Our team at Level5Design were pleased to support Austroads again last year in the development of an Extended Austroads Vehicle Classification Scheme for Australia and New Zealand.  
Safe, efficient, and sustainable transport relies on the accurate classification and identification of vehicles operating on our road and pathway networks.  

More information on the scheme is contained in the recently published report ‘Background to the Extended Austroads Vehicle Classification Scheme for Traffic and Transport Surveys.’

We are pleased to announce that we will be working to support Austroads over the next year to deliver best practice guidance on heavy vehicle rest area (HVRA) facilities by updating the Austroads guidelines for Australia and NZ and improving the availability of data on rest area utilisation.

​We are very pleased to be supporting Austroads in developing a new national vehicle classification scheme. As part of this process, we are pleased to support Austroads in the delivery of 3 upcoming Webinars on the Austroads Classification Scheme elements. More details are given below. The link to all three Webinars can be found in the detailed descriptions. Our very own Drew Gaynor will be leading the sessions.

Upcoming Webinar: Austroads Vehicle Classification Scheme – Heavy Vehicles - 25 October 2023
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This webinar is the first session in a three-webinar series. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme. The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters. The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
This webinar will focus on the heavy vehicle section and discuss:

• level 3 classes 3 to 12
• the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
• better description of axle groupings
• the creation of a new class 19 for heavy vehicles that do not fit readily into the prescribed classifications
• backward compatibility with existing heavy vehicles counting
• further validation of some sections.

The webinar will be presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston. There will be question and answer opportunities during the session.

Upcoming Webinar: Austroads Vehicle Classification Scheme – Light Vehicles - 2 November 2023
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This webinar is the second session in a three-webinar series. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme. The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters. The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
This webinar will focus on the changes to light vehicles and discuss:

• level 3 classes 1 and 2
• the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
• thresholds between classes 2 and 3
• the use of alternative counting technologies.

The webinar will be presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston. There will be question and answer opportunities during the session.

Upcoming Webinar: Austroads Vehicle Classification Scheme – Measuring Active Transport - 9 November 2023
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This webinar is the third session in a three-webinar series. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme. The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters. The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
This webinar will focus on measuring active transport and discuss:

• the creation of level 3 class 20
• the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
• emerging challenges in categorising class 20 elements
• the use of alternative counting technologies.

The webinar will be presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston. There will be question and answer opportunities during the session.

We had our 5-year anniversary on 13 March 2023. Thanks to everyone that has contributed to our success along the way! We got busy quickly doing some great things and it has been full steam ahead ever since...

L5D is one of the leading advisers on parking in Australia. Over the past few years, we have increasing been requested to help local government with specialist advice. This includes undertaking parking technology reviews, developing parking precinct plans, preparing parking cash-in-lieu policies and parking strategies, and undertaking parking feasibility studies. Some of the local governments that we have been working with recently include:

- City of Stirling
- City of Vincent
- City of Armadale
- Gold Coast City
- City of Rockingham
- City of South Perth
- The Rural City of Horsham
- The City of Swan
​- The City of Canning

We have also provided Masterclass training in parking operations, design and planning to staff from a large number of local governments throughout Australia.

Level5Design are proud sponsors of IPWEA (WA) and were pleased to take a prominent role at the state conference this month. One of the more interesting presentations was by the Commissioner for Fire and Emergency Services, Darren Klemm AFSM.

It is hard to believe but last week marked the 4 year anniversary since we started Level5Design. Where does all the time go? Of course things ramped up rapidly and have been busy ever since. What has been terrific is the fantastic variety of projects we have been able to work on, the exceptional level of commitment from the team, and the support we have received from everyone.  Thank you all!

We have been so busy lately that we haven't got around to posting all the fantastic things we have been doing but this one is certainly worth mentioning! Yesterday Drew Gaynor, one of L5D's Principal Consultants, delivered a conference presentation on the topic 'Best Practice Approaches to Road Freight and Communities' to an assembled local government and associated public works audience.

This builds on best practice work we completed for Austroads in 2020 and that is reported here.

The presentation was delivered at the IPWEA WA Annual Conference in Fremantle and formed part of a freight themed session that we organised including other presentations from the Freight and Logistics Council and the Shire of Plantagenet.

Thanks go to Drew for all of his efforts (nice photo by the way)!  A copy of his presentation is given here. 

We would like to finish by also acknowledging the good work of IPWEA (WA). We are a very keen supporter of the Association and what it does for the public works industry.

Under a WasteSorted funding grant from the Waste Authority of WA, Level5Design has developed an on-site toolbox education program in Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste and resource recovery to facilitate better recovery, sorting, and transfer of C&D waste materials for reuse in regional roads and other local infrastructure.

The toolbox information specifically targets those in the C&D industry, contractors, product suppliers, builders, local government etc. and discusses the benefits from cost savings and reduced risk to environmental footprint reduction.

Level5Design has recently delivered a number of sessions throughout the South West and the toolkit can be found here.

Our Managing Director, Peter Damen gave an interview to the ABC to highlight the importance of the toolbox information. Click on the picture below to listen to the interview.