Page 6 - SISK NEWS JULY 2015

Delivering Building
Excellence:

Setting our sites on safety

Senior management, along with project leaders of construction projects in the UK South region,
conducted a Safety Forum at the end of March aimed at reversing the current negative trend in lost
time accidents and serious incidents.

The Forum’s goal was to acknowledge and Engagement and communication:
brainstorm the reasons behind this trend, • Evidencing that subcontractors have given all their
identify actions to counteract it, and test these
out quickly across the region’s construction sites. staff induction before they present themselves at
our site.
The initial meeting inspired a lot of positive debate • Involving and evidencing subcontractors
with many of our new construction staff bringing fresh supervisors in daily safety tours to improve “hazard
ideas to the table. An action plan was agreed captured spotting”.
in four broad areas: • Sisk director safety tours and subcontractor
director involvement in these.
1. Engagement and communication; • Having translators at inductions with the Senior
2. Procedures; Contracts Manager.
3. Procurement processes; and
4. Staff. Procedures:
• Ensuring a hard copy of all procedures is available.
Actions were then categorised as either for immediate • Creating a roles and responsibility matrix available
implementation “TO DO NOW” or longer term
adoption. The former of these two were taken onto for all to see.
sites and monitored for their effectiveness, the latter
were passed to the HSEQS team. Procurement processes:
• Directors and Construction Managers to visit
Here are just some of the TO DO NOW measures that
were tested out on our sites: sub-contractor live jobs and assess the sites.
• Demanding supply chain A Teams as supervisors /
Action Plan:
Blackhats.
Econmgamguenmiceanttioannd • Using full construction team participation and
Procedure
Procurement knowledge with procurement in sub-contractor
processes selection (not solely commercially led).
Staff
Staff:
• Putting a rota in place to ensure that staff are not

working excessively long hours.
• Showing new starters where the hard copy of

procedures are kept.
• Helping retain staff through an initial period of

shadowing.

Six weeks later, the Forum reconvened to share what
had been a success. This proved to be a very positive
exchange of good practice and quickly established
simple ideas to make a noticeable improvement in
behaviours and safety outcomes on the sites.

6 Sisk News | July 2015