Mental Health Summit

Thames Water’s Karl Simons to chair mental health summit

Jamie Hailstone

Thames Water’s Chief Health, Safety & Security Officer is set to chair a major summit later this year on mental health in the highways sector.

Karl Simons will chair Safer Highways’ Mental Health Summit at the House of Commons on 20 June.

Mr Simons has 25 years of experience in industry, having worked across all continents and numerous safety-critical industries including oil, gas, minerals, rail, construction and water.

He is also regular lecturer at the University of Cambridge and holds a position as Main Board Director for the global organisation Water Sanitation for the Urban Poor.

The invitation-only one-day summit will also act as the launch pad for a new industry-wide ‘Road to Better Wellbeing’ strategy, designed to increase the awareness of wellbeing and mental health across the sector irrespective of the size of organisation.

As part of the strategy, highways firms will be asked to take part in a major questionnaire on the issue, which will be followed by further analysis the following year.

The keynote presentation at the event will be given by Lord Dennis Stevenson, co-author of the government’s ‘Thriving at Work’ report which examined mental health within the workplace in the UK.

Also speaking at the event are Dawn Moore, HR Director for Morgan Sindall; Clare Forshaw, Health and Hygiene Partner for Park HS and Martin Coyd, Health and Safety Director of Mace.

Other attendees already confirmed at the event include Jill Collis, Health and Safety Director at Transport for London, Fiona King, Head of Occupational Health at HS2 and many senior figures from across infrastructure including Tim Aston, UK and Ireland’s Health and Safety Director of Swissport and Fiona O’Donnell, European Head of Health and Safety for Buildings and Infrastructure at Jacobs.

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