in particular 0649 and 06050 or hd30 and hd31 in in old money um so these will be updated soon to integrate various changes uh to standards procedural adjustments and advancements towards carbon reduction initiatives um multiple updates have been made to both tii and non-ti standards since these documents were published so we we have a bit of catch up uh work to to to to update all of the references that are within within these documents so just to talk about the paven asset management system uh for a moment it’s a sophisticated system that ensures TI’s payment management and renewal activities are planned and managed optimally so we currently use dtims which is the date and total infrastructure management system which is a Canadian uh based company uh since about 2012 and we use this to generate multiannual pavement programs for for Network management and from the graphic here this is just a 20-year projection of uh investing 100 million per year so this is just a condition distribution across 20 years uh showing from very good to very poor so we would use dtims to Output a lot of these types of reports that feed into our pav and business case that we produce every four to five years for um for the Department of Transport so while that’s an established uh system and process we’re now looking at integrating this dtims with uh the Environmental Management System module uh so the goal of the EMS is to account for uh global warming potential gwp for each pavement segment and determine the effects of treatment operations on the overall gwp of the network so this will allow us to compare uh the costs and Savings in network gwp for various budget scenarios and in gwp for various treatment regimes so assessing the impact of improving the network by also reducing the road emissions that are associated with with that Network so it’s um it’s it’s it’s in its early stages of its uh development but it will mean future updates to the power documents in the Pam guide in the near future so just to make you aware of it the the graphics shown here are just purely uh for presentation uh uh for today um so just to touch on the I apdm the dnp 03021 um and I I won’t uh get into any great detail because I know there’s presentations on this later on but it’s just to make you aware that there will be updates to our ampv documents in response to ipdm so to include guidance on how to report the findings of ipdm include extended strip map reporting and also to align with uh defect descriptions um I think Eddie will be talking about that in uh talking about ipdm in the afternoon so um and just to mention as well in terms of our falling weight deflectometer standards I think most of you will be aware of this test method it’s the most common method used for non-destructive deflection testing of Road Pavements in Ireland um so we’re looking at developing new FWD guidelines uh which are due to be published shortly and we bring together um the relevant pavment evaluation aspects currently covered under a number of different docents within a single TI publication so there’s a document there some of you may be familiar with the NRA guidelines for use of FWD in Ireland which dates back to July 2000 um so almost 24 years old at this stage so I don’t know what I was doing in 2000 but I certainly wasn’t thinking about FWD uh guidelines uh 24 years ago so hopefully by bringing these three documents together it um it will I suppose bring a more clarity to cuz we have had interm technical advice notes produced um for the use of FWD and QA for Works performance assessment on Unbound granular material so we’ll aim to bring that all together uh it will also include requirements for FWD testing quality assurance uh procedures and requirements for the assessment of both new pavement works and existing uh Pavements um so just finally in terms of the updates um I think many of you will be familiar with the maap road asset management system it has been in place uh for a number of years now through uh and developed by the rmo so it’s a collaborative tool used by uh local Authority Engineers when implementing pavement schemes so it can provide accurate asil information on the composition of constructed pavement so you you may have seen um circulars issued uh over the last couple of years uh the introduction of the map road system for data capture and its impact on the power process is detailed in TI circular 0 72022 and TI 02202 4 so these aim to outline how the map road system is integrated into the existing power process because to date or up until about the end of 2022 it was only used on the regional local Road Network we’re now looking to captured all of our national road pavement projects through map road we’ve also rolled that out to active travel projects now as well in the most recent circular um so it’ll hopefully improve our overall uh process and digitization of the approval the approval process and the gateways that are within our hd30 uh 0649 at the moment so finally um just wanted to touch on um some work that we’re doing in the greenway in active travel space that may have some impacts on uh future standards so I think as most of you are aware tii have become the approving organization or the sanctioning Authority for Greenways since about 2021 uh we currently do not have any official remit uh in the space of management or maintenance currently with Greenways uh but we do recognize the challenges that this infrastructure can pose for local authorities so the Nifty framework which was touched on uh in