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Key hazards

Determining key safety issues

Behavioural safety

Safety leadership

Public safety

Safety by design

Work at height

Lifting operations

Road safety

Safety in the vicinity of roadworks

Managing subcontractors

Utility service strikes

Employee consultation

PFI projects

Determining key safety issues

To achieve our aim of operating with no harm to our workers or members of the public, our operating companies each have an annual Safety Plan. This incorporates the operating company response to corporate objectives and also addresses its own specific safety issues, which are determined by risk assessment and by analysing its own accident record.

For example, Balfour Beatty Capital has a focus on hospital design and operation, some companies are developing driver training modules for company car drivers, and others are working proactively with their supply chain.
There are several issues that are common across our operating companies.

Behavioural safety

Like many companies, we find that achieving ever better safety performance requires more than robust safety management systems.

We have therefore continued to adopt a range of safety leadership and behavioural safety approaches to encourage a positive safety culture. These aim to demonstrate visibly our management commitment to safety, to show real leadership, and to engage all employees. By adopting this inclusive approach, we hope to make safe working practices the norm, and to progressively eliminate the acceptance of unsafe behaviour.

We include subcontractors in our approach, and are also often involved in clients' programmes for behavioural safety.

Safety leadership

To demonstrate the priority that safety has, Managing Directors and senior managers in all companies give safety a high profile and visit sites regularly. For example the Managing Directors from both Mansell Construction and Balfour Beatty Power Networks travelled the breadth of the UK delivering safety briefings to reach all employees at a personal level.

Other operating company managing directors review significant incidents as they occur and ensure that their regional directors brief the lessons learnt directly to employees.

In 2006 operating companies have further developed their programmes that demonstrate visible safety leadership. To give them an identity these programmes are themed with titles such as "Whatever it takes", "Be Sure, Be Safe" or "Safe on Sight".

In Hong Kong, Gammon Construction launched its "step change in safety" campaign, as part of which its Chief Executive delivered the message direct to the workforce.

Public safety

Many of our businesses have an increasingly close interface with the general public. For example our highways, railways, hospitals, schools and utility sectors all operate in close proximity to the public. We have identified our principal public risks as road traffic accidents, railway design and installation, excavations in public places, working adjacent to the public in occupied buildings, and working in live schools and hospitals.

In 2005 we conducted a review in all operating companies of the control of risks to public safety. We place a particular focus on design to eliminate risks early on where possible, and to minimise residual risk.

Public Risks are identified in Live Risk Registers, communicated throughout stages of the project, highlighted in risk assessments and monitored through audits, regular safety inspections and safety tours.

We continue to maintain our focus on managing any risks to the public.

Safety by design

Our aim is to design both permanent and temporary works so that health and safety risks are eliminated or reduced. For example, pre-fabrication off site in a factory environment can lead to better quality, faster construction, reduced costs and much safer work activity on site. Risks are designed out at source – for both workers and the public.

Several operating companies hold in-house forums to enable design teams to share best practice.

Balfour Beatty Capital is developing a ‘lessons learned’ database as guidance for future projects from a series of hazard studies, HAZOP and Failure Mode and Effects Analyses (FMEAs) on the first of their two new hospitals.

Balfour Beatty Power Networks has a full time department focussed on designing safe systems of work for accessing towers and cable laying.

Safety by design can be a simple affair. Balfour Kilpatrick has taken advantage of current market developments to use multi-wedge adaptor ceiling fixings to eliminate drilling and the risk of HAVS. The use of push fit pipe fittings eliminates hot work and contact with mineral oils when using portable pipe screwing machines.

Balfour Beatty Utilities has developed a robust footpath board to cover excavations that need to be left open overnight, and Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Services introduced ‘Iceman’ software using GPS technology on equipment fitted to winter maintenance vehicles, to monitor salting activities.

Balfour Beatty Rail has been developing innovative ways of improving track side safety. The plant division has developed a cab lighting system for On-track machines which is automatically activated when operatives climb on and off the machine. In Germany, road-rail vehicles have been improved with the provision of CCTV cameras providing 360° visibility. In Malaysia, tower trolleys have been stabilised by redesigning the rail clip to prevent toppling on canted line.

In 2006 we captured some of our safety by design good practice on a DVD and issued it to all operating companies. Further volumes are planned for 2007.

Work at height

Working at height is a common hazard in the construction industry, and potential improvements are continually kept under review by our operating companies. Our businesses have several initiatives in place, including:

Representatives working with National Grid tasked to review protection scaffolds where overhead lines cross roads and railways, designing side-netting for tower platforms to catch dropped items, and developing a prototype fail safe device for hand lifting/lowering with kermantie type ropes.

Stent has developed a system of guard rails for those who have to work from a lorry platform and line hooks for attaching lifting chains to precast piles on lorries to avoid having to get onto the back of the trailer.

Briefings from scaffolding specialist SGB on the Work at Height Regulation changes, together with practical training on mobile towers, access equipment and edge protection have been delivered as part of Balfour Beatty Construction’s Intervention Strategy with the HSE.

