Transcript

Health, Safety and Welfare

Narrator

Setting new standards for construction is at the heart of the Terminal 5 project, nowhere more so than in the areas of health, safety, training and welfare. At peak, Terminal 5’s 4.2 billion pound construction programme will employ some 5,000 site workers and take an estimated 37 million man hours to construct. That is 37 million man hours during which BAA considers that even one accident or injury is one too many. The aim is to create a culture where safety is considered a core value by everyone working on T5.Before starting work, new employees must attend Terminal 5’s award winning pre-employment induction course. Terminal 5 also boasts the UK’s first on-site test centre for the construction skills certification scheme (CSCS). A valid CSCS card provides employees with an industry recognised health and safety skills accreditation. Many other skills can be acquired through on the job NVQ training; honing of everybody’s skills benefits the project and the individual’s CV.Each project and sub project has different requirements so additional inductions and training for specific work areas have been developed. Regular top up or tool box talks provide opportunities for health and safety refreshers and updates.BAA has also introduced a new culture change programme called Incident and Injury Free. This is a drive to eliminate even the possibility of an accident. IIF is not just about reducing the number of accidents, it is about changing attitudes and behaviour to prevent long established methods being blindly followed.100% safety record is the aim of the team and to achieve this everyone working on T5 attends courses and workshops to enable this vision to become as close a reality as humanly possible.The welfare of T5’s huge workforce is also high on the agenda. There are six separate site compounds each with first class changing rooms, showers and a canteen, the largest of the canteens can feed 400 people at each sitting.At the Occupational Health Centre, a dedicated team comprising of seven nurses, an occupational health doctor and visiting GP, provide an exceptional service including regular health awareness campaigns as well as emergency response.Site workers are also offered free medicals or can just pop in for advice.

Angie Young

I think what singles T5 out as special is that BAA had the foresight to actually decide that they were going to provide the occupational health service themselves; it's a service that is going to bring in advice to designers, advice to procurement, pre-employment medicals for people who have safety critical jobs – so the approach that this has taken is, I think quite visionary because it is giving them a whole scope of services that they wouldn’t have on any other construction job in the UK and maybe even Europe.

Narrator

BAA would like people to go home each day safe and preferably healthier than when they started.

Mike Evans

Achieving better health and safety standards is not a technical problem, it is a case of getting commitment from everyone involved.If it can’t be done safely, don’t do it; that has to become more than just a slogan on T5, people have to believe that we're serious about it.