in most of the presentations this morning outlines priorities for investment out to 240 and identifies both active travel and maintenance of existing infrastructure as being at the top of the intervention hierarchy so in 2023 our team in network management submitted a business case for an asset management approach to be adopted for active travel infrastructure with a separate dedicated maintenance and renewal budget um and while we haven’t been successful to date in securing funding for routine maintenance we have had some uh look in securing funding for the allocation of renewal of existing Greenways on a pilot basis in 2023 uh which has continued into 2024 and likely will continue into the future so as this is constrained to Renewal funding currently this is focused on end of life assets or interest structure that is beyond ordinary maintenance intervention so we are looking at developing a pilot governance structure for the oversight and administration of such funding which will likely take the form of a streamlined par uh process as you’d be familiar with so uh this may be published in uh future updates to standards so with that in mind if any local Authority staff are aware of any sections of existing Greenways which are in need of some renewal interventions uh please feel free to reach out to us at ATI amti i. and that’s all for me thank you very much for your attention so next up we have um Dr suzan me she’s going to talk to us about Crash modification tool and Junction design and the cycle design manual um suzan is a road safety specialist and is responsible for managing the road safety Improvement program for national roads at tii she has over a decade of experience in research she currently lectures at tud is a project manager for several research project projects within tii and Ceda and she is a policy adviser she’s a chartered civil engineer holds a PhD and applied transport statistics and an MSC in transport planning and Engineering okay um good morning everybody um so the first presentation I’m going to give is uh the introduction of the tii Collision modification uh cmf tool um I’m going to cover the uh briefly the research project that that tool resulted from uh some very high level results from phase one and phase two of the project then I’m going to move into what the tool looks like for the user and I’m going to give two worked examples so there will be more training on this in the months to come um and I’m not going to go through all of the functionality within that tool but this will just give you an introduction to what and how it can be useful to you so um the tool came out of this research project was which was funded through um the research call from the research SE section in tii and the title of it was Collision prediction models for Irish National Road Network and the work the project was carried out between 2021 and 2023 um so it was a a joint initiative um between TRL which are based in the UK and responsible for a lot of this type of work over the last many many years and Arup and that’s just uh an idea of of the types of people who were involved in the project so the aim of the project was to determine if there was this statistical model Tech modeling technique that can be practically applied um in the context of national roads in Ireland um an objective is to develop an ax and prediction model which we achieved that I’m not going to go into that today just the results of it the other objective was to produce crash modification factors cmfs to reflect safety performance of uh safety measures in Ireland so we don’t really have those at the moment so for those of you who you who work in this area in Road Safety will know the tii recommends that one of the ways that you um develop your uh business cases for road safety schemes when looking for funding is to use cmfs um so the project was run over a number of years and it had a number of tasks in order to get get to the end result so what I’m looking at today is Task six which is guidance and tools um there’s uh the deliverables from this uh project there’s a phase one and a phase two report um going into how all the statistics and the analysis was done and they’re they’re available uh from the TRL website and from the ti website and there’s a link to that at the end of the um presentation so the models we were able to produce we were able to produce models for motorways dual carriageways single carage ways and our Legacy network uh we found generally that reducing the number or improving the safety of minor Junctions and access points reduced Collision res risks on single carriageway road so that would be something that would be known but actually quantifying it in the Irish context wasn’t known here to for dual carriageways again something that we would be aware of increasing the proportion of medium barriers decreases the risk of uh per segment so in urban environments for example we might not always always have that uh pavement condition um is important uh to ensure that the skid resistance surface texture meets the defined minimum thresholds within tii so we found again this is something that you know pavement engineers and in general we would know that that is a safety factor for all of our networks but again not Quantified in an Irish context again the the model form of that came out of the models the various models that I that I discuss are are in this general for I’m not going to go into that today um there’s a full paper on this was presented at the TR conference uh La last week