Meet the ISG – Tracey Berkahn
It's time to meet our new RCA representative for the North Island, Tracey Berkahn.
Over the upcoming months, we’ll be introducing you to our members - keep an eye out for your representative!
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in TTM
I am the Group Manager of Road Corridor Access and Coordination at Auckland Transport (AT) and have had this role (including the Corridor Access Team at AT) since 2019, after being in Finance in AT (and its predecessor) for 10 years prior to this.
My current team is made up of 50+ very dedicated Corridor Request, Temporary Traffic Management, Heavy Vehicle Permit, Bridge Engineering and Road Corridor Inspection teams. I did not know much about TTM prior to taking on this role and it has been a steep and very rich learning curve! Due to AT’s large and diverse network (over 7,000km of both urban and rural network), I still learn about TTM every day I am in this job.
Away from AT, I am a mother of two adult children and two rescue dogs.
Give us a quick helicopter-view of where the industry is on this journey at the moment and what needs to change to get to where we want to be?
I think that there is a lot of uncertainty at the moment about what the changes to the industry mean and what we have to do to keep our people safe. However, I believe that we are all working in an industry that is on the cusp of transformational change and it is very exciting to be involved at this moment in time. I truly feel that we are all talking and building constructive relationships and that is a great thing, but change is hard and takes time to get right!
Where do you see the ISG adding the most value over the next 12-18 months?
ISG will be pivotal in keeping the channels of communication open in the coming 12-18 months and helping the ecosystem with the importance of the 3 Cs. As the new North Island RCA representative, I am super keen to start to meet other North Island RCAs and build some great relationships. We are all in this together and the ISG is a tangible instrument to support the industry through change.
What do you think is the biggest challenge for RCAs in shifting to a more risk-based approach?
Consistency is the biggest thing that is facing RCAs at the moment. Without the very prescriptive CoPTTM drawings, there is at least the perception, if not the reality, that things are now very subjective. As the RCA, we want to give our applicants a consistent answer every time, not have one corridor request manager give one answer and another give a different answer. Then we need to understand how we will be doing assurance/auditing going forward. All a work in progress but not quite there yet...
If you could clear up one misconception or let people know one thing that you don't think is widely understood about the shift to a more risk-based approach, what would it be?
A current fear is that with the retirement of CoPTTM on 31 October that the whole industry will switch over immediately to a risk-based approach and that is not possible. We will need an orderly transition and support each other to make this change.
8 October 2024