Neil Sheehan explains how developing a team of workers
who specialise in work at height has helped Kier Building
Maintenance improve safety and save money too
At its heart, Kier Building
Maintenance promotes a health Neil Sheehan explains how developing a team of workers
who specialise in work at height has helped Kier Building
Maintenance improve safety and save money too
At its heart, Kier Building
Maintenance promotes a health &
safety ethos and is passionately
committed to keeping its people safe at
work.
Kier Building Maintenance works on
many projects, including responsive
repairs and Decent Homes improvements
to social housing estates across the
country. At the heart of every job we do
there is a comprehensive health & safety
regime designed around sending every
member of our team home in the same
condition in which they came to work.
In 2009 we re-examined our working at
height policy to make it more efficient,
more cost effective and, most
importantly, safer for our employees. At
the time we worked with around 2,000
operatives carrying out repairs and
maintenance work at sites across the
country. Each of these operatives had a
ladder as part of their general equipment
but our investigation revealed that only
6.9 per cent of these workers required a
ladder or scaffolding to complete the tasks
they were assigned. We came to the
conclusion that a better approach would
be to dedicate 11 per cent of our
workforce specifically to this work.
This approach has since proven
extremely beneficial with 89 per cent of
workers no longer exposed to the risks of
working at height. By concentrating this
work in a smaller group we could provide
bespoke training courses to develop this
team into specialists in working at height.
The team are now also equipped with a
more specialised range of equipment
ensuring that they are suitably able to
handle the wide range of jobs they come
across. The team is made up of operatives
who wanted to carry out these tasks and
have the appropriate attitude and
physicality for this type of work.
Less equipment required
As well as providing a more efficient,
specialist service to customers across the
country, the formation of the dedicated
working at height team brought with it
both financial and environmental
advantages. By reducing the number of
operatives working at height, we reduced
the number of ladders we required. At a
cost of roughly £110 each, 89 per cent of
these were no longer required resulting in
a saving of almost £200,000. More than
£350,000 was saved across the fleet on roof
racks and a further £300,000 was saved in
fuel costs as removing the roof racks
improved their fuel efficiency.
Through consultation with our staff,
trade unions and subcontractors, learning
from shared experiences and by
maintaining an honest and open attitude
to feedback, we are able to constantly grow
and adapt our safety procedures to suit the
needs of our workforce. By encouraging a
culture of respect and team spirit, health &
safety remains at the core of what we do
and is not simply a legislative obligation.
We've developed clear internal
guidelines to provide staff with details of
how we operate in all areas of health &
safety and use many different methods to
share successes such as regular
newsletters, learning resources and our
own internal TV channel, KTV.
Against the backdrop of budget cuts
and an ever-increasing workload, the
temptation could be for health & safety
practices to be overlooked to save time
and money. However, we are urging the
industry to look again at its procedures
and listen to staff at ground level to find
out what works and what doesn't. We
pride ourselves on delivering a quality
service that provides value for money, and
it is the people who work for us who are
the key to delivering this.
Kier Building Maintenance is the
leading repair and maintenance company
working in the vital area of social housing
in the UK. This year it will maintain over
220,000 homes and carry out more than
half a million repairs, ensuring all services
meet the needs of local communities.
Neil Sheehan is the national safety, health and
environmental manager at Kier Building
Maintenance.
