Category Archives: safety

PQQ Secrets: Listening to the voice of the customer

For PQQ responses to have chance of success they need to address the requirements and aspirations of the client and project.

They also need to differentiate from the competition. So when a client organisation presents on how to differentiate at bid stage, you should be on to a winner.

But of course it’s an ever iterative game, and you will need to be better than those who also hear the customers tips for bidding.

At last weeks CSkills Forum in Salford, Urban Vision Partnership presented what they look to as differentiators when marking and selecting PQQ’s, either as direct bids, as part of a consortia or within a supply chain. Urban Vision’s overall remit is to manage, protect, maintain and enhance development within the city.

Key Differentiating Factors:

– Creation of community benefit

– Workforce development

– Added value and innovation

– Environmental performance, eg 14001 and CO2 monitoring

– Health and Safety practices, eg 18001

– An IMS (Integrated Management System) approach to quality, sustainability and safety

How many of these can you honestly tick as being well established, or well in development, within your organisation, to articulate within bids?

Many of these have been part of the construction business improvement agenda for many years now, certainly since Egans Rethinking Construction back in 1998, whilst others are relatively new as Methods of Modern Construction Management.

Through fairsnape we can help with advice or support in these areas, in practice or in bid articulation. Why not have a conversation? You can follow and join me on twitter @fairsnape, subscribe to or share this blog post, or get in touch.

Asbestos in system buildings

Noted on the HSE website…

This Sector Information Minute provides inspectors with background information on the issue of potential asbestos fibre release in CLASP and other ‘system’ buildings built between 1945 and 1980.

This document is published under the Freedom of Information Act.

Read SIM 7/2007/04 [PDF 560KB]

Health and safety in public sector construction procurement

HSE have now published their study that looked at health and safety issues in public sector construction procurement.

The broad aim of the research was to provide an evidence-based assessment of how well the public sector in England, Scotland and Wales meets its health and safety obligations in the procurement of construction.

The conclusions, drawn from the evidence of the research, suggest at the broadest level that while some public sector clients performed reasonably well in terms of meeting their health and safety obligations during the procurement of construction, there is certainly more that could be done.

In terms of recommendations going forward, the evidence suggests that more needs to be done to embed current health and safety guidance among public sector clients. There is a sense, from the results, that ‘best practice’ is not as widely embedded as it perhaps could be.

What I find of interest is the studies comment on inetgrated working:

The majority of contractors believe that an integrated project team was used to deliver the project in question. This is a surprising finding given that the majority of the projects in question were procured using traditional procurement methods, and suggests that knowledge regarding integration of project teams may need refreshing for both the client and the contractor.

Read the full report

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Impact on Bad Practice

I was fortunate to participate in an interesting event with Elevate last week looking at the social and diversity issues within our industry – and focusing on the impact of bad practice, ie safety

There was reference to Life on Mars ( the TV cop show set in 1973) with comments that maybe we havent moved forward when you consider some of the images, photos and fines in the news recently relating to bad practice on sites.

The presentation from that event is available as a download pdf on the Events page

MCG chair John Spanswick says supervisors not doing their job on site

Construction site supervisors are not sure about their role in terms of health and safety, are not being held accountable and are not supervising their workforce, says John Spanswick

This was reported in Contract Journal blog yesterday 1st March following more dangerous play videos reaching YouTubes

Do you agree – or disagree?  Do site supervisors really know what is going on on their contracts?

Post your views here – or attend the Elevate Improvement Module on the 6th March where impact of poor safety will be discussed. Check the Events page listings.

(Further details on this event from Fleur.Evans@elevate-eastlancs.co.uk)

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HSE Construction Info-Net and CDM Events

Just received the CONSTRUCTION INFO-NET  from the HSE – if you haven’t signed up to this free email service it is well worth doing so.

The info-net report covers CDM 2007 UPDATE, CONFERENCES AND SEMINARS, (note this link for details of the CDM awareness seminars – one in the NW on the 20th March).

You can download the pdf from here .  HSE Construction Info-Net Feb 07


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How do we clean the chimney??

Death Wash

Is this your contract? organisation? or one of your suppliers? A well thought through method statement maybe – but how do we clean the chimney? Once again the impact of mobile phone cameras and ease of access to the website can affect the reputation of your business. And this is in the north west.

More information at the Building website

Impact of Bad Practice

Following on from the post here regarding the publishing of videos on You Tube covering unacceptable safety behaviour and pranks, Building reports that Morrisons have suspened NGBailey, one of the organisations identified in the videos, from their framework contract that covers 149 stores. View video

Ouch

More details here

For your information the Elevate improvement module will cover this issue – the impact on reputation of bad practice, be it safety, DDA access or quality – on 6th March 2007 – details on the Events page