My Experience: Public Facing Government Transport Engineer

Straight after university in the 2010s, I began my career at an English county government's transportation department. It catered for the needs of 0.5 million people and was responsible for circa. 2,000 miles of highways. I ended up staying there for almost 2 years, coming away with an experience to remember.

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One of my main responsibilities was to survey highway sites and carry out inspections. My work was almost always next to a live road so I had to wear a bright yellow hi-vis jacket so that drivers could see me in advance and would act cautiously. I also wore an organisation badge with me so that if anyone asked, I could prove that I was from the local government. This had some... downsides.

Ordinary citizens would see me and ask me what I was doing. Sometimes I was using a camera to take photos of the site, sometimes I had a measuring wheel to trace distance, other instances I had a clipboard to draw sketches of details to take back to the office.

Many residents got quite excited when I told them about the proposed developments. Some, after seeing I was from government, started asking me about bin collections and council tax. Which of course I knew absolutely nothing about.

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But of course I stayed polite and sympathetic. As is customary, I provided them with contact details of the government hotline responsible for these things. One guy started a rant about everything connected to government, even mentioning the Prime Minister at the time.

Of course, the Prime Minister almost certainly was not even aware of the little 2km cycle route project that I was working on. I'm sure he has more important things on his mind. Anyhow, it was funny to think that just because I was an employee, people would query me about economy, politics and daily affairs.

A Week as School Crossing Supervisor

In one particular week, I was supervising the construction of a pedestrian crossing near a school. This had to be carried out over the week-long half term holiday because it would have caused unacceptable disruption during normal school-time.

The challenging timescale meant that the contractor had to deploy greater numbers of manpower than normal. There were probably close to 20 workmen on-site. Teams included: ancillary civils; asphalt paving; road planing; signage; lining; traffic signals and the traffic management team. The road also had to be closed and a 3 minute diversion had to be put in place.

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Local residents approached me to challenge the road diversion and ask why there were so many workers on-site. I explained that we had a tight programme, was highly sympathetic to their situation and apologised for the inconvenience. The work was necessary and this was the best way to carry out the work with absolute minimal disruption.

It was impossible to eliminate disruption. We could not work at night because it was next to residential communities. One of them stormed off and said he would complain to the government. Our team carried on, having been used to this type of situation since we'd started working in public highways.

About a month after the works had completed, we received some positive feedback from the local district representative. They said it had provided a significantly safer route for children to cross the road and was a worthwhile project. It was work like this that made me remember why I enjoy serving society via civil engineering.

TO BE CONTINUED...