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Those awarding the tenders and the organizations pitching for them face their own unique challenges when it comes to implementing Health & Safety programmes. Here we look at what the challenges are for both groups through the eyes of Scottish Power Renewables and Global Construction and how both have sought to overcome these challenges despite mounting economic pressures.
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Introduction
During an economic downturn, health and safety can become vulnerable to cost cutting as wind developers, manufacturers and contractors try to maintain profitability.
Financial pressure often exposes the underlying attitude that an organisation takes to health and safety.
At one end of the continuum are organisations that consider health & safety as a 'box to tick', an element of the business ripe for cutting when times are hard.
At the other end are those that treat health & safety as a core value of the organisation. Such organisations see their commitment to continuous improvement in health & safety as a way of differentiating themselves from the competition, and thus an element of the business to nurture during hard times.
Those awarding the tenders and the organizations pitching for them face their own unique challenges. Here we look at what the challenges are for both groups through the eyes of Scottish Power Renewables and Global Construction and how both have sought to overcome these challenges despite mounting economic pressures.
Client and contractor perspectives
The client awarding a contract wants to make sure that health and safety standards are maintained across the contractors they work with and throughout the life of contract. The main challenge for these client organisations is how to ensure a safe site.
Wind-farm construction sites are complex places in which to enforce and maintain a consistent standard of behavioural safety. A range of contractors are working alongside one another at any one time. Each is focussed on completing their own particular part of the project and each brings their own safety culture and set of protocols.
By law, it is the principal contractor who should exercise control over its own employees and other contractors working on site. However, as David MacDonald, Civil Engineering Director of Global Construction comments: 'how successful the principal contractor is in doing this will depend on the relationships they are able to develop with other contractors on site.'
Where they have appointed these contractors themselves, they are able to exert influence through their own supply chain. But where contractors are appointed directly by the client, it can sometimes be harder to forge such relationships.
Ideally, the behavioural safety programme operated by the principal contractor will ensure that the organisation's values and accepted behaviours are directing the actions not only of their own employees but also those of sub-contractors. Behavioural safety programmes also work best when managers, supervisors and engineers are using their influence to challenge unsafe acts.
To exercise this influence, these groups need to understand their own role as safety leaders and feel confident to intervene on unsafe acts. This exposes a limitation in some behavioural safety programmes which tend to focus exclusively on the behaviour of front line workers rather than the people with the most authority, and therefore the most influence on site.
Chris Black Head of Health, Safety and Quality at ScottishPower Renewables and the former chair of the RenewableUK Lessons Learnt Scheme comments:
"Effective safety leadership creates a safety culture in which everyone recognises the role he plays in maintaining a safe site."
At a time when some companies are cutting back on health & safety, those contractors who continue to treat health & safety as an organizational value recognize that by communicating and promoting how they do this to clients (particularly during the pitch process) they will generate valuable competitive advantage for the business.
The problem here is that the pressure to cut does not always come from within. Some contractors may well argue that it is the client organization that applies pressure to reduce costs to the detriment of health and safety.
David MacDonald, Civil Engineering Director of Global Construction (part of GE Group) says "When times are tough then it does become harder to focus on health & safety because everyone's focus is money."
In this instance, Mr. Macdonald believes the strong voice promoting health & safety has to come from his organization. "I always challenge clients to stand by what they say about health & safety. We would walk away from business if we thought a potential client was putting pressure on us to reduce costs below which we can deliver the job safely."
Making health & safety work
Client organizations, such as ScottishPower Renewables, recognise that if safety standards are to improve, then they need to take a more hands-on approach and provide the principal contractor with more support and resource.
In the first instance, the client must clearly communicate their own organisation's values and the standards of behaviour they expect of all those working on site. Chris "with our next project we're going to start with a seminar for all key contractors in which our values and expectations will be communicated and contractors will be encouraged to share their experience and best practice."
ScottishPower Renewables are also delivering cultural safety programmes for their managers and supervisors. These programmes set out the behaviours the organisation expects their 'leaders' to adopt, particularly in relation to incident investigation.
Furthermore, before a manager or supervisor takes up their role on a new project they will attend a two day course introducing them to ScottishPower Renewables' safety culture. Those attending will often come from different contractor companies - this will help develop understanding and communication between the participating groups.
Both the contractor and client also need to develop a relationship which encourages discussion and challenges unsafe acts. This is the key to maintaining the right balance between, on the one hand, sound finance and, on the other, effective safety management. Challenge and transparency are key to effective safety leadership.
For the contractor, health and safety has to be a priority every day with managers and supervisors making themselves visible, noticing what is happening on site, talking to workers, identifying and addressing problems as they arise, intervening and showing how important health and safety is to the organization.
Equally the client organization has a responsibility to ensure that its safety culture permeates across all the contractors via transparency, communication and collaboration. Managers and supervisors need to have a clear understanding of the client's safety culture, what 'behaviors' are expected of them, and to share their experiences as a way to ensure continuous improvement. It is then up the contractor to ensure this happens on the ground.
As with Scottish Power Renewables, it is useful for a client to set the stall right from the start via training workshops and continue to re-enforce these principles throughout the life cycle of the contract. Encouraging collaboration and communication between all the participating contractors will also highlight important safety needs as well as prevent a 'silo' culture all too familiar on many wind farm projects.
Despite the ongoing economic difficulties, with these principles in place both contractor and client can ensure a robust, effective health & safety programme that runs across all participating organizations. This will not only saves lives, but can bring competitive advantage at a critical time.
-ENDS-
Contact Information
James Walter
Candid Media
2/7 Powderhall Rigg
Edinburgh
EH7 4GA
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