the week before last um was presented by uh Nathan Haram of of TRL uh so again that paper will be available if you’re interested from the ti website so now taking a look at the tool itself resulting from uh task six so this part of the um research project was led by ARP in Ireland um so in order to develop this and understand what people might need they did an online survey with safety Engineers to gather opinions and Views um on what transport infrastructure uh transport infrastructure Ireland Collision um reduction calculator would look like and what they would need um then the second part of that workshops were held with local authorities and Regional Road Safety Engineers to to facilitate a more detailed discussion about needs and what the tools and the functionality tools and how they would use it ultimately so here is just a flow diagram uh just describing the process flow of of how we got got to the end product so two important parts of this is the first part which is the new piece of information that we got from the research which was the Irish acon prediction outputs that we have so we new CMS for Ireland so those are the first things that went in and then what about all the other bits that we don’t know so we drew from the Clearing House um so that’s one of the most complete um kind of repositories of all of this information um so this tool will look at that repository instead of you having to go into it and we’ll pull down the information into the tool for you and another thing that it does in order to ensure that people are looking at the right information things like five Lane six Lane highways and research that doesn’t apply to Ireland were filtered out also all the research is of varying different qualities so only research that got a three star and above was included and I won’t go into the the rest there so what is it specifically used for in the context of um tii or other schemes uh so it was developed so that it could sit beside um the road safety Improvement procedure that we already have in place it provides a better way to use cmfs a more informed way of using C C cmfs that means you don’t have to get um worried about reading technical papers or research papers um it provides new um cmfs for the National Road Network specifically it also does automatically calculates the safety measure Collision Improvement that will result previously you had to do a little formula if you had more than one measure an additive formula that that that used to get people quite confused on how to do it and there was mixed uh correct applicability of that which when we’re getting approval of your feasibility options boort creates problems and it also will calculate the first year rate return okay and that is a requirement of of of that standard gnd Doo uh gy 01037 um also with and I’ll get into that in a minute so where do you download this from so you go into the tii Publications website uh scroll down and where you get the the road safety improvement process there’s a number of uh appendices and AIDS and it’s it’s added in there so it’s it’s just in the box there it’s called the final tier TRL um Collision modification calculation tool so when you go into the tool and downloaded it onto your onto your C drive um and there’s no macros in it so it shouldn’t shouldn’t be a problem when you’re bringing it into your own system um down at the bottom you see that there are a number of tabs okay so at the bottom there’s guidance so you should read that from0 one down to the end to get an idea how how to use the tool and various different things that it does and doesn’t do uh then there’s the calculator that’s the main pit bit that people will use there’s also uh calculation with CMS I’m not going to go into that that’s a little bit more Technical and the available road safety measures so when it pulls down all the road safety measures from the Clearing House it’ll actually just list them um and I’ll go into that in a minute it also has the capability of adding user cmfs so if it’s not included in that the SE the the Clearing House there’s also other databases and repositories out there not included in this where you might want something specific you can actually there’s a methodology for bringing that in it’s very very simple again I’m not going to go into that today because we don’t have time um so this is what it looks like so this is the calculation tab it’s got uh six sections the first section you fill in your scheme details second section is the Collision stats at the site so you need to know how many fatal injury uh minor and material damage that you have and the number of years uh period of those collisions uh the third part is the Collision costs by severity so those um are basically the cost of a fatality etc etc so the most upto-date uh valuation of those is available from the Department of Transport transport appraisal framework module 8 and that was published in 20 2023 so last year the fourth part is select the road safety measures I’ll go into that in a minute with the examples uh section five then is the total cost of each Improvement so if you were putting in say a right turn lane you give an estimate of that and maybe you’re also putting in some barrier you put in an estimate for that um it also gives you the ability to not break that down because it’s not as easy sometimes with road safety schemes to actually make that definition and you might just have a whole scheme cost you can also put that in that’s okay too and the final bit is results so that that