Client with the best commitment to health and safety

Winner

BAA

With its groundbreaking initiatives and facilities at the UK’s biggest construction project, BAA really had to be the winner of this important category. On its remarkable Terminal 5 project, the biggest construction scheme in the UK, it has really gone the extra mile and tackled health and safety in so many ways they are too numerous to mention here. Still, highlights include: the T5 agreement, a non-adversarial contract that fosters partnering and supply-chain collaboration; the “Safer by Design” initiative, which designs in health and safety from the start of the project; the “Respect for People” philosophy, which translates on the ground into superb welfare and occupational health facilities; an excellent communications programme that includes daily briefings, safety handbooks, posters, site newspaper and safety hotline; and strong leadership with tangible commitment to the welfare of its workforce.

‘An excellent communications programme that includes daily briefings, safety handbooks, posters, site newspaper and safety hotline; and strong leadership with tangible commitment to the welfare of its workforce’

Runners-up

Asda Stores

Asda has made some terrific achievements in the field of health and safety – since 2001 its investment in construction projects has increased from £450m to £1bn, and its incidence rate has fallen nearly 25% in that period. This probably has something to do with the “Asda way of working” scheme, an initiative that the client and its principal contractors and designers came up with in their Continuous Improvement Group meetings to ensure that everybody was working in a like-minded manner. This means that the supply chain has to comply with the guidelines published in its safety rulebook and that more than 200 of its sites are audited for health and safety using handheld technology that is stored on a central database.

‘Asda has made some terrific achievements in the field of health and safety’

Atomic Weapons Establishment

With a name like Atomic Weapons Establishment, you’d be forgiven for thinking that “Target Zero” might be something rather sinister. But in fact it is quite the opposite – being a health and safety programme that marks how many accidents this agency finds acceptable on its construction sites. In order to hit this target, AWE has entered into a partnership with Jacobs Engineering and in 2004, with the support of its contractors, introduced the OHSA reporting system. It holds monthly safety forums and has quarterly safety newsletters for contractors and designers. And it’s working – monitoring health and safety performance this way has enabled AWE to accumulate more than 400,000 hours last year without a single reportable accident.

‘AWE accumulated more than 400,000 hours last year without a single reportable accident’

BBC

BBC and its development partner Land Securities are doing everything right on its BBC Scotland Pacific Quay project in Glasgow. They have a health and safety forum that comprises a group of representatives from Land Sec, the BBC, design-and-build contractor Bovis Lend Lease as well as the fit-out and FM contractors and many more besides. This team designs in safety, designs out hazards, implements initiatives and monitors progress. The judges were very impressed by those initiatives, which include the Scottish executive’s “Healthy Working Lives” pilot (see Occupational Health, page 33), healthy eating at the site canteen, being a Constructing Excellence demonstration project, information points and website, and so on. All this has resulted in an accident frequency rate 35% below industry standard – and a great morale in the workforce.

‘BBC and its development partner Land Securities are doing everything right’

Mitchells & Butlers

Having also made the final shortlist in this category at our inaugural awards last year, this pub and bar developer has made even more achievements in the past year. Innovations for 2005 include: the preparation of health and safety plans during project briefing, ensuring that all hazards are designed out at the inception of the scheme and ensuring that sufficient time and money is included to ensure health and safety standards can be adhered to; league tables to assess contractors’ performance, which now has sufficient data to conduct trend analysis; workshops and support for contractors whose performance dipped in 2004; an extranet site developed with MAB’s retained health and safety consultant, which gives guidance, announcements, details results of site inspections and publishes the league tables.

‘The preparation of health and safety plans during project briefing, ensuring that all hazards are designed out’

Tilfen Land

Once the developer Thamesmead Town, the company that is now Tilfen Land has become a major developer of brownfield sites in the Thames Gateway, Woolwich and Greenwich areas in the south and east of London. Such an expansion within the company has meant that it has needed to tackle health and safety in a big way – and has it ever. These days there is a pre-contract health and safety plan, which is made up of a standardised framework onto which the project specific information is applied. Risk assessments are taken to all design meetings, so dangers can be identified and eliminated. And all information is kept on electronic health and safety files for easy access.

‘Risk assessments are taken to all design meetings’