iRAP Accredited Supplier FRED Engineering is returning to Chad a few months after closing a project for the EIB to undertake a World Bank funded project to perform a Road Safety Data Review and Technical Road Infrastructure Safety Study.

The EIB project involved testing the iRAP methodology from feasibility study to final design of the road infrastructure.

The new World Bank technical assistance is two fold, involving a road infrastructure component and a road safety data component.

First, in order to support the government in adopting safer road infrastructure designs and improving existing road networks to accommodate all road users, the consultancy will include assessments of a sample of selected high-risk roads of 100-150 km pulled from a large network of roads, provide options for improvement and technical guidance on speed management. The main objective of this portion of the assignment is to assess a representative sample of roads following the iRAP methodology, to provide best practice options to improve road safety on those sections that can be easily extended to the rest of the network.

Second, it involves the assessment of the institutional arrangement of road safety data collection and analysis (which includes crash data among other types of data). This assessment will include a review of the database systems currently used in Chad, the data collection processes and forms within various administrations; availability of road safety data; current initiatives relating to road safety data. In addition, an analysis of the data quality, gaps and improvement options will be undertaken.

The aim of this assessment is to provide improvement options to current and planned procedures and systems for collecting, recording (including reporting process and report outline), analyzing, and reporting road crashes, recommend methodologies for the efficient and accurate entry of data according to international best practices, and provide guidance on the efficient rollout of the road safety database and monitoring system. It will include a comparison of different data collection tools and preparation of the roadmap for implementing the selected tool, together with knowledge sharing activities.

FRED Engineering works in 69 countries and has conducted 15,785km of iRAP assessments to date. Four staff are currently iRAP Accredited to perform survey, coding and analysis and reporting services.

Image credit: Anthony Beck, Pexels