HEALTH & SAFETY
AT OUTWEST CONSTRUCTION
OUTWEST CIVIL ENGINEERING consider H&S to be of paramount importance throughout every function and activity of Outwest Construction. We have instilled a culture of H&S excellence across our organisation, ensuring it maintains the utmost priority; all staff, at every level, are fully qualified, trained and aware of their responsibilities and the standards we expect.
As demonstration of Outwest Civil Engineering’s commitment to ensuring the safety of all employees, subcontractors, partners, other contractors, members of the public and anyone else who is affected by our operations, we have implemented an Incident and Injury Free safety culture across our organisation, ensuring all workers go home safely every day. This is further facilitated and ensured through our ISO 45001 certified Occupational Health and Safety Management System. The goal of ISO45001 is the reduction of occupational injuries and diseases, including promoting and protecting physical and mental health.
Our managing directors have experience working for reputable Principal Contractors and learning from industry best practice health and safety initiatives. Our company therefore encourages active participation by our employees, empowering our employees to make important contributions to the development and implementation of our Health and Safety policies and arrangements.
Communication between our senior management and our workforce is paramount to ensuring a good relationship and understanding of "Our Way” of working. Any health and safety issues are addressed quickly and efficiently and then communicated throughout the workforce to ensure lessons learnt are taken on board. This is our safety culture.
For more information, please contact us.
OUR 3 FUNDAMENTAL STEPS TO MANAGING HEALTH & SAFETY
01 - Risk Assessments & Method Statements
With all our work activities, we will have a risk assessment in place. A risk assessment is a careful examination of what, in our work, could cause harm to people i.e. the risks. We weigh up whether enough precautions and control measures are in place for the work to be safely carried out.
Although a safety method statement is not required by law, it is one of our industry's accepted codes of practice. It describes in a logical sequence exactly how each of our work activities are to be carried out in a safe manner and without risks to health. It incorporates all the risks identified in the risk assessment and the control measures needed to control those risks. This allows each of our work activities to be properly planned and resourced.
02 - Toolbox talks and Daily Activity Briefings
All our plant operatives and labour operatives receive a daily activity briefing from our on-site supervisor and also attend any site briefings organised by site management. This ensures planned activities are communicated and discussed to ensure there is coordination of work activities on site.
A ‘toolbox talk’ is a short presentation to the workforce on a single aspect of health and safety. Weekly toolbox talks are given by supervisors and senior management to our operatives. Topics chosen are those relevant to current work activities on site.
03 - Safety Adviser
OUTWEST CIVIL ENGINEERING engage Health & Safety Advisors to carry out our onsite inspections and provide written reports.
We also engage external Safety Advisers to provide training courses to our employees as and when required.