Chris5156 wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 12:45
Conekicker wrote: ↑Fri May 14, 2021 10:45For example, you might think that the right person for service area signs in one part of the country would be the Regional Signs Officer, which is only partially correct. There is a specific team that deals with this type of signing, liaising with the various service area operators as part of their duties.
Seriously? Wow
What do they spend their days doing? MSA signage is universally
appalling. Do they just phone MSA operators every now and then to reassure them that putting any old crap on a pole is still acceptable?
That team aren't sign design experts, it's mostly the admin they do. The designs are done by outside parties, usually consultants for MSA operators. Remember also that many MSA are extremely old and paid for by the operators, so they are often reluctant to put their hands in their corporate pocket to pay for replacements, no matter how manky the existing signs might be.
As far as I'm aware, for "standard" prescribed MSA signs, for which clear design rules exist, no one in HE checks the designs. The same holds for all other signs on the network. The designs are supposed to be done by competent designers and checked by equally competent checkers before they go off to the sign shop. HE don't have anything like enough skilled staff to check the number of signs that go up each year of course, hence it's left to the tender mercies of their contractors. So no need for HE staff to check as "others" are already paid, via HE contracts, to do that.
Unfortunately most of the design organisations creating these abominations don't have enough competent designers and even fewer competent checkers. Which explains why so many horrors are out there. Some sign manufacturers will question dodgy designs, many wont. This is usually because they've tried to do so in the past and been told, in effect, to STFU or they'll not get future work. So STFU they do, much as it grates with some of them.
In the past whenever I've had sight of poor designs I've made comment on them, "being professionally helpful" as it were. Sometimes the designs were fixed, sometimes they weren't. Sadly, as they weren't the responsibility of whomever I was working for at the time, there was nothing more I could do about it.
The only signs that HE signs experts check are non-prescribed ones, before the designs are submitted to DfT for authorisation - and those designs are gone over with a very fine-toothed comb believe me! That assumes that whoever is doing the design realises it's non-prescribed and submits it to HE for checking in the first place of course. Some designers don't do this and thus the dubious signs proliferate.
Patience is not a virtue - it's a concept invented by the dozy beggars who are unable to think quickly enough.