Highway Maintenance Workers
Highway maintenance workers maintain highways, municipal and rural roads, airport runways, and rights-of-way. Their job duties include patching broken or eroded pavement and repairing guard rails, highway markers, and snow fences. They also mow or clear brush from along the road, or plow snow from the roadway.
How to become a highway maintenance worker? Highway maintenance workers generally set out signs and cones around work areas to divert traffic, flag motorists to warn them of obstacles or repair work ahead, perform preventative maintenance on vehicles and heavy equipment, drive trucks to transport crews and equipment to work sites, erect, install, or repair guardrails, road shoulders, berms, highway markers, warning signals, and highway lighting, using hand tools and power tools.
The highway maintenance worker's job description includes controlling operations of equipment or systems, observing gauges, dials, or other indicators to make sure a machine is working properly, adjusting actions of others' actions, assessing the performance of individuals or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action along with knowledge of transportation, public safety and constructions.
To be successful in the job duties of highway maintenance workers, one needs to be comfortable wearing safety equipment, sound noises, and weather conditions. After extensive knowledge and work-related experience, one can commensurate a four-digit highway maintenance worker salary per hour.
Qualifications
Every career requires an element of study and academic qualification, and there can be several study routes and pathways you can take. In following any academic pathway you will study subjects that contribute to the specialised knowledge required to achieve your career goals. These qualifications provide a future employer with the evidence that you have the desired knowledge, understanding and experience of their industry, so it’s important to consider the various types of qualifications available to you and to understand how they can boost your career and create opportunities for you.
- Training Course Driving course from any private or government center
Tasks
- Flag motorists to warn them of obstacles or repair work ahead.
- Set out signs and cones around work areas to divert traffic.
- Dump, spread, and tamp asphalt, using pneumatic tampers, to repair joints and patch broken pavement.
- Drive trucks to transport crews and equipment to work sites.
- Inspect, clean, and repair drainage systems, bridges, tunnels, and other structures.
- Haul and spread sand, gravel, and clay to fill washouts and repair road shoulders.
- Erect, install, or repair guardrails, road shoulders, berms, highway markers, warning signals, and highway lighting, using hand tools and power tools.
- Remove litter and debris from roadways, including debris from rock and mud slides.
- Clean and clear debris from culverts, catch basins, drop inlets, ditches, and other drain structures.
- Perform roadside landscaping work, such as clearing weeds and brush, and planting and trimming trees.
Progression Routes
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