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AUs Delegation

New Zealand TTM Delegation in Australia

The Traffic Management Association of Australia conference and associated visits.

The Temporary Traffic Management Industry Steering group (TTM-ISG) led our first international delegation in March 2025 to attend the Traffic Management Association of Australia’s (TMAA) annual conference in Sydney. A small but punchy group of eight attendees from New Zealand packed a weighty agenda into three days, including one-on-one meetings with Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW), Austroads and the WestConnex Tunnel Motorway Control Centre. 

At the conference itself, the TTM-ISG had an opportunity to share about the progression of the risk-based approach to TTM in New Zealand, which opened doors for good interaction with changes taking place in Australia. Along with the one-on-one meetings, there were plenty of learnings to exchange and opportunities to continue working together across the Tasman. 

Key takeaways from the NZ delegation

  • Meeting with TfNSW – on our first day in Sydney, we had the opportunity to meet with the TTM, corridor access and road safety teams from TfNSW. As a client and RCA organisation, it was interesting to learn about their self-developed guide for TTM and how risk outcomes are procured through contracts to best manage TTM. While the environmental conditions are different and therefore it’s not always suitable to replicate, there are some principles of operation we would be interested in exploring further with TfNSW where there is value to other councils.

  • Meeting with WestConnex Motorway Control Centre – our second day began with a visit to the WestConnex MCC hosted by the FH/Egis team who are part of the maintenance and operations contracts for over 30km of continuous motorway tunnels. A complex network of this nature needs organised planning and logistics. Each year, the full plan of closures is made available one year in advance and activities are then coordinated around these with a minimum of 200 workers in any closure. This means that each closure is used to the maximum to facilitate multiple work activities to minimise disruption to the network. We were also fortunate to have representatives from Alta come and share about their digital workzone technology and learned that WestConnex deploy this where risk of a site breach and harm is high. A live breach was witnessed just the night before, with the public vehicle stopping as soon as the lights flashed and alarms signalled. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the driver was able to safely move out of the work area.

  • Meeting with Austroads TTM operations Manager – Australia are also in the midst of some significant changes to their training and competency model for those working in the TTM sector. This has been a multi-year journey and while the models between New Zealand and Australia are different, there was a common theme for the need to be patient and appreciate the time it will take for the sector to understand and apply the change. Offering on-going touch points to learn and answer questions is important and something the TTM- ISG will continue to do with partners delivering the NZ TTM competency framework. One area that we’d like to explore in future is the suitability of the Austroads Guide to TTM (AGTTM) and whether there are use cases for this in New Zealand.

  • TMAA Conference – our Chair Darren Wu presented in one of the concurrent sessions on Effectiveness, Efficiency and Cost of TTM, a key focus for the New Zealand context given central and local government areas of interest. This included a short Q&A panel towards the end joined by Betty Mitrova (Tier 1 Contractor representative) and Tracey Berkahn (North Island RCA representative). This was well received and sparked further conversation with conference delegates about the complexity of change taking place across the Tasman. The remainder of the conference had a diverse range of presentations covering various technologies used to support the TTM sector, state government updates and even a presentation on change fatigue – something that many of us can relate to. TMAA were very proud to be extending the road worker safety survey to New Zealand and to partner with the TTM-ISG to help improve safety for all road workers. The conference finished with an awards dinner celebrating outstanding performance in the sector. We hope to be able to do that here one day soon!

Across the three-day delegation, we were very thankful for the generosity of time shared by each of the engagements we had, and a special thank you to TMAA also for being great hosts. We hope to grow the delegation for any future international visits and look forward to providing other similar opportunities to the wider sector.   

 

Image: Figure 1 Clockwise from Top Left, Meeting with TfNSW, TMAA conference awards dinner photo booth, meeting with FH|Egis at the WestConnex Motorway Control Centre, delegation dinner kindly sponsored by Highway 1, NZ delegation at the TMAA conference.

Date: 28 April 2025