Personnel improve safety by identifying
threats to snowplows through GIS hazard maps

Maintenance crews are involved in an ongoing effort to identify obstacles and hazards that can damage or wreck expensive equipment.
Their objective is to map out all of the challenges on highway routes that snowplow drivers need to be aware of.

“We’re taking the knowledge from guys that have been here 20 years, and handing it to new guys,” said Max Thieme with ITD's Mobility
Services. “It’s all about employee safety.”

The effort to identify hazards started with District 5's Nik Sterbenz, and D3's Eric Copeland grabbed it next. Brett Stergenian helped D3 pull a map together, and Thieme took it from there.

Thieme said obstacles can range from cattle guards to a section of highway that narrows down, impacting the ability to maneuver. “This is 100% there to increase the safety of our crews,” Thieme said. “Part of avoidance is knowledge.”

"This came from D5 and D3, and was done so well that I felt attention needed to be brought to it, and it needed to be rolled out to all of the districts," Thieme explained. "All I did was make the Excel worksheets for easily adding new hazards for the other districts."

The goal is to identify hazards in all six districts, and add them to the ArcGis platform. Thieme said the online map for each district will be updated to remove obstacles that are no longer a threat because they’ve been addressed through maintenance work or other efforts. In addition, new hazards will be added to the maps.

Thieme said the maps have the potential to contribute to safety in other ways.

Information about hazards could be added to a platform or computer application that would display an automatic alert in a snowplow cab as the driver is approaching that hazard.

In addition, crews doing maintenance work during the summer months can mark hazard locations with GPS, then add them to district maps to ensure the information is current for snowplow drivers.

Published 11-08-19