Corporate Responsibility
As a world-class engineering, construction and services group, which serves customers for whom infrastructure quality, efficiency and reliability are critical, we endeavour to build the principles of sustainable development into all aspects of our business.
This means doing business with integrity, aspiring to the highest levels of standards of safety and health for people, managing our environmental impacts and being committed to delivering on our full range of social responsibilities.
Our approach and management systems cover our global activities and we report on incidents and penalties on a global basis.
We collate safety data for all of our 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.
Our environment data is reported for all wholly-owned UK and European businesses. Our other overseas businesses are progressing towards reporting environmental performance to the same standards.
We report on employee data for all our wholly-owned businesses worldwide.
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.
Five acquisitions have been made since the last report. Two in the US, Centex Construction, now renamed Balfour Beatty Construction US and GMH military housing now renamed Balfour Beatty Communities and three in the UK; two regional contractors Cowlin and Dean and Dyball and Covion, a facilities infrastructure business. We also sold our interest in Devonport Dockyard and acquired Exeter International airport.
Our projects directly improve the lives of people and their communities. Understanding their expectations is critical to our future as a business.
Chairman and Chief Executive's statement
We have continued to evaluate, critically, all our governance and management systems to ensure their suitability for purpose. Policies have been renewed and, where necessary, restated. We are updating the terms of reference of the Business Practices Committee so that it can monitor, evaluate and guide our non-financial performance more effectively.
Helping to tackle global issues
We measure our major environmental impacts and have set targets for reducing our carbon footprint. We have engaged with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace to understand their agenda as well as the Environment Agency to ensure that our work is in line with their aims and objectives.