Laing O’Rourke has revealed it will roll out a new company mission to move away from the culture of controlling all risks towards a focus on fatal risks
Construction contractor Laing O’Rourke has launched a new approach to tackling safety. John Green, director of health and safety Europe, is reportedly leading a company mission to deliver “safety differently”.
This approach is a move away from the culture of controlling risks through “zero harm” towards concentrating resources on severe and fatal risks. In 2010 the firm adopted the Mission Zero campaign, which was similar to other initiatives rolled out by major contractors such as Balfour Beatty (Zero Harm), Carillion (Target Zero), and Bam Nuttall (Beyond Zero).
However, due to three fatal injuries during Mission Zero, Laing O’Rourke is seeking a rethink on its strategy.
This new approach has been underpinned by work carried out by Laing O’Rourke Australia under the ‘Next Gear’ campaign. This aims to build “safety resilience” built on engagement and trust. It places people at the heart of safety decision making. It moves beyond traditional safety practices and concentrates on three principles, which include:
- People – are the solution (vs people are the problem)
- Positives – safety in the presence of positives (vs safety is the absence of negatives)
- Ethics – safety is an ethical responsibility (vs safety is a bureaucratic activity)
These principles are underlined by tactics that can be implemented across the workplace. This includes:
- Focusing on high consequence risks
- Investigating for success
- Reducing bureaucracy and simplifying systems
- Empowering our workforce through engagement and trust
- Leadership that challenges traditional thinking
The strategy focuses on the idea that safety success should focus on identifying the positives and looking beyond the failures.
However, the strategy has come under fire from construction union Ucatt. The organisation said the policy could “erode the very foundations of the UK’s health and safety culture.”
UCATT Midlands Regional Secretary Shaun Lee said: “Small injuries are not small concerns for workers.
“By neglecting basic safety, we put workers’ health and futures at risk.
“Small injuries can mean significant loss of pay and significant psychological stress for the worker and their family.
“If we don’t have zero tolerance in the work place, then standards will slip and the number of injuries will increase.”
A spokesperson for O’Rourke said: “UCATT has not approached us with any concerns regarding “safety differently” and [the] press release is the first time we’ve heard of them.”
The spokesperson added: “There’s a focus at many organisations on low-consequence events, like twisted ankles, in the belief that they prevented high-consequence events.
“In other words, the prevention of all harm means the prevention of serious harm. We do not believe that is true.
“There is no correlation between the number of times people twist their ankle and whether or not someone’s going to get killed by falling from height, for example.”
The spokesperson continued: “There’s also a new emphasis on seeing Laing O’Rourke’s own people as the solution to health and safety challenges by involving them in deciding how hazardous work should be approached.
“Instead of being all paperwork and process, we want health and safety to be at the very core of what we do – and how we do it. In other words, safety is an ethical responsibility not a bureaucratic activity.
“It’s not a question of saying everything we’ve done in the past was wrong – it absolutely isn’t. We wouldn’t be where we are now without it.
“It’s about building on that foundation with a new approach that will take us in the direction we want to go.”
