About our report
Balfour Beatty has been formally reporting its safety, environmental and social performance through independently audited reports since 2001.
During that time, the Group has very substantially reduced its accident frequency rate, greatly improved the management of its environmental impacts and made significant progress in all aspects of corporate citizenship.
This progress was recognised when the Company won the top award for corporate social responsibility in the 2006 "Quality in Construction" awards.
We operate in four business sectors:
- Building, Building Management and Services
- Civil and Specialist Engineering and Sevices
- Rail Engineering and Services
- Investments and Developments
Our approach and management systems cover our global activities.
We report on incidents and penalties on a global basis.
Case studies are drawn from our activities worldwide.
Safety
Safety performance data is reported for all wholly owned activities and for those joint ventures where we have management control.
Subcontractor safety performance is included for all activities apart from the US where it is not common practice.
Occupational health
Absence data is only reported for our UK businesses.
Environment
Performance data is reported for all wholly owned UK and European businesses.
Other overseas businesses are progressing towards reporting environmental performance.
Social
Employee data is reported for all wholly owned businesses worldwide.
Our social responsibility programmes are described in terms of both stakeholder engagement routines and social outreach where we have a major presence.
Organisational changes
There has been a number of changes to the structure of Balfour Beatty since we produced our last report and this is reflected in the content.
Two acquisitions, Charter and Edgar Allen, were completed in early 2006 in the US and UK respectively. Their data has been included within this report.
Birse, a UK civil engineering company, was acquired in the middle of the year and its systems are being integrated into the business through Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering and Mansell.
We also play a part in helping reduce poverty in third world countries and are active participants in the anti-corruption movement.
Chairman’s and Chief Executive’s statement
In 2006, we were awarded the Quality in Construction prize for the best Corporate Responsibility programme in the industry. Such recognition is gratifying, but we remain determined to continue to make progress in all aspects of corporate responsibility.
Helping to tackle global issues
We are committed to the principles of Sustainable Construction and have engaged with Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the Environment Agency to understand external expectations of our environmental performance. We also play a part in helping reduce poverty in third world countries and are active participants in the anti-corruption movement.