What started as an infrastructure project safety revolution in our Southeast operations has now spread to highway and bridge projects in Texas.

Safety, as it turns out, is infectious.

On our Interstate Highway 35 (IH35) at Lady Bird Lake project in Austin, Texas, Guardian Angel devices and strobe lights are creating safer work zones, not just for our teammates and partners but also for drivers. These powerful tools illuminate a vital truth that our infrastructure teammates understand on a deep level: people want to be seen, and when live traffic is one of the Fatal Five risks, work zones are only as safe as they are bright.

Convenient Guardian Angels

IH35 at Lady Bird Lake encompasses a major thoroughfare of an even more major interstate highway. For our project teammates and all trade partners, space and time come at a premium in order to keep traffic moving, and significant night shifts are frequent.

When Southwest Region Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Director Mark Preusse and Traffic Control Foreman Joffre Maldonado identified the need for more robust safety precautions and saw what our Southeast teammates were doing, they knew immediately that they wanted in on the action.

“The difference these devices made was immediate. They’re powerful, and our teammates and partners actively ask to use them every time,” says Joffre. “They just light up the night. I’ve stopped traffic with them. I’ve responded to accidents with them. We’ve used them to execute lane closures and tapers. Their flexibility is endless.”

Mark and Joffre attribute at least some of their efficacy to the simple novelty of bright light in colors not normally seen on the road, such as green and amber.

“We get so used to red, white and blue lights on emergency vehicles, so setting our teammates and work zones apart with unfamiliar strobe colors really gets drivers’ attention,” Mark adds.

Safety in Empathy

Care for our people and communities is the driving force behind every safety advancement our teams implement in the field, and empathy for the people around them continues to drive the strategic safety decisions our project leaders make every day (or night).

On Lady Bird Lake, that means deciding where to deploy a limited number of Guardian Angels. While the team plans to introduce more – and our Southwest Infrastructure teammates plan to deploy them on future projects across Texas – choices have to be made.

One critical strategy that leaders like Mark and Joffre consider is “Does this Guardian Angel or strobe positioning make the human form more recognizable?”

Studies have shown that drivers take safety more seriously when they recognize, even subconsciously, a human form by its shape, orientation or movement. Whether on foot or on a bike, deploying road barriers or directing traffic, the natural movements of a human body tell our brains to slow down, assess the situation and be safe.

For Joffre and the road crews he’s often directing, that can mean placing the Guardian Angel in a position that is both practical and as safe as possible. Whether on a shoulder, helmet or front of a safety vest, many positions enable to device to naturally bounce with human movement, making safe recognition by drivers or our own heavy machinery operators more likely.

In other cases, our safety leaders choose to deploy the devices to individual clusters of workers, typically to a foreperson or crew leader who is on foot and at the same level of traffic and thus most exposed to risk.

“The deployment flexibility makes these lights useful for us in every situation,” Joffre adds. “I can clip it on and run without it falling off. I can tie it to a lanyard or wrist strap. I can mount it on a barrier or cone. We can get them in virtually any color. I can even use it as an extremely effective flashlight when needed.”

A Safety No-Brainer

When it comes to keeping our workers and our communities as safe as possible, no step is too far and a simple but powerful solutions like the Guardian Angel or strobe lights empower our teams to carry out their Zero Harm® mission.

Our teams are evolving with the advantage of our tools, finding new ways to deploy them every day. We’re even using them to deter boat traffic on the very busy and highly recreational Lady Bird Lake by affixing them to work barges.

“Like so many of the best solutions in construction, these lights are elegant, durable, adaptable and simple,” Mark says. “We want to go home safely. We want our partners to go home safely. We want every driver who passes our work to arrive home safely. This is a powerful new way to make sure that happens.”