The ‘big build’ phase of the London 2012 Olympics construction project is nearing its end, so the focus now is on how to take forward the outstanding health and safety achievements and ensure a learning legacy for the construction industry. Tina Weadick reports.
The list of health and safety ‘firsts’ racked up by the project to build the infrastructure and venues for the 30th summer Olympic Games, to be held in London in July and August next year, is staggering – and still growing, as the major construction activity begins to wind down.
The Olympic Park was the first construction site in the UK to have a dedicated team of health experts on site working on preventing ill health as well as accidents. It was the first site in Europe to ban semi-automatic quick-hitch tools on diggers in favour of a safer method. At the end of May, it was announced that the Olympic Park and Village workforce had, for the first time, worked more than three million hours without a reportable injury. And it is the first Games in at least 20 years to have recorded not one single worker death.1
To share some of the lessons learnt so far, and explain more about the learning legacy, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) – the public body responsible for the £72 billion construction project – the HSE, and one of the site’s main building contractors held a forum for health and safety practitioners at the end of May.
Speaking in the shadow of the almost-complete main stadium in Stratford, east London, were the HSE’s Principal Inspector of Construction for London, Mike Williams; the ODA’s head of health and safety, Lawrence Waterman; and, from contractor Bam Nuttall – project director, Richard Prime and project safety advisor, Clinton Horn.
First up was Mike Williams, who set the tone for the session with his observation that the level of health and safety performance on the project as a whole has been “fantastic – it never ceases to amaze me the work that has been achieved”.
Williams first became involved in 2004 – before London was even awarded the Games. He explained: “At that first meeting, with the London Development Authority, there was scepticism we could be an exemplar and could actually win the Games. It was an incredible moment when we finally did.”
The first problem, he said, was the lack of arrangements for compliance with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (CDM). “It is a huge challenge for any city to take something like this forward, but this was still a shock. However, when we started working with the ODA, it was a huge relief – there was commitment, knowledge, and a will to do the right thing, all of which set the tone for contractors, and clear standards for health, safety and environment.”
The ODA is the client on the project and, as Mike Williams said, a committed client is crucial to the success of any construction project, as it sets the tone for everything that ensues. Once the regulator had determined the ODA’s commitment and vision as a client, it took the approach it has always tried to adopt with major construction projects, i.e. getting involved early, checking that all the arrangements are in place, and looking to the others in the chain to see what they plan to do, too.
He continued: “We tried to be upfront, not to do too many visits, see that it’s all being planned properly, and then step back. Basically, there was a core agenda we wanted to see in place – how designers were designing out risk, how Tier 1 contractors were looking at competence, etc.”
In projects as large as the Olympics, there are many major contractors, so communications management was very important. Said Williams: “We encourage our inspectors to talk to designers and Tier 1 contractors to carry through the ideas from our own strategy [Be part of the solution], and to ensure that what we wanted to happen on the ground was actually happening.”
As the work began to flow, Williams said the messages coming back to the HSE were very reassuring: there were excellent examples of designers designing out risk on site – especially with regard to work at height (the source of many of the fatalities at previous Olympics referred to above) – and effective workplace transport initiatives.
The regulator was also constantly looking for evidence of leadership by Tier 1 contractors and the supply chain. Explained Williams: “It’s all about inspiring contractors to live up to the performance expected of them. We saw lots of examples of first-class planning, coordination of contractors, and ‘forward thinking, not just adequate thinking’.”
But it wasn’t all completely plain sailing. Williams referred to “challenges” at the Olympic Village site (where the accident frequency rate was higher than on the Olympic Park site – click here for SHPonline’s original report) as well as the changeover from one to a number of Tier 1 contractors, which “tested those responsible to ensure there was a consistent level of performance”.
He acknowledged a “slightly missed opportunity” with regard to the otherwise hugely successful Park Health scheme, in that contractors and the supply chain “didn’t always recognise the value of those involved in Park Health in helping to work out problems”.
Pedestrian/transport segregation, too, was an area in which successful initiatives had been implemented but there was a dip in performance towards the end of 2009, and work had to be stopped on a few occasions. Said Williams: “We felt we had lost that sober assessment of risk – people were so focused on getting the work done – so it was important to say: stop and rethink. The ODA talked to the Tier 1s, asking if management arrangements were robust enough, and it obviously worked, as we didn’t see such a dip in performance again.”
