Esther’s previous articles presented these challenge from both the client and contractors’ perspective, including an in-depth case study about Global Construction’s innovative approach to health & safety strategy.
Here she summarizes the key lessons to be learnt from our analysis of health & safety during an economic downturn, as well as provide an overview of some of the strategies and principles that can lead to an effective health & safety culture.
Turning adversity into advantage
As has been highlighted throughout this series, the development of an effective safety culture should be a board level concern, particularly for organizations operating in high-risk industries such as the wind sector.
But during difficult economic times, when organizations are looking for ways to cut costs, health and safety often becomes a casualty. During these periods, it becomes easier to allow safety management systems to be paper-based exercises without attending adequately to what is actually happening in practice.
However, as the contributors to these articles demonstrate, there are organizations - among both clients and contractors - who regard hard times like these as an opportunity to increase the focus on health and safety.
For clients this means taking a stronger lead with contractors to ensure a safety standard that both safeguards workers and protects their own safety reputation. For contractors this means promoting to potential clients what they are doing to ensure continuous safety improvement. In this way, the contractor can use health & safety as a means of differentiating itself from the competition, and gaining advantage.
Taking responsibility
On most wind farm sites, multiple contractors with varying protocols and cultures are expected to work together, and so it is not always immediately obvious who is responsible for health & safety.
In this series we have clarified that by law it is the principal contractor who should exercise control over its own employees and other contractors working on site. As David MacDonald, Civil Engineering Director of Global Construction pointed out, when it comes to upholding health & safety standards, the ‘strong voice’ should ultimately come from his organization as the project’s principal contractor.
This strong voice should also be directed towards the client on points of safety, particularly if the principal contractor believes pressure is being put on them to reduce costs to the detriment of their health & safety program. Whatever the economic prognosis, achieving profitability at the expense of health & safety is clearly unacceptable.
How successful the principal contractor is at upholding safety standards depends on many factors, but ultimately it comes down to the strength of their relationships with the companies they work with. If the principal contractor has appointed their own sub contractors, then they can exert their influence through the supply chain. But where contractors are appointed directly by the client, it can be more of a challenge.
The client must also show leadership by clearly communicating their own organisation’s values and standards of behaviour, as well as encouraging transparency between all parties involved on site.
We have seen for example how organizations such as Scottishpower Renewables have developed seminar programs where contractors can share their experience and best practice. Or where cultural safety programmes have been developed for managers and supervisors to encourage a culture of safety leadership. This hands on approach from the client, and the willingness to provide greater resource and support, is an important ingredient to forging a more homogenous safety culture across all parties.
Fostering a culture of intervention
An important theme running throughout this series, is the need for open, honest relationships between the principal contractor, subcontractors, and client. From this one of the principal foundations of an effective safety culture can be built - a culture of intervention, where workers and managers can freely discuss and challenge unsafe acts.
Ultimately improving health & safety comes from simple changes in behavior, rather than sweeping legislative change. As we have discussed, workers who feel empowered to identify unsafe acts, intervene or report to their superiors, provide their organization with its first and most effective line of defense. But for this to happen, barriers must be broken down between workers and their managers. As has been discussed, creating an open forum where ‘disruptive’ behaviors can be challenged, unsafe acts identified, and best practice shared, is invaluable.
Final thought
Despite the pressures imposed by an economic downturn, the wind energy sector has a real opportunity to set a high standard of safety practice that will recognized and respected across the entire energy sector.
The wind industry’s strength is it is still a relatively young sector, and as such has the opportunity to build an effective and lasting safety culture from the ground up. In many ways this is an easier process than trying to improve an existing system that is failing.
But there are many challenges ahead. The size, complexity and global nature of the wind energy sector presents significant barriers to developing a standardized safety culture. Also, the relatively fast moving nature of the industry, where wind farms are built and installed in a matter of months, leaves little time to foster strong relationships that lead to a working safety culture.
However, through a process of continuous improvement built on a foundation of openness, responsibility and intervention, as well as the determination of forward thinking organizations willing to invest in health & safety, and who recognize its value, the wind industry has the potential to become one of safest energy sectors on the planet.
Editor's note: This article was kindly provided by Esther Walker, Co-founder and Director of Forum Interactive. Dr Walker is a social scientist, facilitator and gestalt therapist. She specializes in the influence of work culture on the way individuals think and behave and the interventions which support safe and healthy work practices.
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