Birmingham New Hospital team
The Birmingham New Hospital Joint Venture (BNHJV) project team is celebrating after collecting the latest of a string of safety awards.
The most recent accolade was winning the West Midlands Centre for Constructing Excellence (WMCCE) Health and Safety Award.
The WMCCE is one of several regional centres in the UK that drive best practice in construction and the award was set up to acknowledge organisations that have implemented innovation in practices, procedures and policies that have made significant improvements to safety and health in construction.
The BNHJV project was highlighted for praise because of the strong focus on safety in all areas of the scheme and its outstanding safety statistics despite the scale of the multi-disciplinary project.
Tim Roberts, senior health and safety adviser for the project said: “Safety has been designed into this project. Through Zero Harm there have been all sorts of initiatives to drive improvements such as our Safety Climate Survey for subcontractors. Safety inductions have been given to over 11,500 staff and craft employees helping us, as a team, to achieve over 2.2 million man hours worked without a reportable accident in spring last year, and a Safety Award scheme has been set up with the safest subcontractor, each month, winning £500 to donate to their chosen charity. So far, local charities have received £15,000 through the scheme.”
Project director, Peter Spearing adds, “The six-year long project was launched in 2006 and is the UK’s largest new hospital development outside London. Off-site manufacture from our dedicated manufacturing facility has enabled us to achieve our safety by design goals.”
Among its achievements, it has picked up Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents Gold Awards in 2009 and 2010 and was chosen by the Health and Safety Executive as the project to demonstrate workforce engagement to Lord McKenzie, the Minister for Health and Safety in 2008.
In a recent visit by the Balfour Beatty Group working party, who conducted a ‘Deep Dive’ to review the success and impact of Zero Harm, the BNHJV was described as “an exemplar project.”
Posted: Wednesday 4 August 2010