Overall, said Williams, the statistics can’t be bettered but it was with a rueful smile that he admitted this project may be “a one-off” in terms of the degree to which the HSE was able to be involved, and the subsequent success of its approach. He explained: “The HSE’s role is maybe not what it has been [in view of budget cuts and scaling back of proactive inspections] and it will be more difficult now to get involved in major projects like this, as we are under much more scrutiny – can we remove burdens, simplify things, etc. Our website will now be the main vehicle for ‘talking’ to people.
“Construction is high-risk and, as such, is a sector that we will continue to focus on but the focus will be on smaller sites, not large projects, so we will have to see how it goes.”
Williams concluded by saying the regulator’s aim now is to continue talking to LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) to take forward the best of what has been achieved and ensure that the legacy of the Games stands up to that.
The strongest link
To cement the HSE’s view of a construction project well run representatives of one of the site’s main contractors, Bam Nuttall, took to the floor to explain the company’s ‘Beyond Zero’ approach.
Bam Nuttall has been on the Olympics site since 2006 – during the enabling phase, demolition, landscaping, and screening areas around the perimeter of the park, so it has handled a diverse portfolio of work.
Project director Richard Prime explained that Beyond Zero is the company’s vision of “a sustainable future built on excellence in all that we do. It reaches beyond business into our lives outside work. It is all about caring for ourselves and each other.”
He continued: “The central tenet is: zero incidents? We can do better than that! We want absolute confidence that people go home from work as well as when they arrived – or even better. Beyond Zero is a culture – a way of carrying out work. It is all-encompassing.”
The programme is primarily implemented via a two-and-a-half-hour workshop, which is attended by all workers. A senior manager will always be in attendance, and they will say a few words to demonstrate their commitment. A total of 18 people have been trained to run the workshops, during which there is lots of group work and debating.
While visible commitment from the top is hugely important, Prime emphasised that worker engagement is the cornerstone of Beyond Zero. He said: “Earlier on, lots of our incidents were occurring in our supply chain, so we set up a monthly supply-chain meeting to share best practice, lessons learnt, etc. We also hold weekly near-miss meetings – these are informal, involving taking notes, but they are mainly about listening to what the workers tell us and then doing something with that information. We collate an information sheet, which is fed back to the workers: you said that, we did this.”
Bam Nuttall’s project safety advisor, Clinton Horn, then explained a slightly different approach adopted by the company – positive enforcement. “Not,” he acknowledged, “two words you usually see together!” He went on: “This actually came from the site safety committee, which said ‘why don’t we trial a red card/yellow card system?’ These can fail spectacularly but ours was a bit different. We used a letter, signed by the project manager and the safety manager, which gives the offender the opportunity to explain their actions. It is built into the site rules.
“It was only possible because we had developed our safety culture on site to one where most people choose to work safely, or not – to the extent that the latter expect action to be taken against them.
“We have had foremen and engineers issued with yellow cards. It is right across the board and has proved very effective.”
Currently, Bam Nuttall has had 18 months without a Lost Time Incident, as well as more than 1 million hours without an LTI – a record that Prime attributes to the workforce taking the Beyond Zero process on board. He said: “Right at the top there is strong, visible, committed and very energetic leadership. Everyone has adopted Beyond Zero and taken on its ethos. Basically, our aim is to put health and safety practitioners out of a job!”
Research and development
Lawrence Waterman began his session by making it clear that the health and safety success of the Olympics project is down to initiatives like Bam Nuttall’s. He elaborated: “This has never been a command-and-control project, with the client simply issuing instructions. This project is a great example of the client unleashing the creativity of this great industry – construction.”
Now that this creativity has been set in motion, the ODA’s task is to ensure that it remains active and that the momentum keeps on growing. To this end, said Waterman, the learning legacy ‘mission statement’ is: “collation and dissemination of lessons learnt for the benefit of industry, clients, government and UK plc as a whole”.
A substantial part of the learning legacy will be research, much of which has already been commissioned and begun. The key partners for health and safety-related research are the HSE and IOSH, while others include the Chartered Institute of Building, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Building Research Establishment, and The Wellcome Trust.
Waterman then provided an overview of the main pieces of research currently underway:
All of the research will be published in peer-reviewed journals, and on the ODA learning-legacy website, which is due to be launched soon. Meanwhile, the HSE’s Olympics ‘micro-site’ is already up and running and features a wealth of case studies and free, downloadable resources, such as posters, leaflets and research reports.
In terms of taking leadership lessons forward, concluded Waterman, a leadership team has been established, which includes a representative of LOCOG and, while there is concern that the transition from construction teams to event teams might be difficult, “they will take a lot from what has been done to go forward”.
References
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