50-State Coverage › Tennessee

Tennessee traffic control documentation requirements

What Tennessee DOT asks a contractor to record about temporary traffic control, where that requirement comes from, and how strong the evidence behind it is.

Primary source

Tennessee DOT — primary source

Source confidence

High

What Tennessee requires

Documented requirement

TDOT Form 8-21 Work Zone Traffic Control Inspection Form / Traffic Control Devices Checklist is referenced in TDOT guidance.

Source: Tennessee DOT — primary source

What we checked, and what we found. We read TDOT Section 712 and found no provision requiring the contractor to inspect traffic control daily or to keep a record of it. The one written-record duty in the section falls on someone else: a Uniformed Law Enforcement Officer working the project must “maintain a detailed written log of enforcement activities” and submit it to the Engineer monthly. Section 712 does require trained Traffic Control Supervisors and flaggers, so the competence requirement is there without a matching record requirement. Check your contract's special provisions, which control.

How we know: Full-text search of the TDOT 2026 Standard Specifications for Road and Bridge Construction (April 1, 2026), Section 712 Temporary Traffic Control, fetched from tn.gov. Verified 2026-09-05.

On federal-aid work, 23 CFR 630 Subparts J and K apply whatever Tennessee specifies, with a compliance date of December 31, 2026 — the federal floor, explained. And after an incident the questions come from the incident, not the specification: 105 published judicial matters on that.

DTCD produces this record from the drive-through itself, and names the controlling Tennessee requirement on the generated PDF. Open a sample before deciding anything.

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Filing a work-zone request in Tennessee?

Draw the closure on a map and the builder reads the route, mileposts and county from Tennessee’s own public GIS, checks bridge clearance on the route and the detour, and exports a WZDx feature, a PDF or an email. It runs in the browser — nothing is submitted or stored.

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What changes at the Tennessee state line

Crews rarely work one state, and the record a neighbouring DOT expects is often named differently and cited somewhere else entirely. Here is how the states bordering Tennessee compare:

State	Citation	Evidence we have
Alabama	Not yet verified	Agency source, high confidence
Arkansas	Special Provision SS-604 (Inspection of Traffic Control Devices in Construction Zones) + ARDOT Doc Express Contract Submittal System	Contract-binding spec language
Georgia	Section 150 Special Provision (Traffic Control) — WTCS duties	Binding language identified
Kentucky	Section 112 (Maintenance and Control of Traffic) + standard Project Note "II. TRAFFIC COORDINATOR"	Contract-binding spec language
Mississippi	Special Provision No. 907-618-12 (Section 618 Maintenance of Traffic)	Contract-binding spec language
Missouri	Not yet verified	Agency source, medium confidence
North Carolina	Section 1105-4 (Maintenance and Inspection); Section 1105-5 (Failure to Maintain Traffic Control)	Binding language identified
Virginia	Section 105.14 (WZTC Accreditation) + Section 512 (Maintaining Traffic) + project Special Provisions + VDOT LAP Manual Chapter 13	Binding language identified

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