By Michael Coates
A new campaign using vintage-style posters to highlight and promote the effective communication of health, safety and wellbeing issues has been launched by Geotechnics Limited.
This new long-term health and safety campaign ‘GO SAFE’, has the aim of highlighting, promoting and effectively communicating health, safety and wellbeing issues to staff, sub-contractors and anyone that we interface with on their sites, including the general public.
The concept is to focus on a new health and safety issue every month or so with vintage style posters designed for offices and site cabins, handy infographic guides, and a new dedicated webpage which will provide news articles, information on the campaign and a download section where the latest bulletins, guides and posters can be obtained by anyone. The campaign is also being promoted via Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin with the use of the hashtag #GOSAFE.
A new logo has also been developed to promote the message ‘Think. Assess. Go’. This will be displayed prominently on Geotechnics Limited PPE and site paperwork, to act as a reminder to always follow the correct process. The TAG message has also inspired the development of a new additional Point of Work Risk Assessment which will be rolled out to all Site Engineers.
GO SAFE is an initiative with the Geoscience and wider Construction industries in mind. Whilst each new topic is focussed on improving the company health and safety culture through improved communication and training, we’re keen to trigger discussion and make the campaign available to everyone, not just our staff. It is our belief that all work-related injuries and illnesses are preventable.
For the launch of the GO SAFE campaign we have issued a safety culture survey to all staff to establish a measurable baseline and to track the effectiveness of the campaign and associated future safety initiatives.
The first topic to be chosen is one which should be of interest to most people, focusing on the unavoidable challenges presented during the winter months. The poster is a
reminder that winter is coming and that it’s time to get prepared, and is complimented by a handy infographic guide with some hints and tips for the cold winter months, including winter driving, preparing your home for winter, planning and of course working outside in winter weather, something that Geotechnics Limited engineers, as well as the wider construction industry face over the coming months.
One common issue is the wearing of winter hats underneath hard hats. Whilst no-one would argue that it’s vitally important to keep warm and prevent heat loss through your head, it can also result in a poorly fitted or loosely worn hard hat, or the temptation to remove the hard hat altogether whilst performing some tasks, exposing the operative to the risk of serious injury. To mark the winter initiative Geotechnics Limited is issuing all their site engineers with proprietary fleece hard-hat liners, which will solve this problem and reduce the risk of avoidable head injury.
The next release in November will form part of the winter campaign, and will focus on Drugs and Alcohol, a topic of particular importance at this time of year with the festive period approaching. More topics are already being worked on for release in 2016.
Directors Len Threadgold and John Booth explain the campaign further: “GO SAFE reinforces our belief that the health and safety of employees, contractors, clients and everyone else affected by our work is fundamental to the success of our business. At Geotechnics Limited we believe that our long term success is dependent upon the ability to keep them safe.
It is our responsibility to ensure that every person who works for and interacts with Geotechnics can GO SAFE to work and return home safe and sound.”
Anyone wishing to receive regular email updates from Geotechnics Limited on the campaign can subscribe via their website. The company encourages people to get involved and welcomes any feedback or discussion on their Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin pages. You can also use #GOSAFE to highlight interesting health and safety photos, events or stories.
Michael joined Geotechnics Limited in May 2015 as Health and Safety Manager. He has over 23 years’ experience in construction industry management, and moved in to Health and Safety in 2008 following the completion of a NEBOSH General Certificate. He has subsequently completed his NVQ Level 5 in Occupational Health and Safety and gained Graduate membership of IOSH and Membership of IIRSM.
Geotechnics Limited was established in 1983 to provide the full spectrum of services covering the design, implementation, interpretation and evaluation of geotechnical and contaminated land site investigations. Their head office and laboratory are based in Coventry, with additional offices in Exeter, Chester and Yorkshire. Over the last 32 years Geotechnics Limited has worked on varied projects for numerous clients in a wide variety of environments and sectors, with projects ranging from Phase 1 Risk Assessments for a new dwelling through to multi-million pound developments including low and high-rise buildings, brownfield regeneration sites, waterside developments, bridges and highways. Their client base includes private individuals, house builders, architects, consultant engineers, Government departments, Local Authorities and Utilities.
