Lanes Utilities Division named as finalists in Construction News Awards

Lanes Group’s Utilities Division has the chance to win a prestigious Construction News Award for the second time in three years. It has been named as a finalist in the Construction News Health and Safety Initiative Award.

Judges were impressed by a new digital point of works risk assessment tool, developed to support delivery of a wastewater network maintenance and repair contract for Thames Water.

The ePoWRA, inputted on a standard smart phone, has greatly increased the ability to control and analyse risk. Being paperless, it has also saved in excess of 300,000 sheets of paper every year.

The ePoWRA is one of many elements in a health and safety strategy that contributed to an Accident Frequency Rate of zero for the whole of 2014, included 147 consecutive days without a single lost time incident.

The Lanes Utilities Division won the Construction News Health and Safety Initiative Award in 2013, and the Construction News Specialists Award 2014, for developing its Essential Standards.

Essential Standards is an operational guide that uses cartoon-style images to give clear messages about standards required for health and safety and other aspects of behaviour, including customer service.

The ePoWRA, developed and implemented over the last 18 months, is thought to be one of the most advanced digital health and safety tools in use in the utilities industry.

It is designed to be simple to use – it takes less than 15 minutes to learn to use – but is a powerful method for ensuring operatives consider all relevant risks at work sites, and take personal responsibility for their own health and safety.

Lanes Group Utilities Technical Director Andy Brierley said: “We are excited about being named as finalists in the Construction News Awards again, especially in the health and safety category.

“It is a strong indicator that we are continuously striving to improve our health and safety performance, through bold yet simple initiatives, that combine cutting edge technology and clearly communicated world class standards.”

Conrad Ashby, Lanes Utilities Framework Director for the Thames Water Contract, said: “We are constantly seeking to instil a strong health and safety culture across our workforce.

“The ePoWRA works because it empowered our teams to make the right decisions, for them, for us, and for our customers. The intuitive system allows self validation of mitigation to identified risks through image capture along with clear and simple response categorisation. We only have the opportunity for this recognition because of their hard work and diligence from Field teams that helped input to the development.”

The technology is part of a bespoke cloud-based operational web app called FieldViewer. Thames Water is so impressed that its own teams and other contractors are also using it.

The ePoWRA takes drainage engineers through a step-by-step process to identify and mitigate worksite risks. If a risk is left unaccounted for, the team is instructed not to begin work, and there is an escalation phone alert direct to the respective line manager.

It also has a Safety feedback function. For every job, it provides a simple issue capture process for engineers to share any ideas they have for making the task even safer and also to identify risks and H&S near misses .

Lanes Group’s Utilities Division has delivered the wastewater network maintenance contract for Thames Water since 2012, carrying out over 1,000 drain unblocking and repair tasks every 24 hours.

The Construction News Awards are considered the biggest awards in the construction industry. Winners will be announced at a gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London on 30 June.

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