Suir Engineering recently won the Imtech Group Safety Award 2017. Paul Kavanagh, Group CEO, announced the winner at the Annual Imtech Conference last week. Each business was asked to nominate a project or team that had done something to improve HSE in the Business. The criteria stated that the winning entry must be able to demonstrate the following:

Success – e.g. improvement in performance in terms of culture, better engagement, positive feedback from stakeholders, KPI improvement, saving of time or money, fewer injuries etc.
A Better Experience – for employees or sub-contractors or others.
Culture and behaviours – clear evidence of strong HSE cultures and behaviours such as HSE visibility, engagement with people, an open and transparent culture, workplaces that look and feel like Imtech workplaces, delivery of required standards, going over and above, consistently good performance.
An innovative idea – especially one that has been shared widely, inside the Business Unit or with other Businesses in the Group.

Suir’s entry came from the BMS team who developed a safety system for the safe use of hand held power tools, following a number of near misses and incidents on site. Based on these incidents, the schedule pressures and the inherent dangers associated with the number of site personnel Suir Engineering had at any one time (peaking at 170 direct employees plus subcontractors) Suir Engineering site and safety management developed a dedicated system to minimise the associated risks. This system involved the following steps:

SOP’s for every plant and equipment that Suir employees were using on the site ranging from MEWPs, harnesses, drills, grinders, bench drills to knifes and hydraulic cable cutters.
Implementation of the SOPs through twice weekly, hour long, on-site training sessions carried out by each Supervisor and Safety showing their crews how to use each piece of equipment, Including the correct use and associated hazards.
Following each demonstration by supervision, each Suir employee was asked to demonstrate how to use the piece of equipment, the correct PPE to be worn and identify the hazards.
Assessment by Supervision and Safety would then verify safe appropriate use.
Special attention was given to general operatives and apprentices to ensure full understanding of operation and maintaining the plant in addition to tool safety. Given this may have been the first time some of these operatives may have used these devices, it was critical that the operational requirements and hazards were fully understood.

Well done to everyone that was involved in the safety submission and for their dedication in continually seeking out ways to improve our safety standards. In particular a special thanks must go to Dora Kinsella (Safety Officer), Eimear Kneafsey (Safety Officer), Sinead Dowd (Safety Officer), Mark Duffy (Project Manager) and Rob McGauley (Supervisor) and all of the team in BMS.