Professional Barrier Solutions

Choosing between the families

This range covers several barrier types that do genuinely different jobs. Picking the family first makes the rest straightforward.

• Chapter 8 barriers are the interlocking plastic barriers used for street works and footway closures. Light, stackable, and the default for work in the public highway.
• Pedestrian and crowd control barriers guide people rather than vehicles. For queues, event perimeters, routes around work and keeping the public clear.
• Water filled barriers are heavier demarcation for traffic separation and site perimeters, filled on site.
• Gate barriers give a controlled opening in a run, so the line does not have to be broken every time someone needs through.

Anti-trip feet, and why they are worth it

Most barriers here come as standard or anti-trip, and the difference is the shape of the foot.

A standard foot projects out from the base where somebody can catch a toe on it. An anti-trip foot is profiled so the surface ramps rather than steps, which removes the trip hazard the barrier itself introduces.

Anywhere the public walks past a barrier line, and particularly anywhere used by people with limited mobility or sight, anti-trip is the sensible specification. A barrier that causes a fall has created exactly the incident it was placed to prevent.

Gates, and the run nobody breaks

Any barrier line that people need to cross will be broken unless you give them a way through.

What happens otherwise is predictable: a section gets lifted out, and it goes back badly or not at all, until the run has a permanent gap in it that nobody remembers making. A gate barrier gives a defined opening, so the line stays intact and the crossing point is where you chose it.

Place the gate where the desire line already is, not where the drawing would prefer it.

Pedestrian requirements

Where a barrier line manages the public, the Safety at Street Works and Road Works code sets out what it has to do: a continuous surface at the right heights so it can be detected by a long cane, a tapping rail low down, and a visibility panel the right way up for someone with limited sight.

This is the part of a barrier line that gets compromised first, usually by mixing barrier types along a run or by leaving a gap "for a minute". Keep the run continuous and keep it one system.

Colour and storage

Orange is the highways default. Blue, green, yellow, white, grey and black exist for events, retail environments and anywhere a construction look is not wanted.

Check how a barrier stacks and nests before buying a quantity. Storage and transport are what decide whether a run is easy to deploy, and a barrier that stacks badly costs a second van journey every time it goes out.

For fencing rather than barriers, see temporary fencing.