AROUND one million acts of potentially unsafe behaviour take place on Jersey building sites annually, according to campaigners aiming to transform health-and-safety attitudes in the industry.
Using its new behavioural-safety-leadership programme, the Jersey Safety Council is looking to train all site workers in the Island, so that they become proactive in looking after each other rather than relying on supervisors and foremen.
Chairman Steve Taylor said that this would include changing attitudes so that workers pointed out hazards to each other, such as colleagues working unsafely at the top of a ladder, and that staff ensured sites were safe for others to work on once they had left.
According to the JSC, there are around 100 to 120 short-term injury-and-accident claims made by construction workers each year in Jersey, which they said meant that there were roughly around one million incidents of ‘at risk’ behaviours on site annually.
The figure was calculated using the Heinrich’s safety pyramid, which shows the correlation between the number of very minor incidents and those causing injury.
Mr Taylor said that a key part of the training was raising awareness of the workplace safety of colleagues.
‘The largest danger that we have on sites is people working at height. One of the most common situations we get is with scaffolds, when someone might have to temporarily remove a piece of the scaffold, for example the boards next to a wall, in order to do their job,’ he said.
‘The workers then forget to replace the boards when they are finished, and leave it in a hazardous state for the next people working there. The training is about making sure that people on site realise that they are responsible not only for their own safety, but also the safety of other workers.’
He added that workers were also being encouraged to approach and speak to colleagues if they felt they were in an unsafe situation.
‘This could be, for example, seeing someone working unsafely at the top of a ladder with a power drill in one hand, a piece of equipment in the other and not holding on properly,’ he said.
‘The training teaches people how to talk to the individual, by asking what’s the worst thing that could happen to them, what the consequences would be on them and their family, and what they should do differently to prevent an accident happening.
‘This is something that can be done by everyone on site, not just the supervisors and foreman, with the goal of having a site without harm and where everyone goes home safe at the end of the day.’
The behavioural-safety-leadership programme is being supported by seven of the largest contractors in the Island and has the backing of the Health and Safety Inspectorate.
Peter Lawrence, managing director of building firm Camerons, said that the programme would have a ‘fundamental effect’ on attitudes towards health, safety and wellbeing.
‘It gives our managers the empowerment and tools to raise standards across the industry and challenge attitudes in a non-confrontational way,’ he said.
Since the programme’s launch in September, 110 senior leaders from 36 companies have been taught, with 121 junior site managers, site supervisors and foremen currently receiving training.
More information about the scheme is available online at jsc.je.
