Traffic and site safety equipment: buying in quantity against a works contract
Specified by the authority's standard, delivered against a programme. The schedule matters more than the catalogue.
Traffic and site safety equipment is rarely bought singly. It is bought by a municipality, a highway authority or a contractor against a works programme, in quantity, to a standard the authority already works to - and the hard part of the order is the delivery schedule, not the product.
Phased delivery is the real specification
A road programme does not need all its cones, barriers and signage on day one. It needs a proportion at each phase, and a contractor who takes the whole order at once pays to store it and risks damage before use. Tell us the programme and the quotation can be structured against it: the quantities are agreed at order, the shipments follow the works.
This also changes the freight calculation. Safety equipment is bulky relative to its value, so consolidating it with other divisions on the same contract - construction plant is the usual companion - often matters more to the landed cost than the unit price.
The standard the authority works to
Retroreflective grades, colour specifications and dimensions are set by the authority, and they vary between markets more than buyers expect. Send the standard the contract cites. Where no standard is cited, say what the equipment is replacing - matching existing stock on a network is usually the real requirement, and a specification written from scratch tends to produce signage that does not match what is already on the road.
Supplier questions for this division
- Can they hold a specification across phased shipments, so the last delivery matches the first?
- What is the retroreflective grade, stated as a grade rather than described?
- How is it packed for the quantity involved, and does the packing survive the inland leg?
- Will they quote against a delivery programme rather than one shipment?
Related divisions
Authorities buying safety equipment are frequently buying fire fighting equipment and fire detection on adjacent contracts, and municipal fleets add battery operated three wheelers for the same programmes. Where one buyer is placing several of these, quoting them together is usually worth doing.
Send the standard, the quantities and the delivery programme. Request a quotation, or see the traffic safety range.