Sign, sealed, delivered

Published on 24 January 2025

Meet the team that produces 12,000 signs – and huge savings – across the City of Onkaparinga each year.

The corrugated iron exterior of a nondescript shed at the back of the council’s Field Operations Centre belies the hive of colour and activity inside.

A team of five staffs the Seaford Meadows-based “Sign Shop”, which is filled with state-of-the-art equipment, and covered with vibrant samples, offcuts, old signs and rolls of coloured vinyl ready for printing.

When Onkaparinga Now visits the workshop, which produces about 12,000 signs each year, only two team members are inside.

“The others are out installing signs in the community,” explains team coordinator, Sam Stewart.

“On any given day, the team manufacture and install a huge variety of signs, in addition to responding to priorities to repair critical road signage, damaged through vandalism or road accidents.

We also audit and identify signs for repair while we’re out on site and provide technical advice to teams about what signs they need.”

The team doesn’t just produce Australian standard road and street signs. The Sign Shop makes just about any sign you can imagine across the council area, from tiny no-smoking stickers, through to safety signs, event signage, building signs, interpretive and wayfinding signs, car, bus and truck wraps, and everything in between.

Having an in-house council Sign Shop not only means a quicker turnaround for priority jobs such as safety issues, it also delivers huge efficiency and cost savings when compared to using external providers.

“We focus on manufacturing signs for longevity, with future maintenance in mind,” Sam says.

“We’re also mindful not to produce non-council signs, so we’re not taking any work away from local sign and printing businesses.”

Sam says the sheer number of signs installed – they estimate there are about 500,000 across Onkaparinga – is one of the team’s key challenges, and they rely on people reporting damaged signs to the council.

But he says seeing their work in the community – and the fact no day is the same – makes the job incredibly gratifying.

“One day we’ll be working with traffic engineers in McLaren Vale on a project to help people get home safe, and the next we might be working on signs with the nature conservation team to protect wildlife, or on a major event like the Santos Tour Down Under,” he says.

“It’s fun doing interpretive signs next to historic buildings or on walking trails and lookouts too, because you’re always learning something new about our city.”

Sam’s modest when it comes to the team’s diverse skills, which include attention to detail, maintenance skills, working with graphic design elements, and operating complex machinery.

But next time you’re out in the community, keep your eyes peeled for signs of the incredible output from this little-known team and its nondescript shed.

Two smiling Sign Shop workers talk between the colourful doorways of the Sign Shop. A worker in a high-vis shirt sits at a computer at the Sign Shop, surrounded by colourful signs. The five-person Sign Shop team chat over a table lined with signs, surrounded by colourful signage on the walls. Sign shop_photo 5 A bagpipe player, blurred in the foreground, stands in front of silver signage and poppies at a war memorial service.