will give you the percentage change so what’s good about this is previously with cmfs you you used a ratio so that can be confusing for people particularly when you have to add them up so this just does it in terms of percentage that it will reduce it by and also gives the in the first year or per year it tells you how many collisions it estimates that it will actually take out of your site or the network that you’re looking at and it will also give you the first year rate of return so you don’t have to do that manually anymore you can use this and just screenshot that and put it into your report or write it up if you wish okay so just a little this is what it would look like you put in your scheme details there’s a tab in there for selecting the road type so you’re either working on a Motorway a dual carriageway a single carriageway or a legacy piece of road maybe like parts of uh the n59 for example then you put in the the the Collision stats that you have and the number over and and the number of years um in the available if you want to take a look at uh how many what what measures you might want to use they’re categorized uh so first of all you need to pick whether you’re using the Irish Collision modification factors or you’re using some other category and they’re broadly categorized speed management for example pedestrians are on on street car parking so you’d select the broad type and then the individual ones under that category you select whatever those are okay you can also go into the bottom Tab and you can go as as available road safety measures and and interrogate that separately just to get an idea what ones you’re going to use in the first instance um as I said in the guidance you can you can add um other ones but I’m not going to go into that today so two worked examples the first one is a single Carriage wary Road and we’ve decided that the safety Improvement required there is to close two minor Junctions okay um the collisions there over the three years are two fatal one serious three minor and nine material damage only and it’s go its estimated cost these are just madeup cost 330 ,000 including that so that’s how you would set it up You’ go to the Irish Collision modification factors and select that um and it goes in by degrees so you’ll be able to scroll down close one close two close three close four Etc in this case we’re we’re just going to close two which would be a feent itself just to get that agreed at the local level um and that’s how you fill it in and the cost you can see it there um you always have to be careful um up on the top uh left hand corner top right hand corner uh that you fill in your uh your Collision the Collision costs in that corner okay uh yeah I won’t go into that that’s just the Collision uh for the Irish Collision modification factors that’s just list down of the available ones that are there you can download it yourself and have have a look later and you can get an idea of what the percentage reduction is so if we close to uh minor minor Junctions on a one a one kilometer of the Irish Network we should reduce all Collision types so not not not by any type or by any severity by 23% so the overall Global drop will be that um and then the next part then is it will turn out results for you so doing that measure we can see every year we will take out 1.2 collisions per year along that 1 km stretch of road and the first year rate of return is 140 which is very healthy the second example is for a rural town in Ireland so the treatment in this case uh that was agreed uh was to remove or relocate existing perpendicular on street parking and provide new controlled pedestrian Crossing so that that would be very very typical of of safety requirements needed on a lot of Irish Towns at the moment the collisions again over five years two fatal one serious three minor and nine material damage uh prelim costs 400,000 um so we can see from the results there that we would say save 1.3 collisions per year and there’s a first year RTI of Return of 140% or 104% so what this also allows you to do is if you come to planning and say for example the removal of parking or the relocation of parking off Street um doesn’t get passed as part of part eight or section 38 you just can’t get it get it agreed it means that you can go back and take a look at what the the safety saving would now be as a result so it’s a much more evidence um and data Le approach to kind of assessing the merits of road safety schemes so again you could have several more you could have traffic management thrown in here as well so the various different elements um so that that is a good way of communicating maybe to elected members as well and breaking it down and making it very black and white um and it it kind of will help with maybe anecdotal uh kind of arguments right so in summary uh we have a new way to predict Collision outcomes um available uh a new cmf um tool available uh to those working in the space um there’s also a full paper to describe this research the outcomes the impacts of it um available to read if you’re if if you’re so inclined and also if you want to look further into the the the modeling elements of that it’s very quite quite detailed in terms of the data that was used and the methodology and everything like that they’re available from tii website but also um from the TRL Publications as well um easily findable so thank you so I’m going to go to thank you so I’m now I’m going to go to the second one uh so how am I doing I’m Grant um so this one is