Lanes puts London Underground in picture with Essential Standards

Lanes Group’s Rail Division has launched its own version of the company’s innovative and award-winning quality tool that uses cartoon pictures to show how worksites must look to be safe and productive.

Essential Standards is being used by more than 120 Lanes drainage operatives working on London Underground (LU) maintenance and repair contracts – in what is believed to be the first initiative of its kind on LU operations.

Lanes Rail Division Commercial Director Matthew Todd said: “Essential Standards has been very well received by our teams and by both London Underground and Transport for London, which we are very pleased about.

“Our aim, with Essential Standards, is to clearly establish a culture of ‘right first time’ for all our operations. If worksites are set up right, they have a greater chance of running right, in terms of safety, efficiency and effectiveness.

“We already have a very good record for the quality of our work. We believe Essential Standards will help us deliver the percentage point differences that will create a step change that makes our services consistently excellent.”

Lanes Group, the largest independent supplier of wastewater, utility and underground pipeline services in the UK, has invested £40,000 in developing Essential Standards for its rail operations, based at Rainham, Essex.

LU selected the initiative as one of three to showcase at a Together We’re Safer health and safety forum for its 500 contractors, chaired by LU Managing Director Mike Brown.

At its core is a series of cartoon-style images showing 15 worksite set-ups, selected to reflect their importance, frequency and feedback from audit checks. For each image, there is a process map detailing how the site should be managed.

Easy-to-use and durable Essential Standards handbooks, containing the pictures and other operational information, are now carried by every Lanes drainage team, for use as a daily guide.

The images and process maps are also being used to create a series of interactive training modules and presentations for use in staff inductions and on-going skills development.

The development work is being led by Lanes Rail Division Health, Safety, Quality and Environment Manager Scott Tracey.

He said: “All 120 drainage operatives will receive the same in-depth Essential Standards training. We will also carry out regular site audits to ensure it is being used and to develop it further as required.”

Plans are already in place to introduce the initiative on other contracts managed by Lanes for LU, including locks and security, buildings and structures maintenance and seepage control.

Matthew Todd said: “We expect Essential Standards to have a big impact. It will define how we deliver a quality service. It will help us involve our staff in making day-to-day decisions that change behaviours and our culture for the better.

“Our rail clients will get the assurance they look for, in terms of the safety and quality of our services, so it will contribute to our continuing commercial success.”

Essential Standards was first introduced in the company’s utilities division to support delivery of the UK’s largest wastewater network services contract for Thames Water.

The approach was selected to make use of visual learning, the most common and most powerful learning technique, and was designed to support effective training of staff with widely differing learning abilities.

A third version of Essential Standards is being developed for use by Lanes Group’s 23 operational depots.

Essential Standards was at the core of submissions that won Lanes Group the Construction News Health and Safety Excellence Award 2013 and the Construction News Specialists Award for Health and Safety Excellence 2014.