Lanes broadband infrastructure business highly commends in safety awards

Broadband civils and fibre specialist Lanes Infrastructure has been highly commended in the national Safety and Health Excellence Awards.

The business has taken the runners up spot in the Best Health and Safety in Construction category. The award was won by construction firm Kier.

Donya Seyadi, health and safety manager for Lanes Utilities, the wastewater network maintenance partner for Thames Water, had been shortlisted in the Rising Star category in the same awards.

Lanes Infrastructure (Lanes-i), launched just 12 months ago, delivers excavation and installation services for the broadband industry, and is majority owned by Lanes Group plc.

Clients include City Fibre, for which it is installing fibre ducting in four city regions across South East England.

Lanes-i impressed the award judges with its commitment to set a new standard in health, safety, and wellbeing in the broadband civils and installation industry.

This is typified by a new initiative, due to go live in the New Year, to open an in-house centre of excellence to train all operatives to the BT-accredited standard for fibre civils and installation.

Lanes-i health and safety manager, Grant Blamire, said: “To come second in the SHE Awards, when we’ve only been in business for just over a year, feels like a win for us.

“We’re very pleased for everyone in the business, because we’re all striving together to make health, safety and wellbeing a top priority.

“Being highly commended gives us confidence that we’re on the right trajectory in our efforts to create, maintain and continue to develop a strong safety and wellbeing culture.”

Lanes-i’s new training centre will be based at its Kent depot in Cliffe, near Gravesend, and will be the only one of its kind in the south of England.

Grant Blamire said: “Our aim is not to make sure our teams have the minimum standards but to set a higher bar in terms of training quality and responsiveness to client needs.

“We believe health, safety and wellbeing is central to our commercial success and the high performance standards, in terms of quality and productivity, we aim to achieve for our customers.”

Lanes-i employs a team of dedicated NEBOSH-qualified health and safety advisors who are embedded within each installation area, rather than working between them.

It also operates bespoke service vans with equipment storage designed to minimise manual handling, built-in welfare units, which do away with the need for temporary toilets, and external display screens to communicate safety messages to operatives and the public.