On 18 April 2017, organisations from across the UK infrastructure sector will take part in a national ‘Stop. Make a Change’ event with sites, offices and production facilities putting work on hold to focus on how we can work together to build a healthier, safer industry.

As part of this event, organisations have agreed to put in place a series of commitments that they will implement within their business over the coming year. To ensure that the industry has a common focus on some of the key health challenges that it faces, a panel of industry leaders have identified four key areas for these commitments. They are fatigue, mental health, respiratory health and plant safety.

Barhale supports ‘Stop. Make a Change’ 2017 and are pleased to make the following commitments:

 Fatigue

We will develop and implement a fatigue monitoring programme to identify personnel who are at highest risk of being fatigued to enable Line Managers to implement mitigating measures and reduce individual exposures.

Mental Health

We commit to appointing a health and wellbeing professional to raise awareness and identify mental health issues with our employees and supply chain partners. We will commit to supporting people with mental health issues by providing voluntary Mental Health First Aiders.

Respiratory Health

We will work with designers to eliminate, where possible, methods which can lead to harmful dust exposure. We will also promote near miss reporting in reference to dust exposure in the workplace. We will undertake to provide tools fitted with dust suppression as the first option.

Plant Safety

We will identify new innovations and techniques and proper utilisation to reduce the risks of moving vehicles/plant in the workplace. Through our near miss root causes and trends we will ensure we target new technologies to prevent people being caught in the ‘Line of Fire’.

Barhale will use the ‘Stop. Make a Change’ event to explain and promote these commitments to our workforce.

Barhale agree to work with colleagues across the industry to discuss the outcomes of these commitments, and share the best practice that arises from them.

There will be further communications on arrangements in advance of 18^th April 2017

For further information about ‘Stop. Make a Change’, please click here