Integrated project safety award

Winner

DWP Estates Core Team

This prize rewards the team that has most effectively and deeply instilled a culture of health and safety within the entire project team and everybody working on the scheme. And there’s no doubt that this is exactly what the Department for Work and Pensions team did on its Jobcentre Plus national refurbishment programme. Winner of this category last year, this team simply could not have done any more to ensure the welfare of all its workers, the local community, future maintenance contractors and cleaners, Jobcentre staff and job-seeking members of the public. The partnering framework was the key driver of this, with all team members – including, of course, a dedicated health and safety co-ordinator – working together right from project inception. But DWP Estates doesn’t need us to reward them: no doubt it is reward enough that, when the team entered this category in February, more than 1.6 million hours had been worked without a single reportable accident.

Still, nice to get the award, too …

‘When the team entered this category in February, more than 1.6 million hours had been worked without a single reportable accident’

Runners-up

Highly commended: Bovis Lend Lease

Only narrowly missing out on the top spot is Bovis Lend Lease for its superb work on the GOGGS East project. In this £150m PFI scheme to transform the grade II-listed government offices in Great George Street, central London, the contractor developed an integrated strategy to create a working environment that was free of injury. Aptly named the Incident and Injury-Free programme, this relies heavily on effective communication, reaching out to the workers by using such initiatives as dialogue-led staff inductions and installing a helpdesk in the canteen, so that people could discuss health and safety. A Safety Leadership Team was established on site from the start, which put together a training programme to set its working standards firmly in place, while daily inspections meant that no worker could slip into bad habits.

‘A Safety Leadership Team was established from the start’

BAA

Victorious in both the client and the occupational health categories this year, BAA also certainly deserved a mention in this shortlist too. The all-encompassing measures that this client has taken on its vast Heathrow Terminal 5 project are awe-inspiring, and far too extensive to go into fully here. But we can highlight a few of the judges’ favourites, such as: the Terminal 5 agreement that integrates client, principal contractors, subcontractors and suppliers; the collaborative working that has been achieved at least in part because of that partnering deal; the leadership that has been shown in health and safety performance by the client; the safety leadership teams and committees; and the shared welfare and occupational health facilities … So, that’ll be why BAA has enjoyed a 12% reduction in reportable accident rates and a 40% cut in minor accidents, then.

‘The all-encompassing measures that this client has taken are awe-inspiring’

Bechtel

Bechtel’s Target Zero Accidents campaign on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was applauded for its way of communicating with everybody and ensuring buy-in from across the board. And then of course, there’s the truck. The all-singing, all-dancing Target Zero Accident Truck is such a great way of not merely getting the health and safety message across to its disparate and far-flung groups of workers, but genuinely instilling a deep-rooted culture of best practice by involving the operatives and project team members in forum-led seminars, roadshows, training courses - if there were a category for coolest vehicle then Bechtel would surely have stormed it.

‘If there were a category for coolest vehicle then Bechtel would surely have stormed it’

Carillion

The judges thought Carillion had made some huge achievements in instilling the culture of health and safety into its workforce. On its £40m Westwood Cross retail development, in Thanet, Kent, Carillion was wise enough to know that making health and safety interesting and accessible was likely to be more successful than worthy and boring, so it created a lively site induction video with Billy Connolly, and put together a reward-led campaign called "Don’t walk by", whereby those who submit the best suggestions for immediate action, improvement or innovation get free meals and plant hire. But it’s not all fun and games - there is also the serious approach that involves daily and weekly meetings always putting health and safety right at the top of the agenda. The client says: “Carillion’s innovative ideas helped get the safety message across to all our site operatives” – so it seems to have worked.

‘Carillion’s innovative ideas helped get the safety message across to all our site operatives’

HBG Construction

HBG Construction’s entry, for its refurbishment of Chelsea College at Millbank, central London, was packed so full of information on its health and safety initiatives that it’s really quite dizzying. But this category is all about integration, so for our purposes here we should focus on how HBG achieved this. No problem: how about the way the company developed trusting working relationships with its supply partners and site operatives? Or maybe the excellent site newsletter and communications, which are available in a number of languages? And then there’s the shared resources such as training workshops, with courses open to all on site … Whichever way you look at it, HBG seems to have it covered.

‘Its excellent site letter is available in a number of languages’