WORKING AT HEIGHT SCALING NEW HEIGHTS
Billy Jones, Director at scaffolding and access specialist Millcroft, discusses the company’s 360˚ approach to managing safety at height hazards and reducing risk.
As scaffolding and access specialists with a track record dating back over 40 years, safety at height is fundamental to our day-to-day operations at Millcroft and it’s a responsibility we take very seriously.
We specialise in complex and solutions-driven scaffolding and access projects for the construction, heritage, transport, education, residential, infrastructure and industrial sectors; often working within the client’s strict health and safety guidelines as well as implementing our own safety standards.
But safety is much more than a tick-box exercise for us; it’s a culture embedded in the way we work across all disciplines to ensure that our projects are safer by design, our sites are managed safely and our teams are committed to excellent safety behaviours.
AN ENVIABLE SAFETY RECORD The success of that philosophy is clear. Millcroft
has maintained a zero Riddor record across all our activities, which means we’ve had zero fatalities, zero major injuries, zero notifiable incidents and zero dangerous occurrences.
It’s a commitment to safety that has been recognised at the highest level. We have recently been awarded our seventh consecutive RoSPA Gold Medal for health and safety best practice, recognising our consistent achievements in helping staff, contractors and clients get home safely at the end of every working day.
The assessment criteria for the RoSPA gold medal is extremely strict. It is only awarded to organisations that have achieved RoSPA’s exacting ‘Gold’ standard for at least five consecutive years and this was the seventh consecutive year for us. It’s testament to the hard work and conscientious approach of the whole Millcroft team and the success of our safety culture.
Our goal is to pass that safety culture on to the delivery partners we work with on site and, indeed, our success in promoting health & safety best practice to others was one of the measures of success used by RoSPA.
DESIGNING SAFETY AT HEIGHT INTO PROJECTS While some scaffolding companies simply answer the
client’s brief with their design and quote, at Millcroft we have always approached every project by asking how we can improve a conventional solution with innovative thinking and design know-how.
We prefer to work collaboratively with the client from the very earliest stages of the job for this reason, enabling us to understand where the challenges will be for their site team and what the mission critical access requirements will be. This helps us build a better understanding of the key health and safety hazards involved.
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This early engagement approach enables us to address health and safety challenges from the initial design process onwards. We use 3D design software and modelling programs to understand how our proposed plans will perform on site. For example, if the site is in an exposed location, analysis of wind data plays an essential role in ensuring safety at height both during erection of the scaffold and throughout the project period. These considerations include the design of the scaffold, the materials used, any wrapping of the structure and the sequencing of the scaffold build, which are all calculated to minimise risk while fulfilling the requirements of the project. The same methodical approach to health and safety is built into the sequencing for striking the scaffold too.
Alongside health and safety considerations for our own team and other contractors on site, our design process also takes into account safety responsibilities for the general public. If the building is to remain operational during a refurbishment, we also factor in safety considerations for the occupier. This includes understanding the access requirements in and around the building, means of escape, structural loading and the materials used. Following the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral last year, the importance of fire safety has been high on the agenda, alongside safety at height and accessibility.
TRAINING FOR SAFER SITES Safety at height in the scaffolding sector is not just
about excellence in scaffold design and close co- operation with the client; much of our unbroken safety record also lies in good safety behaviours on site and these are embedded in our company culture.
Ensuring that safe behaviours are part of our team’s every day routine involves much more than strict policies and a zero tolerance approach to policing best practice however; it also requires high quality and regular training. That’s why Millcroft took the decision to construct a purpose-built training centre at our Greenwich headquarters, where our health and safety team can deliver training to our own staff and to our clients.
Health and safety training at Millcroft is composed of both formal teaching to comply with legislative requirements for working at height and workshop sessions to reinforce learning and ensure that it’s kept up to date. This is further supported by our Toolbox Talks programme, which builds on dedicated training sessions as part of the working day. For us, it’s all about continuous learning and ensuring that good safety behaviours are second nature. In this way, colleagues support each other on site and maintain our safety principles.
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