SSE Contracting - BDC Magazine September 2012

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BUILDING DESIGN &

CONSTRUCTION

Goldhill Contracting Ltd has over 100 years combined management experience within the Strip Out, Office Demolition and Site Service Industry.

We pride ourselves on the quality of our service, providing a professional, skilled and experienced project team, from general operatives to site managers, support and office staff, who all contribute to ensure a contract runs smoothly and effectively from start to finish. ⌃ Free on site survey and competitive quotations tailored to client’s specification

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SEPTEMBER 2012 ISSUE 178

Client satisfaction is fundamental to our success and our wealth of experience and long term working relationships with our clients has earned us a respectable name in the industry.

SEPTEMBER 2012

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SSE CONTRACTING

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BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF QUALITY, SAFETY AND GOOD PLANNING

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Goldhill Contracting – the complete package

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

BUILT ON A FOUNDATION OF QUALITY, SAFETY AND GOOD PLANNING Operating from 55 regional offices and employing 3,500 experienced engineers and electricians nationwide, SSE Contracting can offer you local service and support, competitively.

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

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f you speak to any of the 4,000 people who work for SSE Contracting, it quickly becomes clear what makes the company tick. Its six core values — Safety, Service Efficiency, Sustainability, Excellence and Teamwork — are at the heart of all that the business and its employees do.

This has recently been recognised by RoSPA with the prestigious awards of a Gold Medal for the building services and an Order of Distinction for the electrical and instrumentation businesses, at least five years and eighteen years of Gold Awards respectively. This is major recognition of the effort in delivering what has to be a world class safety performance.

The mechanical and electrical contractor is a wholly owned subsidiary of SSE plc, a FTSE 30 company and one of the biggest energy suppliers in the country. Formed in 1992 when Southern Electricity was privatised, it was set up as a separate operation in the same way other regional electricity companies did with their contracting businesses.

Unlike them, SSE Contracting not only survived but prospered by organic growth and by acquisition to the point where, by turnover, it is now the second largest Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) contractor in the UK and, importantly, the most profitable.

The core of the offering is M&E contracting, high voltage, electrical and instrumentation, energy efficiency, fire and security. All encompass a complete service that runs from design through to installation, upgrades, both planned and reactive maintenance and facilities management. The business serves an equally broad spectrum of customers that covers

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health, education, defence, local authorities, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and other sectors.

Over 4,000 staff operate from fifty locations throughout the UK, organised into five regions, each with its own Regional Director. Each region has 8 to 9 businesses that operate as autonomous profit centres and the various locations may specialise on work for different sectors depending on the organisations in the area – so the business provides national coverage and local service. Other regional directors are responsible for specialist sectors and types of work, providing synergies in supporting national clients.

The Electrical and Instrumentation (E&I) activity, for example, is split into three businesses that cover North, West and South, the latter based in Southampton and largely servicing two local refineries. “At Fawley Refinery, we’ve had a term services

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING contract for at least fifteen years and a presence on site for nineteen years,” explains Daron Mullineaux, Managing Director. “We do the full spectrum, with people based on site from the E&I perspective, building services, data communications and HV teams.”

ROSPA ORDER OF DISTINCTION However varied and widespread the work, Health, Safety and Environment are at the core of all projects. SSE’s emphasis on this is demonstrated by SSE Contracting having won another RoSPA gold medal this year through clocking up five consecutive gold awards, while SSE Contracting E&I gained the Order of Distinction due to eighteen consecutive gold awards. Tim Millard, Regional Director of E&I and Railways, says: “The starting point is having a strong safety culture and then good safety performance should follow.”

SSE maintains KPIs like many companies and the safety management system records incident and accident statistics. Additionally, it deals seriously with road traffic accidents because, with over 1,000 vans on the road, getting teams to and from sites

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

CASE STUDY: Defence Infrastructure Organisation – PriDE

safely is hugely important. The intention is to develop SSE Contracting as an industry-leading example of SHE management.

As Group Operations Safety Manager Peter Vujanic explains, that’s involved a change of emphasis recently: “A big push over the last eighteen months has been to develop the leading KPIs so we can be more proactive and have indicators that forewarn of potential incidents. We have also been reviewing the authorisation and records processes to make the management system as robust as possible. There’s a lot more on-site engagement now to make everyone feel involved rather than the traditional instructional model of telling people what to do. We’re evolving to the next level, which is all about empowerment and making every individual feel at the heart of it.”

PriDE is a joint venture business between SSE Contracting and Interserve Defence that manages Defence Infrastructure Organisation’s South East Regional Prime Contract. It is responsible for estate management and construction services at almost 100 Ministry of Defence sites, encompassing around 6,000 buildings and facilities. These include some large and prestigious sites such as the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Horse Guards, St. James’ Palace and RAF Northolt.

The contract includes maintaining the functionality of assets through reactive and planned maintenance, mechanical and electrical services, building fabric, grounds, sports and catering facilities. A 24-hour help desk services over 50,000 reactive maintenance requests annually.

PriDE has also delivered many new works projects to improve and enhance aspects of the estate, realise cost-savings through implementing sustainable solutions and achieve government targets. These include: • a new treatment complex at the world renowned Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, including a state-of-the-art rehabilitation complex and an extensive upgrade to the electricity and gas infrastructure.

This was delivered two months ahead of schedule.

• transformation of a former IT centre at Worthy Down into a sustainable, state-of-the-art Defence Food Services Wing that reduces running and food disposal costs as well as enhancing the overall learning experience.