about Junction design and and and cycle design and the cycling design manual so in this I’m not going to go through the cycling design manual um previously um Brian has gone through some of the problems um you know with with getting departures through with that that they see quite regularly so what this focuses in on is some of the designs that come in and some of the problems that we repeatedly see that just are not safe okay and and kind of what’s what’s what’s missing so these are generic examples that I’m going to give and we just see them over and over and over and over again and we don’t seem to be getting any better at kind of um dealing with them okay so I’m going to look at an example roundabouts that’s a frequent one that that comes up and how to treat them and what goes on with them T Junctions Transitions and the last one then is um is an example of a signalized junction so all of these are to do with adding active travel onto existing networks so retrofitting so very very relevant to what’s going on at the moment rather than brand new Green Field uh type type developments so roundabouts with respect to acto travel retrofit so I’m going to roll back a little bit um before we add any acto travel so first of all to think about is how’s how’s it operating in the first instance in terms of safety um looking at cycle de man cycle design manual and options there are a lot of options for dealing with uh roundabouts in the cycle design manual um as I said some problems that we commonly see um coming across through departures within tii and discussions with local authorities and and others um all of this is coming back to operating within safe limits so the junction that you’re retrofitting into something it can’t be less safe than when you start it and this comes back to the tii statement of strategy so tii is responsible for a safe and efficient Network so if we see designs coming in that are going to denigrate that um then they obviously they won’t be uh approved or accepted and departure stage for tii so these are a lot of things that cause cause problems so there’s a lot of information out there they La their last year September last year the cycling design manual was published they also have another advice uh document called roundabout retrofit um so that’s a Guidance with loads of drawings on how to deal with oh Junctions that are already there dealing with things like constrain space dealing with um uh non-standard kind of layouts and things like that and how to resolve them a lot of information there there’s a whole section on roundabouts uh within the cycling design manual so I’m going to not be talking about uh the design manual kind of in a paint by num situation I’m just going to go back to basics about the user okay so one of the things that always comes up is um you know the recommendation for nearly all of the roundabouts within cycling design manues they go down to one lane okay so just for that should capacity wise be fine for about 25,000 ADT um two lane entry exit is upwards of up to about 40,000 ADT okay so in a on Lane entry on Lane entry exit roundabout um that has no active travel on it it’s got eight conflict points so there there’re places where you have to make a decision and if you make a mistake that that’s probably where you’re going to end up having a collision on the roundabout um if we’ve got a two lane entry exit and circulat carriageway which a lot of them are um then there’s about 24 Collision points so that’s before you before you put in any Act of travel okay so that’s what you’re dealing with and that’s if you have nothing else going on their standard and everything like that okay and operating safely that’s that’s what it is okay so then if you go to add uncontrolled pedestrian Crossings you’re adding a further eight conflict points that’s illustration drawing on the left um so what happens if you then add cycle routs or you add shared uh shared facilities um if you’ve got a double lane entry we’ve got 24 vehicular um conflict points if you add that in uh then you’ve got 16 pedestrian added onto that and then depending on what way you do the cycling design it’s plus plus plus plus that’s a lot of conflict points for all users to be concentrated on a roundabout and it’s no it’s no wonder that you know for vulnerable Road users roundabouts are difficult in terms of collisions they’re a source of collisions okay so when a 2way or shares segregated facility is added to an urban street and it and it comes up to a roundabout um facilities should not uh ever be terminated at a pedestrian Crossing and we see it all the time that it’s just the pedestrian Crossing that was there it’s a cursy Crossing there’s no safety benefit to that at all and actually it’s confusing and drivers ignore it anyway um not treating the roundabout at all no that’s not acceptable either you’re placing a new Demand right up to the roundabout and as I’ve said you’ve increased the conflict points you need to design it um how do cyclist even navigate the route if you just stop it at the at the stop line and one one arm or the roundabout you know this this should be easy to follow for for cyclist where are they supposed to go and it should be easy to follow for the drivers they should be able to anticipate someone uh cycling in front of them or coming out from the side how many conflict points have you added in your design to that roundabout as a result of the design that you are proposing to tii um what will it operate within safe limits as a result and what