Alan Trueman at CityFibre on the EHS challenges of delivering blanket broadband across the UK.
Over the last four years, there has been strong progress in bringing fast, reliable broadband to rural communities. In January this year, gigabit broadband coverage in the UK reached 81% – up from just 6% in 2019. With the Government’s target of achieving 85% coverage by 2025, companies including CityFibre will continue to play a vital role in accelerating this coverage.
CREDIT: Compare Fibre/Unsplash
CityFibre has been heavily involved in Project Gigabit, a flagship programme to enable hard-to-reach communities to access gigabit-capable broadband. CityFibre recently secured a further five of the Government’s Project Gigabit broadband contracts, totalling over £394m. These awards will subsidise full fibre rollout to over 202,000 hard to reach homes and businesses in the UK – bringing the total to nine contracts totaling £782m. This, in addition to our existing nationwide rollout, means CityFibre is currently delivering one of the largest infrastructure deployments the country has seen for decades.
To deliver this ambitious goal, the health, safety and wellbeing of those on the frontline is paramount. We strongly believe in the importance of agreeing a unified approach and obligatory standards, especially when it comes to skills, quality control and health, safety and well-being, for everyone involved in this ambitious project. To achieve this, a group of Full Fibre network operators came together in 2021 to establish SHiFT (Safety & Health in Fibre Telecoms) Group.
SHiFTing expectations
Made up of 36 members, SHiFT is a joined-up approach from the industry to set and raise safety standards specific to Full Fibre deployment. Achieving consistency is key, and by bringing together a wide range of organisations representing all levels of the industry, we can define guidelines and standards that will pave the way for safer and more efficient rollouts. At CityFibre, we’ve gone to great lengths to incorporate new standards into our own rollout. As a member of SHiFT, we aim to share our experiences with others, and indeed learn from their experiences too.
Getting approval for street works can be extremely challenging when building fibre infrastructure across communities. Permissions must be seamless, with meticulous planning in place, or works can easily ground to a halt. SHiFT has established a charter, set out a roadmap and agreed on a set of priorities. These include reducing service strikes, standard guidelines for working at height, minimum competency expectations and ensuring the requirements of CDM legislation are implemented for full fibre deployment.
Partnership managers are a key component in ensuring CityFibre meets safety standards, due to their work with local communities. Providing insight is fundamental to help tailor the rollout process and to ensure standards are met for both engineers and customers on a regional level. Given the use of heavy machinery and operatives working at height, it is vital that build partners strive to keep health and safety standards airtight. Our assurance programme checks that build partners are in fact meeting the correct criteria to execute a safe and successful rollout.
Specialists
Other fundamental components include the work of our Street Work Specialists. Many have previously been highway inspectors or compliance managers, so it’s a team bristling with expertise on build-permit applications and with an extensive joint knowledge of the UK’s New Roads and Street Works Act (1991). Together, they’ve helped to streamline permit-processing, meaning our build partners don’t need to waste the time and resources of local authorities by submitting permits that need to be clarified and then resubmitted.
Additionally, our joint survey approach means our own surveyors accompany the council’s highways inspector on a tour of the build area, which gives us the opportunity to discuss local knowledge of permit conditions, traffic management, embargos, required reinstatement standards, and ways we might speed up the permit process.
The introduction and work of groups like SHiFT means that local authorities can be assured that we will always strive for the highest quality standards – from signage, to lighting and guarding through to reinstatement – so that the need for re-work is rare.
Broadband collaboration
As we play our part in delivering ultra-fast and reliable full fibre broadband, we will continue to work collaboratively with our partners to improve the safety and health standards within the UK’s fibre industry.
In 2022, Alan Trueman was voted SHP’s Most Influential, part of the wider SHP Awards. You can read more about Alan’s work here and what it takes to win such an accolade.
Approaches to managing the risks associated Musculoskeletal disorders
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, we hear from Matt Birtles, Principal Ergonomics Consultant at HSE’s Science and Research Centre, about the different approaches to managing the risks associated with Musculoskeletal disorders.
Matt, an ergonomics and human factors expert, shares his thoughts on why MSDs are important, the various prevalent rates across the UK, what you can do within your own organisation and the Risk Management process surrounding MSD’s.
