24 November 2011

Costain has staged the first of what will become a regular series of ‘safety weeks’ on Crossrail’s Bond Street project.

The events are designed to keep site safety in the forefront of the workforce’s minds and help ensure that everyone goes home safely at the end of the day.

When complete later this decade, Crossrail will provide a route from Maidenhead in the west through twin-bore 21km tunnels under central London and out to the east, forking to Shenfield, near Brentwood in Essex and to Abbey Wood in southeast London.

At Bond Street, Costain, in a joint venture with Skanska, is constructing two large station boxes that will reach five levels below ground. 

Costain has been involved in similar safety weeks on Thameslink, the other major rail project underway to improve rail connections through London; there, one contractor took overall responsibility for each week-long event, said Bond Street Project Director, Isabel Coman.

The first Bond Street safety event was “very much a joined-up affair between us, Crossrail, the other contractors and the design team at Bond Street”, she said.

One highly successful component of the week involved site personnel sitting in the cabs of the large trucks and plant that are employed on site, allowing staff to understand the fields of view that the drivers have around their vehicles.

A day of manual handling training sought to tackle what remains one of the biggest causes of site-related illness, while another aspect of the week saw speakers present some of the latest safety products relevant to construction sites.

An actors’ group role-played various scenarios that allowed staff to correct their potentially unsafe behaviours, while briefings on empowerment helped personnel understand how they could raise safety-related concerns.

“It was a real first in terms of the Crossrail scheme,” said Isabel. “We will be having a ‘lessons learned’ session and we look forward to the next one in January.”

 

Ends