Andrew Sansom visits the picturesque archipelago of Scilly to discover how health and safety is being managed as part of the construction of a new school.

In late April, the wedding everyone’s talking about will host almost 2000 guests, virtually the same number of people who reside on the cluster of islands off the southwest coast of England – the rumoured setting for Kate and Will’s honeymoon.

The attractive but low-key setting might suggest that the Royal family is conscious that understatement is the order of the day at a time when many people in the UK are experiencing a squeeze on their living standards. Scilly, however, is investing in its residents’ future education and well-being with the construction of a new £14m school on the island of St Mary’s.

Building work began in May last year and is expected to conclude in October, at which point the new Five Islands School will, for the first time, cater for the islands’ nursery, primary and secondary schoolchildren all under one roof. The school will not only serve an educational purpose but will provide a focal point for the community; a new sports centre and performance hall, for example, will be available for use by children and adults alike.

Social focus
Such facilities should be a further boost for the islands’ residents, who, according to a survey in 2006 by Sport England, were found to be the most active in England in sports and other fitness activities. Intriguingly, just two teams compete in the Scilly Football League – reportedly, the smallest football division in the world – yet they still manage to play each other a staggering 17 times a season!

One can imagine that the teams know each other like the back of their hands. For Kier Western, however, the main contractor of the Five Islands School project, it’s the back of the hands, front of the hands, and everything in between that really concern its health and safety team.

Indeed, sports and the enjoyment of social activity have featured heavily in the company’s recent hand-protection poster campaign, developed by glove manufacturer, Marigold Industrial.

Employing images representative of workers’ social lives, the posters highlight how a hand injury might stop them enjoying pastimes and recreation activities with friends and family. It’s an approach previously adopted by the HSE in some of its own safety-campaign promotions, and the posters devised for Kier have apparently proved so popular that other construction companies have adopted similar campaigns across their own sites.

All the tradesmen working on the school site during SHP’s visit in early February were wearing gloves – a practice Kier insists is risk-based but which is effectively adhered to across all its sites and by its direct workforce and approved sub-contractors.

According to Kier’s project manager, Brian Trethewey, and health and safety advisor, Richard Lindsay, the working culture on the company’s construction sites has transformed over the last 10 years, with almost everyone now working in gloves. The speed of the change has accelerated with the number of younger workers entering the industry. Says Lindsay: “Youngsters don’t know anything different. They’re brought up in a safer world. It’s just the norm for them and they see gloves as part of their kit.”

Book reviews
When it first introduced gloves, however, the company noticed that a high number of hand injuries was still being recorded in its accident books. On further analysis, the company’s safety, health and environmental manager, Ian Dovey, discarded those hand injuries where gloves would have made little difference, such as crush and drill-related incidents, and found that a large percentage of injuries sustained were cuts. The fact that, in many cases, the victims were wearing gloves alerted him to the understanding that workers were not necessarily using the right glove for the right job.

In 2005, Kier Western recorded 132 accident-book entries, 54 of which were hand injuries, with carpenters, roofers and ground workers found to be those most at risk. The firm realised that it wasn’t enough simply to provide gloves for workers; it also needed to raise awareness of using the right glove for the right task to offer the most suitable level of protection.

Testing times
The company set about running a set of trials, with a carpentry sub-contractor chosen to test a glove that had the tops of two digits removed. The glove was well-received by the tradesmen but they suggested they would have even more dexterity if the glove had the tops of three digits detached. Armed with this feedback, Kier went back to Marigold, which set about developing such a glove, but one that still provided level-3 cut resistance.

By 2009, Kier Western’s accident-book entries had fallen to 60 – 13 of which were hand-related injuries, and, of those, seven were sustained while wearing gloves.

According to Dovey, involving the workforce in the trial was absolutely vital in getting the gloves to be accepted, and, consequently, in reducing hand-related injuries. He points out that by providing gloves that offer the right levels of comfort and protection encourages the workers to look after them properly.

