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Wilson Bowden plc is the parent of a group of companies engaged in residential and commercial property development throughout most areas of the United Kingdom. One of these companies is David Wilson Homes Limited which operates in almost 40 counties across England, Wales and Scotland. It works across all sectors of the housing market, with a balanced spread of product ranging from one bedroom apartments to six bedroom houses.
Wilson Bowden Developments is the group’s commercial property development business focused on retail, leisure, office, industrial and mixed use schemes. Over the past five years the commercial business has developed residential apartment expertise enabling the Wilson Bowden Group to offer comprehensive retail, leisure, office and residential development capability. This ability under one roof distinguishes the business from many in the development sector and enables it to deliver comprehensive urban regeneration which has for some time now been an important part of the company’s activities.
A number of fundamental changes on how Wilson Bowden Plc managed health and safety were successfully introduced in 2004. The group established a totally integrated internal health and safety department as the problems associated with the use of external safety consultants justified the introduction of a dedicated team of safety professionals. The role of the safety department was expanded to perform safety inspections on David Wilson Homes and Wilson Bowden Developments sites and evaluating to a consistent standard. All operating business units are now integrating health and safety into the planning and preparation phases of the projects. This has produced a significant improvement in the reduction of accidents and enforcement notices served on the business by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Overall Wilson Bowden plc made a reduction in reportable accidents to the HSE of 6.2 per cent last year. Wilson Bowden Developments worked hard to reduce its reportable accidents by 37.5 per cent, while David Wilson Homes saw a reduction in reportable accidents by 1.5 per cent which is very creditable considering the 20 per cent increase in build volume during 2004. The company achieved a 50 per cent reduction in reportable dangerous occurrences to the HSE and a 30.76 per cent reduction in reportable accidents to the HSE, relating to falls from heights. This was achieved with a more consistent approach to fall prevention and protection measures introduced. The safety department also identified this as a principal risk on site inspections, hence the reduction.
One of the most impressive achievements of 2004 was that the company’s sites did not receive any enforcement notices despite having 56 visits by the HSE. This clearly demonstrates the benefit of adopting a new approach to health and safety when compared to 2003 when David Wilson Homes received 16 notices and Wilson Bowden Developments two notices, after 46 visits to its operations.
Andrew Locker was appointed as group director of health and safety in April 2004. He discusses the practises the company implemented to improve their safety record: “As a department we focused on the four principle risks associated with construction sites, and those were traffic management, falls from height, plant and machinery and public protection. In 2004 those four principle risks were highlighted on a major poster campaign, which were placed above the urinals so they read them in the toilet block. Also, focusing on those four principle risks the safety department now work to a marking criteria which is another great innovation that we’ve introduced within the business. It’s what we call a PDA, a personal digital assistance monitor. The health and safety inspection scores are entered into the PDA and can be printed via infra-red connection. With this you can print your safety report off on the site and it goes straight through to the mainframe AS400 portal database. It also goes to the relevant construction director to rectify any principle risk that’s identified on site. This is leading edge innovation.
“In addition we also have a plc health and safety steering group. The company now rewards innovation. Every quarter we have nominations for the person who’s gone that little bit further and we give them £1000 reward for any innovation that’s been introduced within the regional structure and at site level as well. If a site manager or someone in the region comes up with a safety idea which gives value and benefit to the business, it’s introduced within the company. We also have quarterly regional awards of £250 for improving health and safety standards as well.”
The company’s improvement in health and safety was recognised nationally on two occasions in 2004. In May, David Wilson Homes received the silver award from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents for outstanding achievements regarding health and safety management, and in September David Wilson Homes was a finalist at the Quality Building Awards ceremony in London.
Andrew concludes with his plans for the future with regards to health and safety: “I set some objectives for 2005 that are going in our corporate social responsibility report which we’re putting a lot of time and effort into. The first objective is a ten per cent reduction in reportable accidents to the HSE across the plc business. I set a target of a five per cent reduction in reportable accidents to the HSE relating to slips, trips and falls, which is our biggest category. We’ve also inititiated a poster campaign for that as well.
“Environmental performance has now been integrated into an entire health and safety monitoring system. In addition, sites have to achieve a score of 72 to get legal compliance for health and safety inspections. We set this as a benchmark in 2004. All regions and divisions achieved above this with the average score across the business at 78.21, which is much higher than legal compliance.”
VTR
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