Health & safety

Together we eliminate harm

The health and safety of our teams and everyone who works with us is at the heart of everything we do.

Our goal is to eliminate harm across our business and change the way we manage safety, health and environmental areas through innovation, the use of technology and by thinking differently.

We achieve this through a centrally governed, ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 certified Integrated Safety, Health and Environmental Management System, applied consistently across our projects and supply chain, and continuously improved through data, assurance and learning. 

It provides a framework for successfully managing risks, preventing injury and ill heath, and creating a safe working environment whilst protecting and enhancing the natural environment in balance with socio-economic needs.  

Leadership

Leadership at Costain goes beyond commitment; it is defined by accountability and action.

Our leaders are accountable for ensuring risks are effectively managed, resources are in place and our standards are consistently applied across all projects and partners.

By engaging directly with our workforce and supply chain during engagement visits and twice-yearly leadership Impact Days, where the whole company and our supply chain takes time to focus on a particular issue, we make informed decisions to drive consistent, high-quality Safety, Health and Environmental performance across all our operations.

Support and developing skills

Our Cultural Behavioural Management programme is based on the principles of behavioural science, which explores the link between people’s behaviour, their workplace and the local environment. It’s a leadership approach which creates environments that increase and promote desired behaviours and is a key framework for implementing positive change.

The Costain SHE Academy runs alongside the Graduate Scheme and includes apprentices and trainees from the safety, health and environment professions. The aim is to develop the SHE professionals of the future.

Performance

We use a combination of leading and lagging indicators to understand risk and drive improvement.

• Leading indicators focus on risk control effectiveness, leadership engagement and workforce involvement.
• Lagging indicators (AFR, LTIR and HPE) provide confirmation of the outcomes.

Our Leading Indicator approach has seen us reduce injuries to industry-leading levels and maintain that performance. Leading indicators include:

• Behaviour - effective safety, health and environmental workforce engagement ratios, supporting reporting and workforce involvement.
• Assurance –indicators support effective monitoring and assurance at every stage of a contract level.
• Incidents – investigation quality measure to learn from and improve our understanding of events.
• Leadership – ensuring senior management remain in touch with front line operational issues.
• Competence - ensuring our teams have the right training for their roles.

We use digital tools and data analytics to:

• Capture real-time safety, health and environmental data.
• Identify trends and emerging risks.
• Support consistent reporting across our projects.