Managing health and safety

The Group Health and Safety Manager leads the function and reports directly to the Chief Executive. Managing corporate risk is a key issue and the Managing Director of each Regional Business Unit has operational responsibility.

Corporate risk assessment procedures were updated and a training programme was delivered to all Crest Nicholson risk assessors – a total of 204 people representing 35% of the workforce.

We use the British Standards Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (BS OHSAS) 18001, as our health and safety management framework, which is reviewed operationally every quarter.

We are continuing to grow our management of health and safety with a focus on embedding a safety culture through regular training and inspection.

Training

While training for people working on site is of fundamental importance, we also believe it is essential that senior managers are directly involved in the management of health and safety so this year we established Director Safety Tours. These allow operatives to discuss issues directly with senior management and they also serve to reinforce directors’ personal commitment to continuous performance improvement. Forty-one operational directors successfully completed the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health course ‘Safety for Senior Executives’.

During 2008, we established new procedures in response to the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007, including training for 141 managers. We also developed four new safety awareness courses for implementing during 2009 covering asbestos, confined spaces, excavations and construction transport.

Inspections

Site safety inspections are central to improving health and safety performance as the monitoring reports help site managers to focus their attention where it is most needed. In 2008 NHBC completed 578 site safety inspections with our site managers, which represents an average of 10 inspections per active site. This is very close to our target of averaging one inspection per month for each active site, but the year saw considerable operational pressure and site re-organisation and rescheduling.

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See how we performed this year.