DESCRIPTION
A collaborative working approach adopted by Hanson Contracting, Raymond Brown and Dorset County Council has delivered exceptional, sustained safety performance on the county’s highways term service contract (HTSC).
A relationship between the partnership businesses had been established prior to the current Dorset HTSC Partnership which commenced in 2010, so a high level of openness, honesty and trust was already present between the partnership members.
At the start of the partnership, collaborative working was a relatively new and novel approach to managing a construction contract. Nowadays, the opportunities offered by a collaborative working are more widely recognised and major clients are structuring contracts to realise the improvement in performance the Dorset HTSC Partnership has delivered.
The collaborative working approach was adopted during the planning, implementation and review of all the various different types of work, from routine maintenance to major schemes. At the heart of the system was ensuring that safety issues formed a critical part of the design and planning for all the work undertaken.
With 5,000 different people engaged at different times and for different durations during the partnership, this collaborative working approach spanned all different levels of worker who were all closely involved in discussing and defining the safety standards expected throughout the project.
This was facilitated by all keys parties sharing an office, which enabled issues to be easily discussed as they emerged and commitment by all parties to an agreed way forward. The gangs were issued with ipads that enabled them to easily report near misses, good ideas or other safety issues. The management were able to feed back in monthly reports, the actions they had taken ‘You said – we did’ and share relevant safety information such as tool box talks.
BENEFITS
- Exceptional safety performance achieved over 6 years contract
- Over 1 million hours worked and 500K tonnes of asphalt supplied and laid without accident
- 5,000 employees and contractors employed kept safe
- Enhanced safety culture of all those involved
- Sharing and effective communication on all safety issues
- A more efficient and successful operation