Lanes Group wins Construction News health and safety accolade

Lanes Group has won the Construction News Award for Health and Safety Initiative of the Year 2013 after showing what judges praised as a “relentless focus” on improving health and safety.

The company was presented with the highly prestigious award at a ceremony attended by 1,200 construction industry leaders on Thursday July 12.

Lanes Group, the UK’s largest independent drainage specialist, submitted its What Good Looks Like initiative, an essential standard that uses detailed cartoon-style images to show operational teams how worksites should be set up.

It creates a highly effective method for communicating vital health and safety messages. The cartoon-style of communication uses visual learning techniques to encourage engineers to see and remember the connection between their behaviours and the connections between safety quality and the environment.

Lanes also showcased an innovative digital work scheduling system, designed for a major new contract. It allows field engineers to share, in real-time, point of works risk assessments and worksite images with operational controllers.

Judges for the Construction News Awards, among the most prestigious accolades in the construction industry, said: “Our winner showed a strong and relentless focus on health and safety with straightforward communication at its heart.

“We were not only impressed by a novel and innovative use of electronic communication, but also the passion and commitment of the team.”

Lanes Group Director Andy Brierley, who leads the team that has developed What Good Looks Like, said: “We are very proud to have won such an important award. The judge’s remarks are very heartening.

“A strong health and safety culture is vitally important to the success of any organisation. We work constantly to make sure it is at the heart of all Lanes’ service delivery and our approach to leading and developing out teams.”

What Good Looks Like was developed to support the implementation of a major wastewater network services contract in the south east of England, valued at up to £216m.

The engaging cartoon images reflect a wide variety of worksite scenarios. They are designed to show best practice, while encouraging teams to think creatively about potential hazards and how to overcome them.

These images support detailed process maps showing, step by step, precisely how different worksite tasks should be carried out.

The digital scheduling system has been designed to manage the huge volume of work required to fulfill the contract, more than 4,000 jobs per week. Lanes plans to further develop the huge potential to build in real-time measures to control health and safety risks.

Both initiatives are designed to support Lanes’ drive to continuously improve health and safety performance on the contract, which has a current Accident Frequency Rate of 0.12.

John Glover, Lanes Group Health, Safety, Quality and Environment Manager, said: “We were short-listed last year for this Construction News Award, so to go one step further this year and win it is very pleasing.

“It is a reflection of the commitment made at all levels of the company to continuously address risks that could cause injury and ill-health. We take a strategic approach to health and safety because we think safe business is good business.”

Rebecca Evans, the editor of Construction News, said: “The winners of the Construction News Awards 2013 represent the very best of an innovative, dynamic industry.

“These companies are leading the way in adopting a more sustainable, collaborative and responsible approach to construction, with exciting technology at its core.

“Congratulations to all the winners, they are a fantastic reflection of the huge contribution that construction makes to the economy, the jobs market and wider society.”