Our health and safety team is concerned with the protection of every single individual and community with whom we come into contact – employees, subcontractors, residents, local schools and future generations.
Our RoSPA Gold award-winning health and safety system is certified to OHSAS 18001 standards and our health and safety team works on both a corporate and a detailed regional level to ensure the highest standards are met. We are working more and more closely with contractors to ensure they recognise and meet the standards we demand.
We liaise with sites all the time and carry out regular visits to ensure that all the people on site are always looked after as they should be. Site visits also alert us to situations that may need addressing before an incident happens and allow us to spread this knowledge to other sites before a situation even arises.
Comprehensive training for both office and site staff is a significant aspect of our health and safety policy. This ensures that changing legislation and new working practices – and their implications for health and safety – are addressed immediately.
Of course, we want the communities we work in to be as safe as possible too, both during the project and afterwards. Long-term considerations are taken into account at the design concept stage. During the construction phase of a project, we make our sites as safe as possible for the community, and we back that up with a range of information to explain site dangers and construction hazards to local people.
Our health and safety managers also go into schools to show a film and give a short talk about our work and the importance of safety on construction sites. The creation of animated characters Lenny and Laura has made a big impression on the younger children we visit, helping them to understand the inherent dangers of building sites.
