SECTOR F OCUS
Collen Construction’s innovative safety programmes encourage full worker engagement and the taking of greater personal responsibility. JOE O’DWYER, Health & Safety Manager, Collen, outlines how the contractor’s “Creating Safer Sites” programme fits with furthering its worker safety philosophy.
Joe O’Dwyer, Health & Safety Manager, Collen.
COLLEN CONSTR UC TION – C R E AT IN G C S A F E R S IT E S ollen is an eighth-generation, family-owned business founded in 1810 that delivers complex projects in Ireland and Europe. We currently employ 370 people who are our greatest assets. In line with our ongoing growth plans for this team, we constantly work to enhance our robust safety ethos. On 17 September 2021, Collen launched our “Creating Safer Sites” programme at Croke Park. This event brought together Collen’s senior leadership teams from Ireland, Sweden and Germany, who were deeply engaged in thought-provoking and, at times, confronting conversations on what it will take to create the step change in safety and wellbeing that Collen is committed to and furthering the core objective of the new “Collen Way”, that people go home every day feeling in better shape for having worked at Collen.
BACKGROUND
Collen operates a robust occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS), which was certified to ISO 45001 in April 2018. The company has been accredited with an “A” rating from Safe-T-Cert for the past nine consecutive years. An OHSMS translates the organisation’s intentions to prevent incidents in a systematic and ongoing set of processes that reinforces a commitment to proactively improving
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occupational health and safety (OHS) performance. Collen is committed to constantly strive for safety innovation and improvement. This led us to develop the Creating Safer Sites programme, a culture change programme designed to create a step-change in safety and wellbeing that is sustainable over time.
WHERE COLLEN WANTS TO BE
The core objective of Creating Safer Sites is to establish an environment where all people on sites go home safe every day and feel in better shape for having worked at Collen. To achieve this objective, Collen is creating a mindset for safety that is positive and proactive, ensures that there is no gap in our safety performance, embeds our safety values and ensures that they are visibly lived across the organisation. Collen also wants to develop a culture where all management and the workforce are committed to the same safety vision of everyone going home safely every day.
HOW IT WILL WORK
Over the next 12 months, the Creating Safer Sites programme will engage Collen worker, subcontractor and supply chain site teams in a transformational process through a series of engagement and skills workshops for all levels of leadership. Collen will provide on-site support to embed new practices, individual leadership development of senior leaders, and create a body of internal field coaches to ensure the sustainability of the intended changes. There are three critical elements of the transformational process: • Transform thinking – Transform the way people think about safety • Transform leaders – Support teams and individuals in creating and sustaining a positive safety culture and mindset • Transform capabilities – Develop the skills and abilities necessary to support and spread new actions. These changes will be achieved by developing leadership teams, conducting