• rebuilding a combined senior and junior ranks mess kitchen at RAF High Wycombe with similar sustainable innovations.

APPROPRIATE ACTION Involvement and empowerment include recognising that people carrying out a task are often the best ones to ensure it’s done safely. Consequently, they’re

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING encouraged to escalate all incidents to their managers and directors within thirty minutes. This ensures the correct engagement at director level for appropriate action to be taken depending on severity. Any lessons learnt can be shared within the business.

There is, as Daron points out, a proper structure that ensures SHE matters are handled throughout every part of the organisation: “We have fifty businesses and each has a Local Safety Group, led and chaired by the local business manager with teams that will produce local risk reduction plans to address the key risks to their particular business.

Safety advisers within Peter’s team will support and provide professional safety advice on how they will achieve improved safety measures.”

Training and communication are the twin strategies on which good health and safety and environmental matters are often built and the former starts with new employees who get a full week of induction where safety is the largest element. After that, all supervisors are trained to CITB SMSTS

TRAINING AND COMMUNICATION ARE THE TWIN STRATEGIES ON WHICH GOOD HEALTH AND SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MATTERS ARE OFTEN BUILT www.bdcmagazine.co.uk

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

CASE STUDY: Hampshire County Council

qualification and everyone goes through a threeyear programme of statutory training that covers first aid, resuscitation, manual handling, asbestos awareness and other relevant topics.

The public sector is an important market for SSE Contracting and it has recently secured a five-year contract for the Hard Facilities Management business for Hampshire County Council's Western region.

The work encompasses the maintenance of all electrical and mechanical infrastructures, building fabric, catering equipment and other items such as swimming pool plant. A help desk and a full out of hours response service are provided. Properties include schools, residential care buildings, libraries, museums, countryside and community buildings, offices, traveller sites and leisure centres.

BACK TO WORK Communication is handled through various means.

“We have frequent ‘SHE Updates’, ‘Safety Alerts’ and ‘SHE In Action’ bulletins, in addition to a number of campaigns which include our New Year initiative,” recounts Daron. “The first day back at the start of a new year, we run a ‘Back to Work’ initiative to get people focused on being back in the work environment. We have regular briefings throughout the year and a complete schedule of SHE engagements where all managers, supervisors, directors and anybody responsible for people will visit sites and have an engaging conversation with staff and contractors rather than just giving orders.”

All employees, including agency staff and any sub-contractors, will have frequent Toolbox Talks and Site Engagements. Given the scale of SSE Contracting, this means these events will run into the thousands every month.

Each job will have a pre-prepared SHE Plan which is regularly reviewed and updated during the

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

progress of a project. Additionally, each employee will undertake an individual task risk assessment before commencing work.

Significant risks are also identified through local Risk Boards, which have come out of the SHE management system that’s been introduced over the last two to three years. Peter says: “Every local business has its own key risk board that highlights the top ten risks that part of the business faces. It gives a short summary of the control measures we’re taking and it’s real-time information.

“If an incident occurs elsewhere in the company related to a particular risk, the boards are updated all across the company to highlight it. The Local Safety Group takes ownership of the risk boards and a core of six to seven risks are business driven while the rest are locally driven. Many managers do their team debriefs right next to these risk boards.”

SAFETY FAMILY The emphasis on involvement and ownership has been reinforced by what Tim describes as ‘the largest safety initiative this company has embarked on in the last twenty years’. He says: “We’ve developed the Safety Family platform to really engage

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CASE STUDY: University of Warwick This was a fast track project to be completed over the ten weeks of the summer holidays in 2010.

SSE Contracting acted as principal contractor on the £3.5 million refurbishment of eight student accommodation blocks. It had over 100 staff on site to ensure completion and used pre-fabrication where possible to speed up installation and minimise waste.

Electrical works included full rewiring, LED emergency lighting, fire and data installation.

Building works comprised bathroom and kitchen refits, replacement windows and doors, full redecoration and final clean.

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with our teams and influence their personal behaviour. The whole SSE group is engaged in this so it affects over 20,000 people.”

Daron adds: “The Safety Family brand is encouraging a focus on personal safety behaviour, on looking after yourself, family, friends, colleagues at work and being your brother’s keeper. The ethos is that, if anyone sees something unsafe or somebody acting in an unsafe way, they would intervene and discuss with them the implications of their actions.

We’re encouraging everyone to take this process home to be part of their family life; it’s about

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people not hurting themselves in their gardens, doing DIY and other things.”

SSE is constantly looking at fresh ideas for engaging the workforce in the health, safety and environmental culture. It is currently ensuring its Local Safety Groups engage at the next level by empowering them to become leaders in the safety field locally. They will play a key role in taking ownership of local SHE issues and, with the support of the professional Safety Team, find solutions and proactively engage the safety management system.

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RoSPA: SSE CONTRACTING

EQUAL PARTS Peter says: “We try to generate genuine two way engagement. At all levels, we all have equal parts to play and we’re all part of the family. That’s what the family model is all about. The traditional behavioural safety model looks at behaviours, human error and resulting actions. The family model is more than just a behavioural safety system in that there’s a lot more focus on positive psychology, motivation, learning lessons and personal development.”

The Safety Family behavioural programme has only been introduced over the last six months and is seen as a three to five year cultural change. So SSE is in the process of distilling the feedback of everyone that’s taking part and drawing up sustainable improvement plans. Tim comments: “This is staying with us. It’s a massive commitment and actively driven by senior management to embrace the whole workforce. We have a number of values in the company and safety is branded the number one value.” www.ssecontracting.com Tel: 0118 9580100

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