The Olympic Delivery Authority is playing a major role in the building of London’s 2012 Olympic Games venue. The Olympic Delivery Authority has always had the safety of workers as the utmost important factor during such a large project and has assured us that London will be no exception.
What’s Being Said?
In an interview at the launch of this project the Chief Executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority, David Higgins, stated ensuring worker safety was their number one priority. Over 5,000 construction workers took part in the building of this venue for the 2012 Olympics and Paraolympics. Higgins further stated that their dedication to safety was about promoting overall good health among the workers, not just reducing risk and injury.
CLM (the consortium made up of CH2M Hill, Laing O Rourke and Mace) , who partnered with Olympic Delivery Authority to manage this project also pledged to uphold the Olympic Delivery Authority high standards of safety. The Chief Executive of CLM, Ron Brooks, stated that he fully felt it was their job to protect and promote the health and well being of all workers involved in this project. He, like Higgins, reassured everyone that they understood planning was vital and that health and safety were at the very core of it. The Olympic Delivery Authority health and safety standard was released with a goal of minimising the risks for all construction workers and making the London 2012 Games safer and healthier by design.
What’s Being Done?
According to the Olympic Delivery Authority health and safety standard, everyone involved has pledged to take part in all of the following:
- First and foremost, the goal is to minimise accidents; no more than one incident per million man hours worked.
- Public health and safety performance reports.
- Any and all plans necessary to the health and safety of workers will be required to be put into place before any stage of work can begin.
- All on site construction workers will have limitless access to regular health checks- those found to have any health condition will be properly advised on how to proceed and when to safely return to work.
- Any unsafe practices or unhealthy work conditions will not be tolerated.
- It will be mandatory for all designers assisting with the venue to provide concrete details as to how their plans have taken into account the health and safety of all workers. All plans must reduce or completely eliminate the risk of accidents.
Finally, and most importantly, the Olympic Delivery Authority believes that a well trained and informed workforce is the key to minimising accidents on the job. Every construction worker on the site will be required to have a CSCS card. Requiring workers to take and pass a CSCS health, safety & environment test ensures that they are informed ahead of time on basic health and safety procedures.
Every worker being in possession of a CSCS card was so important that they even worked with colleagues in the LDA to come up with effective ways of having each employee take the Health Safety Test before the project was in full force.
A CSCS card not only shows that a worker has received a certification that validates their skills, it also ensures that every worker on the site has sufficient health and safety knowledge to keep themselves and others as safe as possible.