Best safety innovation from a construction consultant

Winner

Building Resources Company

McDonald’s may not have always got the best press in the past, but the judges were blown away with this entry’s commitment to safeguarding the welfare of everybody who builds, maintains, works in and uses its premises. With an increasing amount of store refurbishment being carried out, it became clear to McDonald’s that a rigorous health and safety system was needed – so it called on Building Resources Company, its appointed CDM co-ordinator, to come up with a solution. BRC’s answer was to introduce identity cards for everybody working on its client’s premises, initially to all contractors but it was soon rolled out to include suppliers, designers and everybody in the supply chain. The cards are colour-coded in accordance with the risk-level of tasks the holder may perform, depending on what training they have had, and where they have access to. This clever innovation certainly deserves this accolade (even if nobody makes a documentary about it …)

‘BRC’s answer was to introduce identity cards for everybody working on its client’s premises’

Runners-up

Bechtel

The judging panel just loved consultant engineer Bechtel’s health and safety innovation - the Target Zero Truck. It may sound like a toy for boisterous toddlers, but it is in fact a roadshow truck used by Bechtel to communicate the health and safety message across the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project. This truck visits sites across the CTRL’s 68-mile operation, and has an onboard TV and video, information leaflets, sound system. It also comes with an external studio and arena that can be set up wherever it parks, delivering presentations, briefings, seminars and worker achievement awards to the 20,000 plus workers that will come through this huge project.

‘The roadshow truck is used by Bechtel to communicate its health and safety message across the CTRL project’

Capita Symonds

A rather more high-brow entry, this one, and no less deserving of its place in the shortlist. And this is also a submission that proves an idea doesn’t have to be recent to have been an innovation worthy of congratulations. A little more than 13 years ago, Capita Symonds thought it would be a good idea to host a yearly lecture on health and safety issues, given by some of the most senior and well respected professionals around. The Annual Capita Symonds Safety Lecture was born - and it has never looked back. Subjects as far and wide as risk analysis, corporate manslaughter and European legislation have been talked about at the ICE headquarters in London by such eminent names as the Rt Hon Lord Woolf, the Rt Hon Michael Meacher MP and Anthony Scrivener QC.

‘Capita Symonds thought it would be a good idea to host a yearly lecture by some of the most senior professionals’

Eurosafe UK

With more than 2000 asbestos-related deaths every year in the UK, Eurosafe points out, asbestos is still a massive problem for the construction industry. This is particularly pertinent to a client such as Punch Taverns, which has a duty to advise everybody working on its properties of any potential hazards – no small task when you own more than 8000 pubs. But having worked for Punch as safety consultant and asbestos surveyor for several years, Eurosafe was in an ideal position to make this happen, and decided that only an internet-based system would be wide-reaching enough to fulfil the requirements. It created a bespoke, web-based database of photographs and information on all Punch properties and integrated an asbestos management system. This has proved incredibly useful – especially to those people working out of hours when there’s nobody awake to call …

‘Eurosafe created a bespoke, web-based database’

Lend Lease Projects

Having been seconded to the DWP Core Team, for its £750m Jobcentre Plus national scheme, Lend Lease Projects set about creating ways to make refurbishing and extending Jobcentres safer. And it came up with the Passport scheme – a system of delivering and recognising competency training using the principals of ABC – Achieving Behavioural Change. This series of workshops and courses teaches the workers about health and safety, challenges traditional views and actively encourages discussion and feedback. It integrates the requirements of the DWP code of practice and the Incident and Injury Free initiative that is common to all Lend Lease projects. When, and only when, the workers have completed the training, they are issued with the all-important passport – an identity card that allows them to do their job.

‘Lend Lease came up with the Passport scheme’

The Stephen Barker Partnership

The CDM regulations say (and I paraphrase) "every client shall ensure any health and safety file is available for inspection". Phew, thought the Stephen Barker Partnership, that’s a tall order when you have vast amounts of information covering multiple buildings in different locations. Realising it had to be done, and done in a way that made accessing the information quick and easy for even non-IT-literate people, SBP launched Elf, a user-friendly electronic health and safety file. The user simply taps in the name of the building they want and the options for all the different jobs done on it will appear. But it is not a simple program, as it manages vast quantities of information and, for advanced users, offers cross-referencing functionality and the ability to leave notes for other users. The kind of program that your techie 14-year-old would be happy with as well as your computer-phobic granddad…

‘SBP launched Elf, a user-friendly electronic health and safety file’