In 2006 significant effort was put into tackling the inherent risks from using Mobile Elevated Work Platforms (MEWP). Guidance for supervisors who carry the Appointed Person duties for MEWP operations was developed and in October 2006 representation to the IPAF Manufacturer’s Technical Committee was made in pursuit of voluntary retrofit of MEWP’s to prevent crushing of operatives against overhead obstructions.

Lifting operations

The control of lifting operations remains a prime concern to some operating companies and accounted for a total of 11 notifiable dangerous occurrences in 2006.

Lifting operations are supervised by trained and nominated crane co-ordinators, and each lift is controlled by an appointed person and certificated slingers. Further training was carried out for Crane Supervisors and Appointed Persons in safe lifting procedures in a number of operating companies.

Road safety

Road safety remains a significant issue. We are concerned about both road traffic accidents and traffic management around our work sites, as these impact the safety of both our employees and third parties.

We have several initiatives in place to address this risk.

A cross operating company task group was formed in July 2006 to develop minimum standards for managing safe driving.

Several UK operating companies engaged a driver trainer in 2006, for the benefit of both car drivers and drivers of commercial vehicles. Driver training is also conducted in Hong Kong, Spain, Italy and Germany.

Commercial vehicle specifications have been improved in terms of markings, reversing sensors, bleepers and cameras.

We actively support BRAKE, the road safety charity foundation. Newsletters and safe driving merchandise are distributed to employees.

Safety in the vicinity of roadworks

Our Temporary Traffic Management working group continued to meet during 2006 to address traffic management operations and to share good practice.

In 2004 the group issued standards for temporary traffic management, and has since produced enhanced training in Temporary Traffic Management operations. Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering maintains an accredited traffic management training unit.

Our road maintenance business, Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Services, has developed an automatic cone-laying machine to set out tapers and linear coning without operatives being on the carriageway. We have senior representation on the Steering Group for Safer Temporary Traffic Management Operations, an industry group chaired by the Highways Agency.

Across all of our road construction activities we are constantly searching for ways in which we can improve temporary traffic management and enhance the public's journey safely through and beyond them.

The speed and driver behaviour of vehicles approaching highway works remains a concern. Despite correct traffic management arrangements, thirteen (12 in 2005) members of the public were fatally injured in road traffic accidents around our road works across our global operations.

Managing subcontractors

Managing subcontractors continues to be an important issue, which is given considerable attention, including:

• stringent health and safety pre-qualification and competence criteria
• obtaining director level commitment to safety from subcontractors
• publication of a project charter with detailed safety standards and agreed compliance mechanisms
• developing an integrated approach with major subcontractors
• identification of key risks of subcontractors’ work at pre-start meetings
• formal appraisal of subcontractor risk assessments and method statements
• assistance in health and safety training for subcontractors
• joint review of safety management arrangements with key subcontractors
• setting minimum expectations for critical issues
• an escalation process to directors of subcontractors, for resolving persistent project issues
• systematic safety audit of subcontractors
• supplier forums, to share knowledge and promote common practices greater co-operation
• the facility to remove poor performing suppliers.

Utility service strikes

Striking buried or overhead services is a recurrent hazard for many operating companies.

We have a strong focus on this, supported by full reporting of all strikes. Although the total of strikes reported remains high, high-risk strikes have reduced by more than 50% since 2005.

On two occasions in 2006, High Pressure (> 7 bar) gas mains were struck, resulting in the evacuation of the immediate vicinity. Fortunately, there have been only a few minor injuries to hands and eyes as a result of all service strikes in 2006.

In July, a cross operating company task group issued a good practice guide on the management of service strike risks, and in early 2007 issued a Balfour Beatty DVD "Avoiding Underground Danger" with an accompanying "Easy Read" guide.

In an attempt to encourage safe behaviours when operating in the vicinity of utility services, the Group commissioned an independent human factors analysis.
Additionally, Balfour Beatty Utilities have been working in collaboration with Manchester University to research cultural and behavioural issues around damaging underground services.

Whilst some operating companies have been enhancing skills training for operatives, others have been trialing new technology including Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR).

As a result of these actions, together with the increased attention placed on these risks, we have seen a modest but continuous improvement in performance.

Employee consultation

Arrangements for employee consultation were reviewed in all UK businesses during 2001 and have been the subject of continuous improvement since. Where individuals are reluctant to accept safety representative duties, employee representatives are invited to workplace and senior managers’ health and safety committees.

Telephone hotlines are provided for employee concerns in several businesses, in addition to formal whistle-blowing arrangements. Elsewhere, employee safety champions are encouraged to accompany safety advisers on inspections.

Formal worker union representatives are in place in six UK operating companies, one in Germany and one in the US.

Together Balfour Kilpatrick, AMICUS and the Health and Safety Executive, held a joint safety conference in December 2006.

Operating companies hold formal safety committees on site throughout the UK. Additionally, some operating companies hold employee forums in order to consult directly with the workforce.

PFI projects

Several operating companies have collaborated since 2003 to develop a more integrated approach to safety management on our major PFI projects. A particular focus is working with design and bid teams to ensure that early decisions do not adversely impact on health and safety during construction and operation.

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