At Prater, health and safety is a core value. Here, Senior Health and Safety Manager Brian Butler talks through the relevant standards the business adheres to, and why for a specialist contractor - a proactive, cultural, behavioural and innovative approach is always called for.
“Prater’s uncompromising approach to health and safety is echoed by its number of related accreditations. We have consistently passed audits from bodies such as Achilles and the Contractors Health and Safety Assessment Scheme (CHAS) for several years. In addition, we have also earned recognition from the British Standards Institution (BSI) – receiving BS OHSAS 18001 certification (from TUV) for Occupational Health & Safety Management.
Such accreditations are acknowledgements of the continual, stringent processes that are put in place internally, to minimise the opportunity for incidents. Across all projects, offices and off-site manufacturing facilities, Prater has mandated the use of five pieces of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE): Safety Boots, High-Vis Jackets, Task Specific Gloves, Safety Glasses and Hard Hats. In addition, we ensure that all staff are appropriately trained in the use of equipment, vehicles and machinery where required – while checks are also frequently carried out to ensure they are maintained in a safe condition.
The importance of health and safety is championed throughout the business. Our Cultural Behavioural Safety Roadshows seek to change perceptions towards health and safety, to ensure our own employees as well as sub-contractors working in Prater workplaces are continuously thinking about keeping not only themselves safe but the whole team and the public.
These standards are continually reviewed, with premises regularly inspected by senior management, directors and external consultants. As such, Prater’s Health & Safety Policy is reviewed annually to ensure conformity to current legislation.
This approach has underpinned all our projects – from the smallest to Prater’s most complex, high-risk construction programmes. For example, Prater delivered works at the development of Blackfriars Bridge Station - London’s first station to be built across the river, with the station built on the bridge itself. This meant meticulous planning was required to facilitate river access for over 3,500 pallets of materials to be delivered to site and lifted from barges to roof level.
Planning and identifying potential issues as well as ensuring a robust health and safety strategy was also key to the delivery of the redevelopment of London Bridge Station. Prior to installation on-site, our site team was involved in the construction of a full-scale prototype – testing our solutions in a controlled environment, allowing all parties to eradicate any errors or dangers and enabling the efficient and safe delivery of the project.
We also currently on site delivering an external façade package at Telehouse’s TN2 development in London. The size and scale of the project – including 15,000m2 of composite cladding, and a vast scope of bespoke materials, requires engineers to work at heights of up to 60m using spider cranes and hanging cradles.
Methods like this require an uncompromising approach to health and safety and we are very proud of our outstanding incident record. With over 1.6 million man hours completed in 2015, no RIDDOR accidents were recorded – with only two recorded in over 1.4 million man hours in the previous year.
