Maintenance workers are the operating unit that maintains public facilities and keeps a community, city, or municipality functional. These workers perform semi-skilled and skilled work in the construction, maintenance, repair, and cleaning of streets, curbs, gutters, storm drains, and related structures; operate and maintain a variety of hand and power tools and equipment, and perform related duties as assigned.
One of the most important arms of maintenance workers is those that engage in street repair activities such as construction, repair, rehabilitation of city roads and infrastructure. When you see a street worker operating heavy equipment while donning safety gear and going about their duties, analyze their work ethic and capabilities using the quick facts listed below.
They have a mandatory CDL license
The Commercial Drivers License (CDL) is required before you can drive a commercial motor vehicle (CMV) in the United States. There is a high chance that a street repair worker has a CDL because this is one requirement for employment. If you do not have a CDL license before your employment as a street repair worker, employers make it mandatory that you get one within six months of your employment.
If you want to get the CDL, you will undergo the Department of Transportation (DOT) physically. This is a health examination mandated by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for CMV drivers. A DOT physical helps determine if a driver is physically, mentally, and emotionally fit to operate a CMV because it is a wide test for high blood pressure, epilepsy, alcoholism or drug use, cardiovascular or respiratory disease, diabetes, poor eyesight or hearing, and nervous or psychiatric disease. The heavy-duty equipment that street repair workers will handle is classified as a CMV, which is why they must get either a Class A or B CDL.
Professional in handling heavy machines
Street repair workers vastly use heavy equipment and machines, as their work depends on these tools. Highway construction and repair projects often require the use of dump trucks, skid steers, concrete mixers, and paint trucks. An engineer for a street repairs outfit has professional experience in operating a variety of heavy machinery, including pump trucks and trash compactors, and machines used to prepare the terrain for upcoming construction projects.
Also, a construction worker with a street repair firm has professional knowledge on how to use skid steers, dump trucks, knuckle boom loaders, track hoes, loaders, flatbeds, bush hogs, cranes, and steamrollers. Same way, asphalt paving contractors have a deep knowledge of machines used for their road work jobs. Thanks to their expertise, the roads before you are paved properly.
Know how to use several hand tools
Street repair workers have proficient knowledge in using hand tools relating to their services. A road repair worker knows how to use forked hoes, pickaxes, mattocks, crowbars, shovels, spreaders, and rammers because these are requisite tools for the job and are part of the requirements before you get hired. As a repair worker, construction tools such as brick hammer, bump cutter, chisel, circular saw. Cordless drill, crowbar, hand saw, hoes, jack plane, measuring tape, pickaxe, putty knife, sledgehammer, spade, tile cutter, and other requisite tools are some implements that the workers know how to use.
Also, an engineer for street repair work knows how to use a jack, jumper cable, wrench, trusty saw, plier, hammer, chisel, screwdriver, vise, power drill, utility knife, calipers, and other tools. These workers have proficient knowledge on how to use hand tools and when to use them on the job, and this makes them qualified professionals for street repairs within their specialized field.
Some of them are contractors
Many people assume that most street repair workers work for the city or county, but this is not true because they outsource some jobs to independent contractors with technical knowledge. Some street repair works require certain machines or equipment which the city may not have, hence, they outsource the job to contractors that have this machinery to carry it out. Also, the city administration uses the public-private partnership (PPP) agreements to shift the burden of street repair works to private companies.
Street repair contractors may not be distinguishable from city maintenance workers if they wear the same color of coverall, but if you look closely, you see that the label on each outfit is different. Undoubtedly, street repair work is one of the most notable ways of preserving public infrastructure, bearing this in mind, people who work in this space are like the salt of the earth or simply put, worldly saints maintaining our assets.