The educational approach that Kier has adopted, which sees Marigold undertake regular tool-box talks on hand protection, also appears to have paid dividends. Even though many tradespeople are specialists, the talks, says Dovey, support the construction company’s risk-based approach and help raise awareness among workers about potential PPE hazards and reinforce the safe culture. Another awareness-raising approach involves theme-based mock trials, where sub-contractors and Kier managers are invited along to witness a pretend courtroom health and safety prosecution.

Says Lindsay: “Many employers are still in the one-size-fits-all mentality and the macho image is still there. . . It’s about risk reduction – you’re not going to eliminate all risks, but we need to meet people half way, not by trying to be the bully boy but showing that we’re trying to help them.”

Recognise and reward
Trethewey interjects, warning that a risk-based hand-protection policy doesn’t work if you’re too lenient, and he highlights how he has adopted a reverse-psychology approach as well. In an industry where reprimands can come thick and fast if you’re spotted doing something wrong, the idea of a safety-rewards scheme for staff and supervisors, with £50 vouchers up for grabs, is a positive way of keeping safety at the forefront of operatives’ minds.

Says Trethewey: “A bit of competition can help in raising standards. You need to recognise the good behaviour as well as the bad behaviour.”

There is also a strong business case for reducing injuries on a remote offshore site. Although some A&E facilities are available on St Mary’s, transporting people between the island and the mainland is fraught with difficulty, especially in winter when the ferry boats don’t run.

Planning emphasis
Workers operate on the basis of 10 days on, followed by four days off to cut down on flight time, with many staying in B&Bs dotted around the island. What with other problems, such as the type of inclement and hostile wintry weather one might associate with a remote island off the coast of England, the company is conscious that injuries and ill health could throw the shift-work schedule off course.

Trethewey is already looking at shuffling his work plans to minimise disruption over Easter and May, when worker accommodation will be in extremely low supply. Seafaring enthusiasts from as far afield as Holland, France and America will descend on Scilly for the World Pilot Gig Championships in late April, with the rumoured Royal honeymoon expected soon after.

Procurement and transportation of build materials, not to mention safety equipment, also has to be planned methodically and carefully coordinated through liaison with sub-contractors, shipping companies and the fleet of island carriers that help in the offloading and delivery process.

Positive impact
The potential for delays that such logistical challenges bring could create the temptation among supervisors and sub-contractors to cut corners on health and safety to make up any lost time. But Trethewey and Lindsay refute the suggestion, and argue that cutting corners is tantamount to “making a rod for your own back in the long run”, especially when considering the cost of getting someone over from the mainland to rectify something that has gone wrong.

Dovey agrees with the notion that the downturn in construction has actually had a positive impact on maintaining standards. Asked if he has noticed any temptation among sub-contractors to cut corners, he points out: “There’s not so much work out there, so sub-contractors have had to be seen to be complying to get future work.”

Further considerations
Trethewey and Lindsay pledge to run a tight ship on the site – with method statements and risk assessments drawn up prior to inductions and toolbox talks, as well as site-supervisor inductions. The school is also being built on the same site as the existing school, so Kier has been careful to engage with the schoolchildren to explain the safety implications and dangers of having a construction site so close, and re-routing the access path to the existing school grounds so that pedestrian and site segregation are strictly maintained.

Various other design and construction features are contributing to safety on the project, too. A cut-and-fill earth-moving process, for example, helps reduce the need to transport waste off the island – reducing costs as well as risks in the handling of waste materials – while the soil can be redistributed to maintain a more even gradient.

Reduced emphasis on wet trades and increased prefabrication also help eliminate waste and manpower on site, and consequently reduce the risks to worker safety, and the impact on their health from dust and noise fumes.

Final thoughts
Given the remote setting, the amount of planning that has been involved, and the sense that the regulator – i.e. the HSE – is ‘out of the picture’, it is encouraging to see that health and safety appears to be at the heart of the construction work being carried out.

You get the feeling if David Cameron were to visit Scilly, he would use the islands’ community spirit as a paragon of the Big Society ethic. But, equally, it might be suggested to him that if he could inject as much recognition for health and safety more generally across construction sites on Britain’s mainland, the positive impact on people’s lives could be even more tangible.