Paul Basham Associates have had the pleasure to support our clients across the country in delivering Construction Traffic Management Plans over the years, whether meeting planning condition requirements or simply facilitating construction access to sites. However, there is often a reliance on the client or appointed contractor to provide further details on construction movements and frequencies across the construction timeframe, and whilst there is no problem with this in most cases, often a CTMP is requested at a point in the project lifespan where this information is not yet known.
It was therefore very interesting for us to review the latest TRICS Research Report on “Construction Traffic at Residential SAM Developments” that was published last week, which provides insight into typical construction movements at various sites across the country. The findings show that there are variations in frequency, and size of construction vehicles depending upon location in the country. Within town locations, construction vehicle sizes were typically smaller and in turn results in a higher frequency of LGV trips. This is likely owing to more constrained sites or routes to serve the sites, which results in needing to use a larger number of vehicles to deliver/remove material where their capacity for load carrying is smaller. This is reflective of our experience in town centre locations, where we quite often need to rely on more manoeuvrable vehicles to access brownfield locations and / or require temporary TROs to maintain clear access routes.
In terms of peak hours for delivery trips, the TRICS report outlines that the AM peak across all site locations is 7am-8am and that whilst the number of remaining hourly trips varies across the day, the PM peak is between 3pm-4pm. This is also broadly reflective of our experience, but does highlight that perhaps there is a focus on early deliveries and that these will need to be factored into construction times and any restrictions imposed on working times within the agreed construction timeframe.
In summary, we believe this note will be useful to inform framework Construction Traffic Management Plans (i.e. prior to fixed programmes or contractors being appointed), as the note will enable us to provide a construction trip rate per dwelling based upon development location. In summary, this has been an extremely useful note to review, and we would welcome further analysis on construction patterns at other different types of use classes to allow us to further assist our clients at all stages of the construction timelines.
If we can help you with your requirement for a Construction Traffic Management Plan, then do get in touch and one of our expert team will be happy to help talk you through the requirements.
