Forward Works Viewer

An interactive web-based platform for stakeholders to observe active and planned works to aid coordination and planning and to enable the mitigation of spatial and traffic conflicts.

At the height of the rebuild, SCIRT had 150 works crews active across Christchurch, including about 40 working at any one time within the central city.

Some work was on major arterial routes, including the city’s one-way system and the four avenues ringing the central business district (CBD). The accessibility needs of crews, together with the disruption caused by other roading and vertical construction work, and the need to provide consistent journey times with minimal delays for normal road traffic within the CBD, created the need for a tool to map and display current and planned rebuild work. The tool needed to show work at street level, be freely available, online, to all stakeholders. The Forward Works Viewer was created to meet this need.

Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) led the development work for the project in partnership with SCIRT, the Christchurch City Council (CCC), the Christchurch Transport Operations Centre (CTOC), the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) and the Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU) – a part of CERA.

All parties working within the central four avenues were asked to load their projects into the Viewer. They recorded the location, duration, contact information and expected traffic impacts, such as the removal of parking, lane closures, directional restrictions and full closures.

The interactive use of the tool became critical to understanding the impact of a programme on the transport network, and its value was immediately apparent when considering which works could be progressed without the adverse effects becoming too great. It also enabled a reliable source of information to provide forewarning of the impacts on community and business interests in the CBD. This information was then considered by representatives of the aforementioned stakeholder group, and projects approved or declined depending on predicted disruptions.

The maximum benefit from the Viewer was achieved by its early development in SCIRT’s CBD programme of work. The tool was used by roading, utility and rebuild agencies across Christchurch. It helped stakeholders to mitigate network impacts, and identify clashes, and opportunities for coordination.

It is being further developed on a platform that allows it to be used nationally.

Access to the Forward Works Viewer can be requested here: www.forwardworks.co.nz

A demonstration video about the Viewer was developed by LINZ and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0c7Cvge7HE

Tags:traffic managementtransport planningtraffic impactroad worksnetwork capacity