Collision types will follow asking those questions are very very important so again nothing really to do with the technical side of I must do this and I must do that within this cycling design manual it’s really asking some very basic design questions okay so if I add a two lane like we have loads of examples of of of this coming into us so either on a one on Lane entry roundabout or a two-lane entry roundabout and typically we’ve got two-way movements of cyclists and or pedestrians happening on one side of of one arm and a roundabout so quite often we get this type of solution where it just stops and use the courtesy Crossing and as I said that has added a demand for uh vulnerable Road users Crossing and interacting at the wrong point of a junction so driver is approaching the roundabout and then if we’re going going to if we’re going to a two lane the driver is like getting a lane for Lane one or lane two and thinking about um giving away or finding a gap on the roundabout they’re not thinking about a cyclist coming across them so within the cycling design manual and there’s there are four different figures this is just one of them of how to actually treat that roundabout so there’s about 16 different layouts and examples given in that advice in that advice note or the guidance notes that I I had on the previous slide so what is exactly going to happen so this is what happens when the cyclist is just traveling with traffic and just some questions for you so the drivers approaching uh the cycle is merging from the left by Design here so they’re going to merge into the the left turn lane and then also the right turning lane and the the Straight Ahead Lane so what that actually does in design terms it is actually creates a weaving conflict you’ve actually designed a merge H you would never design this for a um a vehicle you would not put in a slip Road like this okay um cyclists are at high high risk of a vehicle conflict um and yet this this is how how we are are are ending some of the cyclist uh cyclist designs that we see getting in um and does the cycle route end here like I mean is it’s supposed to end here is it’s supposed to connect into something else or their plans for something else further on you need to get them past the roundabout the conflict Point onto whatever the next leg of the route is uh and not forget to treat the roundabout otherwise you’re going to add this in so a few things about this that are even even without that conflict happening if they’re coming in uh at this point do they have enough room for the for for drivers to give them under the rules of the road the one Kil or the one meter or one and a half meter clearance all the way around the roundabout probably not the other thing to remember about the user is in this Arrangement the user has to look behind them to actually safely accept a gap I mean again we know that if we designed a slip Road like that that’s going to lead to collisions it’s the same with this so what way should it look like uh rural highp speed roundabout this is one layout that is in the cycling design manual so you can see that they’re all segregated so the the conflict points are taken out of the roundabout and out of the way of the drivers trying to make decisions as they navigate the roundabout in a low-speed Urban environment so and the one rule the cyclists do not have priority so priority is still with the driver but the conflict points have been taken out so you had eight or 24 to start with you’ll still have eight or 24 ending up with that okay not adding them in a low-speed Urban environment yes the the the cyclist in most most situations should have priority and designed as so and again those layouts are in the cycling design manual and they’re mandatory for anything 60 and under um it’s no different than what’s in the tii guidelines for Rural so this is what’s in um our standard for for uh geometric design of Junctions priority Junctions direct taes Etc and this is this is the guidance that we give so if you have an off-road two-way or one-way cycle PA cycle cycling Lane it should be dealt with like this so you carry it through the roundabout and don’t forget about dealing with it at the round otherwise you’re just putting them into and adding conflict points to vulnerable Road users and they will come off the worse T Junctions adding an active travel route again we see this time and time and time again more so than the roundabout one uh this this is a common one so ending a cycle facility or shed facility here actually just dropping it at the at the T Junction or at the side road so again going back to conflict analysis and looking at how does that Junction operate as it is you can see there’s about nine conflict points at any kind of priority Junction like this that’s before you put the cyclists or the pedestrians into it okay so what happens if you add a two-way walking or cycling shared facility whatever it is here you’re creating a demand across the red lines are the movements of the pedestrians either attracted onto it or getting off it to go further on their journey and it’s right across one thing it’ll do so it creates conflicts on the approach to the stop line on the minor part of the road it creates a permanent Crossing demand to and from the facility at a conflict Point already a conflict point on a network so that’s what it does um so user inter this is before I even this is just 2D on on paper looking at that like first principles traffic engineering then if I start looking at in 3D in terms of