The gospel of St Bovis

It is the climax of a four-hour session, during which Peter Jacobs and Burak Kaplanoglu have been striving to change the beliefs of their 20 assembled colleagues at Bovis Lend Lease.

It is Jacobs who asks the question. Jacobs, the board director who last autumn was moved from operations to safety. Jacobs the spiritual leader in Europe of a new religion, known – rather uncharismatically – as 'Incident and Injury Free'.

The group is arranged in a semi-circle, Jacobs at its centre. Indifferent and unsure at first, people start to respond to the personal anecdotes of near misses and regrets.

From time to time, they split into smaller groups to confess their safety sins and swap parables. Jacobs moves among them, listening and contributing.

For many people in Jacobs' position, the prospect of moving from the front line position of operations – he was a board director responsible for Stanhope projects such as the prestigious Paternoster Square development – to the traditionally jobsworth ex-HSE inspector-type role of health and safety director might not delight. It could feel like being sidelined.

Not so Jacobs. He believes.

True calling
"It has changed my life," he tells the people at the session. He has been building his own house over the past two years, and although he had a pair of safety goggles somewhere, he never dug them out. "Now, every time I am hammering in a nail or drilling a hole, I put them on. It's so easy, why wouldn't I do it?

"If I still take those risks at home, how can I come to work and realistically say to someone 'wear your goggles'?"

Jacob's calling came from on high. Or rather from down under. Ross Taylor, the then global CEO of Lend Lease real estate solutions, made the call. And if Jacobs is the bishop of IFF, Taylor is the pope. By July this year, every one of Bovis's 2,800 European employees (1,800 of them from the UK), will have seen a video of Taylor where he pleads with them to be open to this new approach and tells them about his conversion sparked by a safety session with specialist consultants JMJ Associates. "I realised that I would have reacted far more strongly if I had found someone being fraudulent in our business than if someone had been doing something unsafe," he says.

What Taylor had discovered was that his beliefs were exactly the same as probably every operative on the sites his company was running. Board directors, project managers say "safety is our number one priority". The tradesman hears "get the job done on time and to budget".

This is what JMJ, which has its head office in the US and a base in London, would classify as the subjective element of an organisation: the culture, the unwritten rules. It is different to the observable parts of the company: the policies, method statements, PPE. Similarly, whatever someone says or does, what is inside his head can be very different.

Bovis has worked hard on improving its safety record by looking at and improving its safety procedures and systems. But, in common with many UK contractors, the increasing amount of time, money and effort spent on safety over the last 10 years has not produced the reductions in accidents and deaths that might have been expected. Improvement has plateaud. Last year eight people died on Bovis Lend Lease jobs worldwide. Most accidents happen in 'safe conditions' when people switch off, or do something out of character.

The will to believe
Other major contractors such as Shepherd, HBG and Kier are looking at behavioural safety which can help address problems of people going onto auto pilot, or 'alpha sleep'. This approach examines why people do what they do, involving the workforce and learning more positive ways of talking to people about safety.

JMJ, while it recognises that behavioural techniques are useful, claims that they only produce gradual improvement. Getting inside people's heads can bring a step change.

"We believe there's a limitation because a lot of the behavioural programmes may get you compliance, but it will leave the onus on the person who is trying to get them to comply," explains Mark Britton, European MD of JMJ Associates, based in London.

Taylor employed JMJ Associates last year and now the consultant is working with Bovis Lend Lease in all the countries in which it operates. In the UK, 750 managers went through a two-day course where they were asked to examine their own and the company's attitude to safety.

Now every time I am hammering in a nail or drilling a hole, I put my goggles on

Peter Jacobs, Bovis Lend Lease

The message
There were many converts. Jacobs called for believers who wanted to spread the news. He needed 27; he got many more, and selected from these using JMJ's criteria of communicative, coachable, committed and credible.

Kaplanoglu is one of those that is preaching the IIF gospel. Today he has been paired with Jacobs, sometimes he will preach alone or with another management convert. He is an architect, and according to a colleague, usually a quiet man. Not so when he is talking about this subject. He is animated; his enthusiasm is infectious.

In addition to the video of Ross Taylor, the people at each session will watch the gruesome tale of Charlie, an oil worker who cut corners on a routine operation one day while not wearing all his PPE and leaving his jeep running. Result: years of painful operations, he loses his wife, heart attack for his father, kids with mental problems, permanent disfigurement and discomfort. "And for what?" he repeatedly asks.

The message from this is that if you fall into the 'it won't happen to me' category (see quiz overleaf), you and your family could well end up in a similar situation to Charlie.

Moving it may be, but can a four-hour session really change what someone believes and the way they behave on site? It is one thing to confess – as assistant project manager James Adams did – that you once fell off the top step of a ladder that was balanced precariously on your stairs at home. And to realise that it was crazy to take such a risk. It is another to try to change ingrained habits in a 54-year-old labourer.

Adams is giving it a go. He pledged to learn the name of each of the 45 workers on his project. "If you know someone's name, you are on a better footing with them to start with," he says.

Other Bovis initiatives include monthly meetings with workers from each specialist contractor, a suggestion box in the canteen, and a mirror as workers enter sites with the words 'this person is responsible for your safety' above it.

You will find equally good ideas on other major contractors' sites. More striking is the way Bovis bigwigs are forced to interrupt their busy days to deal with every incident. For all reportable accidents the project manager and the specialist's site manager have a conference call with Jacobs and the global head of safety Murray Coleman to discuss what has happened and how it can be prevented. Where possible the operative who has suffered the accident is also on the line, although this has only happened on two occasions so far.

Missionary positions
The most crucial stage in the spread of IIF has yet to begin: spreading the message to the specialists' supervisors. These are the people that make the difference, says JMJ's Britton, because "their word counts".

Soon JMJ-trained safety managers will begin explaining to these supervisors how to put people to work safely. This process will just keep rolling, according to Jacobs.

If Bovis can make an impact at that level, the good news will start to spread to other contracts as those supervisors move around. IIF could become the way for the industry.

JMJ and Bovis Lend Lease recognise it will be a long haul. The programme for introducing IIF takes three years.

One potential threat to the success of IIF could be the February reorganisation of Lend Lease, which saw real estate and construction divisions combined and Ross Taylor moved from his global brief to head up the Asian Pacific region.

Jacobs insists that Greg Clarke, now the overall head of Lend Lease, is committed to the cause, although he has yet to go through his two-day belief reshaping; that is planned for the end of May. It is a serious financial commitment, though Bovis won't say how much.

Meanwhile, back in Jacobs' meeting, the Bovis employees are looking deep into their souls to see if they can meet the three challenges he has laid on the table: to try and catch people when they have gone onto auto-pilot, to speak up when they see someone at risk and to be open to change when people point out something they are doing unsafely.