Safety gets off to the right start

Speedy has championed best practice in health and safety for many years and in 2005 it set new standards in on-site safety communications with the launch of its Safety from the Ground Up campaign.

The campaign initially focused heavily on working at height, one of the main health and safety issues on sites according to HSE statistics. Since its introduction, three more safety themes have been added to cover manual handling, hand arm vibration and dust control. The campaign has proven to be a great success, having received widespread industry support and won numerous awards including an Orange National Business award and a Business in the Community award for responsible marketing.

Safety from the ground up has evolved to meet changing needs of the industry and mirrors the findings of the 2011 HSE and Construction Skills report by Pye Tait, a leading education and training research organisation, which saw the undertaking of a major study to evaluate the key issue of competence in the construction industry.

Human error, either through poor performance or the individual's inability to recognise or predict potentially hazardous situations, was a key factor found to be a cause of accidents in the work place. Pye Tait noted that in other high-risk sectors, such as the nuclear and aviation industries, greater consideration is given to the human factors of behaviour and attitudes in their approach to safety education.

The report recommended that the construction industry should adopt the concept of 'new competence' where human factors such as behaviour and attitudes, as well as skills and knowledge, are factored into safety training and education.

Speedy's Head of Brand Marketing and Communications, Daniel Walmsley, is responsible for the updated programme and explains the strategy behind the decision to re-launch. He says: "Safety is very much at the forefront of our own business and the underlying driving force behind the original Safety from the ground up campaign was always to help our customers raise awareness and understanding of key safety themes amongst their site operatives and managers.

"Our determination to champion best practice in health and safety continues but it was evident that an update to the campaign was required to take into consideration the latest thinking, a number of legislative changes and the fact that new products have been brought to market that are designed specifically with health and safety in mind and to mitigate risks.

"Focus group research amongst our customers,employees and suppliers discovered that there was still a need for the type of information the original Safety from the ground up campaign offered but the findings from the Pye Tait HSE report needed to be integrated and a new approach was needed.

"In effect, the re-launch is a response to customers' needs. There is now a focus on site supervisor responsibility (as well as operatives and managers), we've completely redesigned and updated the communication materials and we have created a product familiarisation library with more than 40 separate short films uploaded to our web site – a unique resource in the industry.

"Finally, we are able to offer a comprehensive range of health and safety, environmental and product training courses from over 200 sites nationally. Positive feedback from Speedy's customers confirms its effort to help increase awareness and understanding of health and safety is still very much in demand.

Speedy will display its health and safety communications as an exhibitor at this year's Safety and Health Expo which takes place from 14th – 16th May 2013 at Birmingham's NEC. For more information on the company's Safety from the ground up programme, visit speedyservices.com/sftgu