intervisibility of the users what happens there again another thing that usually gets dropped and not looked at um when design reports come in and also it requires cyclists again as I showed in my previous Slide the cyclist to look over and back behind their shoulder in this case you’ll have to watch for oncoming vehicles to get across the road and also look behind for oncoming vehicles and front of you so three things you have to do okay if it’s designed like that and left like that okay so in an urban environment what are you you’re supposed to do okay so you need to deal with two things first Crossing safely to get across that Junction so you’re not adding more conflicts to it so that’s a picture and there’s loads of different variations of the layouts in the cycling design manual and I’ll come to uh tii standards in a minute the second bit that you have to deal with is the crossing so you’ve created a permanent Crossing for a volume Ro user that there was not there before you need to deal with that okay again there are and I won’t go into that but you you need to you’ve created a collision RIS risk and created a conflict you need to design it out to make it safe so if there are Crossings um added either inadvertently or deliberately on any network it needs to be clear to everyone that it is a a Crossing that it looks like a Crossing to all users to to be fair to the road user and to be fair to the vulnerable Road user the road user be the vehicle user sorry okay and then what does it look like very very similar I know there’s Bend out and bend in versions of this in the thing but just for illustration purposes it’s pretty much the same same thing um for a minor road crossing um in a rural environment and again these I’ll come to these in a minute so in terms of a Crossing in a rural uh high-speed Road creating that Crossing C does require quite a lot of design okay so it has to be obvious to the driver approaching it that there is a Crossing they do not have priority here they still have to yield but instead of looking over their shoulder they’re right angles to the road and can look to the left and look to the right to find a gap okay and that’s what this is doing so again you can’t just put in the crossing and someone just kind of go across it you also have to you’ll notice that there are jug handles there and that’s to bring the cyclists at a um to slow them down and bring them at a nice a nice right angles to to make a um a clear decision on when it’s safe to join the network okay so there’s a few versions of those Crossings for acor travel Crossings on high-speed roads um added to our suite of um standard construction details and they’re they’re there um so if you haven’t looked at those before take a look at them they do require quite a lot of design and there are signs associated with it so there’s a cost associated with them etc etc so do bear that in mind if you are doing active travel design there’s more than just putting in uh a segregated cycle facility um again it doesn’t doesn’t really matter if tii is the standard that you need to apply or if it’s the CDM the picture on the left there is of the crow manual and they’re all saying pretty much the same thing okay and how to deal with um how to deal with vulnerable Road users okay a little bit on transitions so these the way they’re described are described as vertical and horizontal transitions etc etc they’re actually designing an a merge okay so if you’ve been doing traffic engineering it’s the same principles that apply it’s just that one is vehicle or traffic the other is a vulnerable Road User it’s a cyclist okay cyclist so merge conflicts are potentially fatal and serious uh vehicle to cycle cyclist from the side or cyclist being struck from behind that’s the that’s the Collision scenario that you’re trying to take out and also you’ve created a new conflict Point onto the network that you didn’t have before so you make sure that’s safe the other thing to question is is it uh to from a oneway or two-way facility what the the solution for the crossing or what you’re going to do or the merge depends on that so are you attracting people onto it from an opposing Direction you have to cross traffic ET Etc like that always ask yourself the question then do I need a Crossing to complete this also is it realistic as a designer for you to design something where a cyclist has to look behind them no is the answer to that one okay this is also from uh our design standards as well the use of jog handles so merging from an angle and merging from a side and cyclist looking from behind them that is a collision risk that is conflict that you’re adding into into the system we H recommend jog handles like this so again that’s that might not be obvious you’re just thinking about offsetting a piece of infrastructure and retrofitting it in these need a little bit of these need need a little bit of of space and planning and where they they they can go in safely visibility lines and all that kind of stuff but this is a safe this will operate within safe limits okay again ending a cyc lane this is very very common um maybe you’re you’re in a coming out of a of an urban uh an urban area this one there’s there’s a junction there’s a roundabout behind um but the the design has created again a permanent need to cross the road at that location okay cycling to and from it the red one there is is getting off and going further on your further on your journey you do have to cross uh so a Crossing facility should be provided there