Safety Partnering with Contractors

Property & Facilities Management (PFM)- Shared Services employ a myriad of contractors to undertake all forms of facilities work in all ESB commercial premises. Everything from complex construction, electrical and mechanical works to the more mundane pest control and window cleaning. Ever stringent and evolving safety legislation and growing customer requirements have placed increasing demands on the capabilities of contractors.

To assist contractors in delivering safety standards that meet ESB's high standards PFM have introduced a partnership approach to its relationship with its major contractors.

Pat Boyle Manager of PFM told EM, "We have undertaken major safety awareness training and workshops with our own staff over the past few years and recent communications surveys have shown that as a result of this. Our hugely proactive and dedicated safety committee and staff are fully committed to our safety culture and ethos. However to date, for contractors, we have relied solely on audits and safety documentation to measure our contractors safety commitment.

"We now feel it is time to go beyond this superficial level and engage in detail with our contractors regarding their safety culture, their safety training programmes and communications processes. This, however is not just about the contractors, it is a two way process. We also want to learn from them and identify where we can improve our practices to help us both work more safely."

In initiating this new approach PFM's Safety Manager, Norman Conway, organised a workshop in the Mont Clare Hotel on the 25th May. The workshop was attended by major contractors employed in the Head Office estate and by senior PFM Managers. Recent developments in Safety Legislation and ESB's rigorous safety reporting system were discussed.

The session finished with a frank question and answer session with contractors raising their obvious concerns that reporting of incidents and near misses might affect the possibility of future work. Contractors were advised that Shared Services had a totally open policy on the reporting of near misses and that ESB would be surprised if there were no near misses reported.

Norman Conway insisted that he would expect that near misses existed and a positive view would be taken of contractors who showed they were proactive in safety reporting and in the investigation and follow up of near misses and incidents.

Two further workshops are planned for large contractors working on ESB's Commercial properties in greater Dublin and around the country. These will be followed up with individual one to one partnership meetings with contractors in the autumn and winter.

ESB SHARED SERVICES