Highways Maintenance Skilled Operative

On a highways maintenance skilled operative apprenticeship course, you’ll work on rural and urban roads to repair damaged surfaces.

Hand and power tools, as well as pedestrian plant equipment, are used by professional highway maintenance staff to restore damaged surfaces on rural and urban roadways (excluding highways).

As an apprentice, you will work as part of a team to do repairs and as an individual to prepare the area for repairs. When working on highway repairs, you’ll learn to read and follow blueprints and specifications.

Repairing potholes, rebuilding and restoring pavements and kerbs, installing street ironworks, and paving new surfaces may all be part of this work to ensure that roads and pathways are safe for vehicles to drive on and pedestrians to walk on.

You’ll also use equipment to find concealed water, gas, or sewage lines, and once discovered, you’ll dig by hand around the line to minimise additional damage and service disruption. In addition, you’ll be in charge of planning, establishing, and operating temporary traffic control on rural and urban roads.

What you’ll learn

On a highways maintenance skilled operative apprenticeship course, you’ll learn to:

• Follow adequate health, safety, and environmental requirements while operating on the road.
• Plan and carry out productive work practises when mending potholes, pavements, and kerbs on rural and urban roads and developing new surfaces.
• Design specification and highway data must be read, interpreted, and applied. Highways training will include using safety barriers, cones, traffic flow, and safety zones when working on the road.
• Locate buried water, gas, sewage, or other utility lines using underground cable locators, and then dig around the line by hand to avoid any damage or disruption to services.
• Install Street Ironworks (drain access covers and frames, as well as roadside gully gates) as needed.
• Use powered tools and machinery for road use, including generators, pumps, pedestrian–operated equipment (such as pushed rollers), mixers, compressors, and self–powered tools.
• Prepare, set up, and operate temporary traffic control on urban and rural roads (using cones and barriers to isolate road sections from cars and pedestrians) while excavating and re-establishing the route.
• On larger projects, work with additional subcontractors (e.g. traffic management).

Entry requirements

You’ll usually need:

• Depending on employer, but likely GCSEs or equivalent qualifications or relevant experience.
• Apprentices without level 2 English and maths will need to achieve this level before taking the end-point assessment.
• Be over 18 years of age
• Have a full driving licence

Assessment methods

The End Point Assessment consists of two distinct assessment methods: 

• Knowledge Test 
• Practical Skills Assessment 

Duration, level, subjects and potential salary upon completion

Apprenticeship standard

More information about the Level 2 Highways Maintenance Skilled Operative Apprenticeship standard can be found here.

Apprenticeship end point assessment

For more information about the End Point Assessment Process, please read the Institute of Apprenticeships’ information page