it should be obvious to driver that they’re not just looking at the white line up the end of the road that there’s actually something in front of them I have to look out for someone coming either way here in front of me so to give the driver a fair chance at stopping for that vulnerable Road user that where a cycle facility has been designed and someone has designed the endpoint there okay signalized Junctions and this is this is the last one I’m going to look at so this one on the face of it I think probably doesn’t look like there’s anything to see here so a new signalized controlled um Crossroad um it’s a private development with new recreational facilities um um all arms of the junction previously not kind of treated for pedestrians just actually there’s nothing there or there would be nothing there um have pedestrian push button units that’s fine it’s in an urban environment the development is also going to provide a two-way segregated cycle track and the wits were designed in accordance with the CDM okay that sounds good um also the cycle route to get to this new Rec ational facility um they actually found a quiet route through residential streets so they wouldn’t have to use the very busy busy road Main Road um and and that was part of the design as well so what they did was this is the position of in this instance where the segregated two-way segregated cycle facility was provided within the development and this is what uh the Maneuvers will result uh from the design as proposed so the quiet route uh comes on to the the major road out of the residential kind of area um in order to get into the facility and use the segregated two two-lane cycle track um the cyclists will first of all have to have to join traffic um then they’re turning right they will have to weave into the right turning lane and wait there with with traffic when they get a green light uh then they will turn right into the development and then at the junction at the junction point they need to hang a sharp left over the foot path at The Pedestrian Crossing and onto the segregated cycling okay so there’s quite a lot of decision points there for the vulnerable Road user the return Journey then they will have to cross waiting traffic at the stop line on the on the red um and then uh then turn right and then they will have to turn right again again Crossing traffic and waiting in the middle of three lanes of traffic in order to get a gap to get across okay so it created it has created a new Crossing demand the designed the way it was set up so it needs a it needs it needs a Crossing potentially it has created weaving Maneuvers for the vulnerable Road user within a signalized junction it’s created new conflict points new weaving New Crossing uh Maneuvers so the conflict points of this Junction going back to Basit have increased okay without mitigating them and for a vulnerable group of Road users uh so you need to design those out somehow and pedestrian cyclist conflicts also have been created okay within within the um uh within the the new facility okay so there are loads of versions of how to deal with the signalized junction uh within the cycling design manual I have shown one okay so they look quite complicated uh they probably need a bit of room and lots of signalizing things like that okay so that’s one thing the other thing was to go back to basics and say okay where are they coming from and where are they going to and what’s the possibility of kind of removing conflicts in this instance to get into the development uh you could put the cycle Lane anywhere you want it it they just it was chosen to put it beside the road sometimes it doesn’t have to be beside the the road that you’re designing and and tacked on to a junction you can just put their Crossing somewhere else and avoid the conflicts okay so that was an instance where if you’re just thinking about removing conflicts on that you’re created make it complicated for yourself or make it make it simpler is there another solution other than putting everybody in in a junction situation and them all trying to fight for their own safety as it were so that’s uh something to think what what conflicts can I remove from the way it’s designed at the moment is there a simpler way to do this sometimes there is okay so last slide uh the cying design manual uh transport infrastructure Ireland Crow or other guidance are all telling you the same things the principls are all singing off the same Hy sheet just be very very careful not to design by numbers you have to think about the user how they will use it and the safety outcome I’ll talk about safety outcome because the numbers of vulnerable Road users in terms of statistics and the ter proportion is going up okay they’re not coming down okay they’re on the Rise um designed to operate within safe limits okay prevent or mitigate conflicts have you created more than you started with and avoid ambiguous layouts okay so it’s not clear to the drivers who are using the road and not clear to pedestrians or cyclists that a there’s a Crossing there or what you’re supposed to do make it obvious okay put in the pieces of infrastructure that make that say what’s happening and say like it’s on the tin um obvious to all users and also ask yourself another question can a child cycle using it independently okay the example that I gave uh the last example of the signalized crossroad was actually for a school okay no way I would let my my child use that to cycle not an ocean okay thanks very much thanks for your time