Core Highways announce first deployments of new “BAAVA” barrier in the UK.

The first deployment of the product in the UK was in London, for TfL, on Costain’s refurbishment project on the A40 elevated section where Core Highways are the Traffic Management contractor and have been undertaking full road closures, to enable safe working zones, over specific weekends.

In this instance, with the works taking part on the elevated section of this major London arterial route, there was a concern that errant drivers needed protection from the work zone.

Bridge joints were being replaced and the site contained a high amount of large construction plant - a particularly hazardous environment - so protecting motorists from physically entering the work zone was a key requirement, whilst allowing easy access to works vehicles. The BAAVA barrier proved absolutely perfect for meeting TfL’s requirement

Then, for the Rutland Remembrance Parade, the teams were out supporting this important occasion and ensuring that the full procession were able to conduct their service parade safe in the knowledge that the BAAVA barrier would prevent vehicle incursions.

The barrier is unique in that it is totally modular to build, has passed industry standards BSI-PAS 68 and IWA 14 and has proven to stop a 3.5 tonne vehicle travelling at 48kph in just 5.5 meters.

With these impressive statistics, the BAAVA barrier provides the smallest, proven, safe zone behind the barrier that we are aware of in the UK. This means that the product is suitable for many urban environments for utilities projects, temporary road closures and events.

The truly modular design of the BAAVA means that the working barrier can be literally widened or shortened, on site in real time, by adding additional units and securing with hand tools, as required.

The innovative design means that members of the public will not be able to move the barrier once deployed but with the detachable handle attached by the operative, the unit can literally be opened/closed as an access gate by a single person.

Dan Raffles, Director of Core Highways specialist Barriers Division commented “Once we were introduced to the BAAVA barrier we immediately sought to secure some product for demonstration to our client base.

The versatility of it means that deployment can be designed for each use case without compromising safety/crash test integrity and, by utilising the unique opening mechanism we can turn a solid crash tested barrier into an access gate within seconds.”

Rutland County Council’s Head of Highways, Andrew Tatt (FCHIT), commented “After seeing the BAAVA barrier system at Highways UK, I was keen to trial it for Rutland’s remembrance parade as I could see the potential for anti-terrorist prevention as well as crowd and road worker protection at public events/temporary road closures for maintenance works.

He continued “The way the units can be built up on site to cover a variety of road widths and be quickly manoeuvred at road closure points to let authorised vehicles through made the whole experience very impressive.

The closing part of the deal was the crash test certification that the product has, it gave me the immediate piece of mind that it was safe.”

If you would be interested to experience the BAAVA barrier for yourself on a project you have coming up or to see how it could provide anti-incursion protection to your operatives out on the network, please email the team at barriersolutions@corehighways.com