Dubai International Airport recently surpassed London Heathrow as the world’s busiest airport. However, Dubai’s ultimate goal is to support 200 million passengers by 2050. ‘Prepare for takeoff’, an article in the forthcoming SHP, discusses how health and safety is being embedded in Dubai’s ambitious growth strategy for the aviation sector.
Overall responsibility for the delivery of all aviation related infrastructure in Dubai lies with Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects (DAEP). DAEP has led the way in developing a health and safety strategy and associated vision. The strategy encompasses a number of outcomes, each one deemed necessary to DAEP’s vision.
DAEP recognised the need to establish a health and safety governance structure, one that would incorporate the necessary systems and capabilities to ensure the control of consultants and contractors under its direction. One important component in the governance framework was the development of an expectations document, which would detail the minimum requirements that applied to all parties engaged by DAEP.
Developed over an extensive consultation period, the expectations document drew on input from relevant stakeholders from across the aviation sector via a series of workshops. As a result, DAEP was confident that the expectations document contained specific health and safety requirements that could be applied to the lifecycle of aviation-related infrastructure projects.
Early on, DAEP decided to embed the expectations document in the conditions of contract that were issued to consultants and contractors for all new tenders. This allows provision for health and safety to be costed into tenders and avoids situations whereby claims are lodged for variations when requests for improvements in health and safety are made after a contract has been awarded.
Once the relevant parties had been issued with the expectations document, DAEP set about auditing the consultants and contractors against its requirements. On completion of the audit programme, DAEP executives received a summary report that provided an overview of the most important themes that had emerged from the audits.
The culmination of the expectations audit programme was marked with an awards ceremony designed to promote health and safety, reward the highest audit scorer and incentivise performance. The plan is to conduct the expectations audit annually and it is hoped that the competitive climate fostered by the programme will help to drive continuous improvements in health and safety performance.
Moving forward, DAEP will start to implement some of the other projects detailed within the health and safety strategy. Indeed, with an understanding of the lessons learnt from previous mega projects around the world and in the Middle East region, the Emirate is well positioned to ensure these developments take place in a safe, healthy and sustainable manner.
Rob Cooling is risk services manager at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Middle East and North Africa. His article, ‘Prepare for takeoff’, will feature in the October issue of SHP, available at the end of this month.
