Best site facilities award

Winner

Wilson James

The workers leaving the Unilever refurbishment project in central London are some of the best dressed anywhere in the country. The reason is that the site operates a "clean in, clean out" policy, backed up by splendid changing areas, a properly manned cloakroom with full laundry facilities. This new approach is the brainchild of Stanhope, Bovis Lend Lease and logistics provider Wilson James. The three companies developed their ideas over several years across a number of sites in London. The benefits of this system are felt throughout the project. Higher morale means higher productivity, better industrial relations, and therefore a better outcome for the client. But perhaps the best outcome of all is that its rivals are starting to emulate its enlightened attitude to site services, and that has to be good news for everyone.

A Bovis trainee returns his PPE to a Wilson James cloakroom attendant

Runners-up

4Delivery

This outfit is a joint venture between United Utilities, Costain and MWH, and it was set up to work on a £750m programme of improvement work across Hampshire, Kent and Sussex for Southern Wate. One tranche of the work involves installing the Kent towns of New Romney, Greatstone and Lydd-on-Sea with the novelty of sewerage systems. For this project, 4Delivery was determined to create a state-of-the-art working environment. It therefore put in place an impressive array of measures, some of them standard best practice (comprehensive signage, trained first aiders), some of them standard but with a innovative twist (angled signs for greater visibility), some of them unusual, to say the least (braille toilet and fire escape stickers, meditation groups, ponds and fountains). One day all building sites will look like this …

Al Futtaim Carillion

This contractor carries out work in the Gulf states, and most of its workforce are from the Indian subcontinent. The company's aim is to give these expatriates some home comforts after their gruelling shifts. At the Dubai Festival City project, 2000 workers are accommodated in a managed labour camp. Many workers have single rooms, as well as access to a first aid clinic, gym, cinema and, of course, cricket pitch, where, during the lunch interval, tiffin is served by men carrying large stainless steel tiffin carriers, who also deliver to the labour sites. The result is a work force with a real sense of well-being.

Skanska

Skanska based its case on its Woodbridge Airfield project. The contractor used this scheme to demonstrate how the physical organisation of a site could improve the way it worked. So the workers' morale and well being were taken care of with well appointed changing facilities, regularly cleaned showers and WCs, a full time occupational health adviser and high quality food - which was the same as the site's senior management. And the layout also provides an open plan office in which the design team, client, principal contractors and supply chain work together.