NPORS Safety at Street and Road Works Training (N714)

No, and it is important that you know before you book. Works carried out in the street by statutory undertakers under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 require prescribed street works qualifications for operatives and supervisors, awarded under a separate scheme with its own card. The NPORS category is a recognised card for safe working at street and road works, which suits many contracting, grounds, drainage and construction crews, but it does not replace the statutory qualification where that applies.

Tell us who your client is and what the work is. If you are working for a utility as an undertaker executing works in the highway, it is the street works qualification scheme. If you are a contractor, a grounds team or a civils crew working beside traffic, this category is usually the right and proportionate answer. We will say which rather than take the booking either way.

We confirm it when we quote. The NPORS test sheet we work from has no row for this category, so we ask how experienced the crew is and what road types they work on, and set the length from that rather than printing a figure we cannot support.

The Safety at Street Works and Road Works code of practice, usually called the red book, and Chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual, which is the reference for temporary traffic management layouts. The course teaches crews to use them rather than to memorise a single layout that will be wrong on the next job.

Yes, and it should, because the pedestrian who cannot get past your works will walk into the carriageway. Footway closures, signed and ramped alternative routes, and the needs of people with impaired mobility or sight are all part of the layout rather than an afterthought.

Yes. A thirty mile an hour street, a forty mile an hour approach and a dual carriageway need different advance signing, different tapers and different safety zones. The course works through the road types your crews actually work on.

Yes, and it works well for this subject because you can set out with your own cones, signs, barriers and lighting. If your depot has no suitable area we will arrange a venue near you.

An NPORS card recording the Safety at Street and Road Works category. It carries the CSCS logo where the holder has a current CITB Health, Safety and Environment test pass, which is what construction sites check at the gate.

NPORS courses are priced per course, not per person. What you are paying for is the instructor, the registered tester and the machine time, so the figure turns on four things: the category, which route your operators need (novice, experienced, conversion or refresher), how many people are coming, and whether we run it on your site or at one of ours. It is also why a squad works out considerably cheaper per head than sending operators out one at a time. Use the course builder on this page: tell it who is coming and it works out how many days the course takes and how many times it has to run, which is what the price is built from. Then ask us and you will get a figure for that exact group rather than a list price with conditions attached.

We run NPORS courses across the UK rather than out of one fixed centre, and for most categories the better answer is that we come to you: your operators are assessed on the machine they will be using anyway, nobody loses a day travelling, and for a group it costs less. If you would rather come to us, we have centres at Trent House in Stoke, Pride Park in Derby, Europa House in Manchester and Kingsway House in Liverpool. Tell us where the work is and we will say honestly which way round makes more sense.

There is no fixed timetable to wait for. NPORS courses here are run to order, which means the dates are built around your programme rather than ours, and a single operator or a full squad can normally be booked in within a couple of weeks. If you have a card about to expire or a start date to hit, say so when you enquire and we will work to it.