Improving health & safety standards in Partnership for Yorkshire (P4Y)

Under Yorkshire Water’s AMP7 Capital Framework, Partnership for Yorkshire (P4Y) Enterprise was set up. The P4Y Enterprise purpose is to promote collaborative working on capital delivery projects through matching skills with the project need through a ‘best athlete’ approach. P4Y consists of 25 delivery partners and in joint venture, Costain and were appointed to manage the H&S Assurance Consultancy Framework within the Enterprise.

The Costain-Arup JV developed a three-part strategy for H&S Assurance. For the Capital Delivery Projects, we created a H&S Assurance Calendar to effectively plan and co-ordinate a large-scale audit and inspection schedule. The second part of the strategy was to synchronise activity to ensure a smooth transition from the end of AMP6 into AMP7. For example, with new delivery partners, we commenced onboarding reviews to gather information and provide constructive advice.

The final element was communication. We set up working groups with representatives from the delivery partners to identify issues and resolve them quickly with improvements to processes quickly rolled . The most recent focussed on improving the planning and delivery of confined space working. As a result of the Costain-Arup JV leading the discussions, a Confined Space Charter campaign was launched at a P4Y townhall event with the whole Enterprise engaged.

Key activities that had the biggest impact:

Reviewing behavioural safety

Yorkshire Water needed to understand if behavioural safety was being utilised as part of H&S training and to review the maturity of the behavioural safety programmes currently being used. Linked to this was the need to understand how each Delivery Partner monitors and measures H&S performance of their subcontractors for a holistic view of the supply chain.

Onboarding the supply chain

We undertook review , looking at behaviours, procedures and the onboarding of the supply chain. A major part of the review involved improving culture and behaviour towards compliance and health and safety. Upon completion, each partner was given a full system ‘health check’ report which allowed them make improvements, where necessary. In addition, the Client received a full capability profile for each partner.

“The on-boarding engagement reviews are a brilliant exercise for partners to ensure continuous improvement within their organisations”.

Sean Mannion – SHE Director, Ward & Burke (a P4Y delivery partner)

Subcontractor appointments

Through surveys, workshops and , we looked at each Delivery Partner’s subcontractor appointment process and arrangements for managing their respective supply chains. A H&S action log was developed to make sure that all the recommendations from the reviews were allocated, tracked and addressed.

Audit & inspection

We recognised the importance of assigning an overall grading based upon our findings from audits and inspections. The development and introduction of a grading system has been successful with the P4Y Enterprise now using this language summarising performance. Using the grading system allows us to compare performance much more easily and when this is combined with a red, amber and green (RAG) status it becomes an extremely powerful visualisation on Power BI reports.

Close collaboration with YW has undoubtedly helped develop a culture where H&S successes are celebrated across the frameworks. ‘Good practices’ are regularly identified through the audits, inspections and procedural reviews that we carry out on a routine basis and are then fed into the shared log.