Health, Safety & Wellbeing
Safe by culture, not simply by compliance
At East West Connect, health and safety is not owned by one department or added to a project after the work has been planned. It is a shared responsibility across our business, from our Directors and operational managers through to supervisors, engineers, apprentices and supply-chain partners.
The people who plan and deliver our work are responsible for managing the risks associated with it, supported by competent Health & Safety professionals who provide specialist advice, challenge and assurance. This is embedded within our Integrated Management System (IMS) and the way we plan, manage, monitor and improve our contracts and projects.
We want our people to feel able to speak openly, challenge something that does not look right and stop and reassess work when circumstances change. Good safety performance comes from competent people making good decisions, supported by effective systems and visible leadership.
Plan well. Understand the risk. Deliver safely.
Good health and safety starts before anybody reaches the workface.
We use risk assessment, construction phase planning, safe systems of work and project-specific controls to understand how work can be delivered safely. But documentation alone does not make an activity safe. What matters is whether the controls are appropriate, understood and applied where the work takes place.
Our approach brings together:
- effective planning and risk assessment;
- competent people with clear roles and responsibilities;
- practical RAMS and safe systems of work;
- proportionate supervision;
- site inspections and management engagement;
- effective contractor and supply-chain management;
- monitoring, audit and corrective action; and
- learning from incidents, near misses, observations and good practice.
This aligns particularly well with the company’s strategic H&S work, which prioritises risk assessment and RAMS reform, operational assurance, inspection and effective action management.
Safety starts with the way we lead
Our Health & Safety and ESG functions have distinct specialist responsibilities while working together as part of our wider approach to governance and assurance.
Our Head of Health & Safety leads our occupational health and safety framework and ISO 45001 arrangements, providing professional leadership, technical assurance and practical support to operational teams.
Our Head of ESG leads our quality, environmental and wider governance framework, including ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 and the integration of our management systems.
Together, these functions support our Directors and operational management teams, without replacing their accountability for safe delivery. This reflects the responsibilities established within our current compliance structure.
It gives us an important balance: operational ownership supported by competent professional advice, challenge and assurance.
The right people, with the right competence
Competence is more than holding a qualification or training card.
We consider the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours needed for people to perform their roles safely and effectively. Industry card schemes and qualifications provide important evidence, but we supplement them through practical experience, supervision, assessment and continued development.
Our approach reflects the increased focus on individual competence and organisational capability across the built environment, including the requirements introduced through the Building Safety Act and associated regulatory changes. Our organisational competence work specifically adopts skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours as its competence model and recognises that card schemes alone do not demonstrate competence.
We look beyond the paperwork
Our assurance processes help us understand whether our controls are working in practice.
Through inspections, audits, management reviews and action monitoring, we use information from across our projects and maintenance activities to identify issues, share learning and improve.
If something falls short of the standard we expect, simply closing an action is not enough. We want to understand why it happened, make the appropriate improvement and check that the improvement is effective.
That emphasis on effectiveness rather than simply producing more documentation is also explicit in our H&S strategic direction.
An open culture makes us safer
We encourage people to raise concerns, identify hazards and report near misses before they become incidents.
A positive safety culture depends on people knowing they will be listened to and that raising an issue will lead to action. We therefore combine open reporting and workforce engagement with clear accountability for behaviours and standards.
We would rather identify a weakness, learn from it and improve than allow it to become tomorrow’s incident.
Two-way communication, consultation and workforce feedback are specifically identified within our H&S strategic work as important parts of strengthening safety culture.
Protecting health as well as safety
Our responsibility extends beyond preventing physical injury.
We want our workplaces to protect people’s physical health, mental wellbeing and long-term occupational health. We consider health risks when work is designed and planned, provide appropriate health surveillance where required and ensure colleagues can access support when they need it.
Our wellbeing programme provides confidential 24/7 support, counselling and health resources, alongside initiatives that encourage physical wellbeing, stronger connections and a positive working environment.
Just as importantly, we want managers and colleagues to recognise when somebody may need support and create an environment where asking for help is normal.
Safety, quality and sustainability work together
We do not see health and safety, quality, environmental performance and responsible business as competing priorities. They are interconnected.
- Good planning improves safety.
- Competent people improve quality.
- Better logistics can reduce risk, waste and disruption.
- Better information supports safer decisions.
- Learning makes the whole organisation stronger.
Our IMS provides the framework through which these disciplines come together. Our audit planning similarly considers H&S, quality, competence, information security, supply-chain controls and IMS effectiveness as connected areas of business assurance.
Our commitment
Every person should go home safe and well at the end of their working day.
We will continue to challenge ourselves, listen to our workforce and clients, invest in competence and improve the way we manage risk.
Having a policy, procedure or certificate does not, by itself, demonstrate that we are safe.
Our standard is demonstrated by what happens every day, on every site, on every contract and in every decision we make.