11 January 2011

Costain’s continuing commitment to safety has been recognised by one of its projects winning a new national award in conjunction with designer Atkins.

Costain/Atkins on the A40 Penblewin to Slebech Park Improvement Scheme in Pembrokeshire, southwest Wales, took the Association for Project Safety’s (APS) first Project of the Year award.

Its judging panel considered that the A40 improvement project demonstrated good integration of safety and environmental considerations into the fundamentals of the project.

Monitoring, reporting and communicating systems were particularly marked out for praise, including public liaison. The Construction Environmental Management plan, which included good practice measures in the reuse of materials on-site, was also commented upon favourably.

“The judges were looking for evidence of Health and Safety risk management and how it gets moved on from the design stage and taken right through to construction and feedback,” explained A40 Project Manager, Mark Young. “We had much evidence of this but the primary source was the existence and management of the Hazard Log and our future intention to close it out and provide feed back.

“Through the Early Contractor Involvement stage we designed out as many of the hazards as we could with Atkins and our supply chain. As we progressed to site, residual hazards were all stated on the drawings; it was a good way of demonstrating an audit trail showing that risk management had been carried on through the various stages of the project and highlighting the required start point in the construction stage. Together with our internal SHE management systems and the application of other best practice this has been highly effective.”

The A40 project for the Welsh Assembly Government got underway in February 2009, with the aim of creating just under 5km of ‘2+1’ carriageway and 1.5km of side roads, together with a series of bridges, underpasses, drainage systems and water treatment ponds.

The project runs through the Eastern Cleddau Special Area of Conservation, which has necessitated making provision to protect local wildlife, including bats, otters and badgers. The route also borders the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

 

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