Last month more than 2000 people from across the globe attended the UK’s biggest annual event in health and safety at Manchester Central, for two days of networking and business-critical thinking.
More than 840 people attended the conference – the highest figure yet for the flagship event – and many more visited the exhibition stands, spotlight theatres and IOSH theatre, as well as the CoreSkills+ workshops.
IOSH chief executive Rob Strange OBE said: “I would say this has been the best ever – based on my own experience of the speakers and sessions I attended and on the general buzz and activity. The numbers of delegates registered is a record, so it’s certainly the most we’ve had in the 16 years I’ve been involved.”
A packed auditorium gathered for the opening session with Professor Ragnar Löfstedt – the man behind the independent review of UK health and safety legislation. Prof Löfstedt, who was among 60-plus expert speakers at the conference, announced the formation of a new crossparty parliamentary committee of MEPs, to promote evidence-based risk policy-making in the EU.
Speaking about the news, Rob said: “We’re really pleased that IOSH is going to be so heavily involved in this initiative, where leading academics and policy-makers in Europe will be gathered together under the IOSH banner to debate the real issues of health, safety and risk in Europe. And this will form the input to the forthcoming European-wide review on health and safety.”
Meanwhile, in the same session, HSE chief executive Geoffrey Podger welcomed IOSH 2012 enters the Institution’s record books more cooperation between the HSE and local authorities, while TUC senior policy officer for health and safety Hugh Robertson declared the Red Tape Challenge was a ‘gimmick’.
The conference was also attended by figureheads of Australian, Canadian and American health and safety organisations, who all enforced the message of health and safety’s moral and financial benefits.
President of the American Society for Safety Engineers (ASSE) Terrie Norris reflected her sentiments and said: “Smart companies know that the economic impact of investing in health and safety is a very positive one. And we’ve demonstrated the financial benefit of an organisation with a strong safety and health programme.”
Delegates packed out the sessions in the four conference tracks. The ‘behavioural safety and culture’ track saw Tony Willetts, Raleigh International’s head of operations, tell delegates how his organisation dealswith risk when it takes groups of young volunteers overseas. And the ‘working smarter’ track saw the Highways Agency’s head of health and safety, Paul Mitchell, discuss the impact of a new approach to highway worker safety.
In a similar vein, British Gas spoke about the success of its new strategy to manage driver risk, with health and safety advisor Danny Plumb explaining a range of methods it had put in place to improve vehicle efficiency and driver performance.
The free-to-attend exhibition boasted an array of exhibitors, free sessions in two spotlight theatres, the IOSH Theatre and a brand new IOSH exhibition stand, which presented information on everything from the Institution’s Life Savings campaign, to its popular training courses.
During the two days, there were more than 100 tweets from IOSH 2012 using the hashtag #iosh2012, with plenty of lively discussion on LinkedIn and Facebook.
IOSH president Subash Ludhra closed the conference with a message to delegates: “The real challenge is what we will be doing tomorrow and beyond,” he said. “How can we transform the knowledge gained into actions that will really make a difference to our organisations, business, government, the media and the public? My challenge to all of us is to be prepared to be different and make change happen.”
