Sri Lanka roads serve all road users in often confined environments posing a challenge to balance safety risks (Image credit: ARRB)

The Government of Sri Lanka has shown its commitment towards delivering a safer road network through iRAP analysis of their highways and staff capacity building.

With funding from the World Bank, Sri Lanka’s Road Development Authority (RDA) has been working throughout 2022 toward understanding road safety risks on critical sections of their road network of A and B-class highways.

The RDA has achieved a significant milestone on its journey to improving the safety of its highways with three of its engineers successfully completing the training and assessment required to attain iRAP Accreditation in the Coding, Analysis, and Reporting modules working with the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), the India Road Survey and Management (IRSM), and local partner Consulting Engineers and Architects (CEA), with CEA Engineers also gaining iRAP Accreditation.

“Having CEA engineers also accredited means there is additional local support to apply iRAP to the rest of the road network and to new road projects,” said ARRB Project Lead, David McTiernan.

Experts from ARRB and IRSM delivered in-person training to RDA engineers over two weeks in November 2022 hosted at the RDA offices in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to train them to complete the assessments for accreditation.

The RDA and CEA teams attend training in iRAP Coding and Analysis and Reporting from ARRB and IRSM (Image credit CEA, Sri Lanka)

“A pilot project started actively in March 2022 and it is a complete package for Sri Lanka, involving coding of 1,079 km of their existing highway network, analysis to identify risk scores, reporting of Star Rating results, and development of a Safer Roads Investment Plan that was appropriate, feasible, and practical for Sri Lanka to deliver,” Mr McTiernan said.

An important part of the delivery included ARRB and CEA experts touring the coded network to identify SRIP treatments that best suited the local highway environments.

The team is designing the SRIP treatments so RDA can implement the SRIP and improve high-risk (1 and 2-star) sections to achieve a 3-star or better outcome. The designs are scheduled to be completed in April 2023.

iRAP assessments assist to identify infrastructure improvements to Sri Lanka’s highways to achieving 3 Stars or better (Image credit: ARRB)

The RDA invested in the training and accreditation of three engineers and expects to take the initial iRAP Star Rating analysis and expand it to the rest of the Highway network in Sri Lanka, to eventually provide over 12,000 km of Star Rated roads.

“RDA is a pioneer organisation in Sri Lanka for the construction and maintenance of roads while ensuring the safety of road users, hence we are planning to establish a separate unit for iRAP in the RDA”, said the Director General of RDA, Eng. L.V.S.Weerakoon.

The RDA and its engineers are to be congratulated for taking this initiative to make the road safe for their communities.

Article and header image credit: David McTiernan, ARRB