Safer road rollers awarded by AAPA

A safety initiative aimed at road construction workers has been recognised with the AAPA National Safety Initiative Industry Award.

Gerard Killick, the business development manager at Fulton Hogan in Adelaide, has been behind the design and development of a CW12 pneumatic tyre roller.

After reading a coroner’s report about a death on a worksite involving a road worker using reversing equipment, Killick decided to find a way to eliminate the need for reversing.

It was well known that reversing plant in spray seal applications is a key factor in near misses and injuries of operators and crew. The Victorian roads authority, VicRoads, in association with AAPA, has announced its intention to phase out the use of reversing spreaders by 2022.

Responding to this, Killick approached Caterpillar after seeing a seven-tonne asphalt compactor with a 360° rotating seat.

Killick, who has 25 years’ experience in road surfacing across New Zealand and Australia, proposed that if the seat rotation technology could be used on a spray seal roller, it would eliminate the need for rollers to reverse on job sites.

He worked closely with Caterpillar, and together they designed and built what would become the new CW12 pneumatic tyre roller.

The roller enables operators to always move and look forward and is specifically designed to ensure compliance on Australian spray seal job sites.

“We just kept working together with Caterpillar until we got it right — they were great,” Killick said.

Fulton Hogan management were quick to support Killick, and their support for the initiative continues today.

“I test-drove the CW12 when I was in China recently, and thought, ‘hell, we’ve actually done this and it’s everything we thought it would be’. I’m rapt,” said Killick.

Image courtesy of Fulton Hogan.