Health, safety and wellbeing – success is no accident

Success is no accident

Every day, we safely maintain, construct and deliver essential services to millions of customers across the UK. We recognise that we have a duty of care to employees, our clients and members of the public. We are committed to ensuring that hearts and minds are engaged to achieve our key objective ‘to have zero accidents, incidents or ill health as a result of our activities’.

‘Success is no accident’ is our safety ethos and is core to everything that we do.  We continuously learn from any accidents or injuries when they occur. We encourage our workforce never to be worried about challenging each other about safety matters, or reporting incidents. 

We have four areas of focus;

  • Ensuring a ‘safety first’, open and just culture
  • Encouraging co-operation to innovate and improve
  • Building competence to ensure a sustainable workforce
  • Maintaining our key focus on risk awareness, reduction and control

We have an integrated approach to Health, Safety, Environment and Quality. This complies with internationally recognised standards, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001.  Our OHSAS18001 certified Management System ensures we have policies, guidance and support available to all personnel working on our behalf. 

We are able to carry out works under the Construction Design and Management Regulations 2015 (CDM), at both Principal Designer and Principal Contractor level. 

We are members of Utility Strike Avoidance Group (USAG) and have signed up to their charter to ensure safety whilst conducting work in the vicinity of underground utility assets.

Proactively preventing accidents

We all have a moral obligation to each other to identify the unsafe acts and unsafe conditions which can lead to accidents and to act to prevent them wherever we can. Our helpline is available to all personnel 24/7 to provide advice, report hazards and incidents and raise any ideas for improvement. We use dynamic on-line technologies to enable our resources to report hazards or ideas which will enhance safety. This means instant feedback is given to the relevant management team and is tracked to closure by our Compliance Team. With rewards for those who identify and resolve the hazards within our business, there is never a shortage of reporting and ideas.

Wellbeing and mental health awareness

Our employees really are the centre of everything we do;  we recognise the importance of ensuring their wellbeing in the workplace.  That’s why we have established a wide number of proactive steps, programmes and events to engage them.  These include;

  • Employee benefits package including PERKS, access to help and support phone lines
  • Occupational health
  • Ongoing monitoring of work performance by both line managers and independent quality assessors, so that we know when someone might need more support or guidance
  • Investment in training programmes to develop employees
  • Regular employee engagement activities
  • Fantastic support for local charities where we can make a difference 
  • Rolling out a programme to train mental health champions across the business

We are supporters of the Mates in Mind charity, specifically aimed at those working in the construction industry. This provides our personnel with access to specialist help and support. 

Supply chain management

We work with a huge range of suppliers, sub-contractors and specialists – recognising that everyone has a crucial part to play in making sure we deliver services to clients in a safe and competent manner.  Wherever possible, we treat our supply chain in the same manner as direct labour; using the same compliant processes and IT systems.   Our Supply Chain team pre-vet all third parties working on our behalf and our Compliance Team carry out daily reviews of quality standards. 

We are always looking to put the Plus in Network Plus, so if you are a supplier or a specialist service provider and you want to work with our company, please get in touch and we will arrange to discuss how our companies can collaborate and work together.