At Jones Engineering, we are proud to once again, support the CIF annual Construction Safety Week.
The goal is to eliminate accidents at work, to drive continual improvement in safety and health performance, to celebrate best practice and to reinforce and promote the importance of safety, health and overall wellbeing in work and in life.
As our EHS Manager Declan Grady put it, “CIF Safety Construction Week provides an invaluable platform to highlight areas of safety concern within our industry. It is an opportunity to refocus and double down on our commitment to strive for an injury free workplace. It is also a time where different facets of the construction industry can work together to share experiences and best practices, which has never been as important as during the unprecedented circumstances and steep learning curves we have experienced throughout the last two years.”
The topics the CIF has chosen to focus on this year will be covered in themed toolbox talks and events on our sites throughout the country over the course of the week. Our projects are located across Ireland, Europe and the Middle East and as such we extend our CIF Safety Week events beyond our shores. Some of our teams are working in harsh conditions such as extreme heat environments reaching temperatures of +50 degrees celsius and arctic conditions reaching sub-zero temperatures of -40 degrees celsius with very few daylight hours. On these projects we are now utilising an Employee Assistant Programme with PepTalk which allows for supports to be made available to staff on site and in particular in relation to their mental health and wellbeing. We chose PepTalk because they are passionate about delivering sustainable, long term behavioural change for employees through a market leading, technology focused wellbeing solution.
Historically, construction health and safety has always prioritised the more immediately obvious physical hazards and their impact on site safety. But attitudes are thankfully changing, as people realise that the silent issue of mental health is just as dangerous and potentially fatal. We have signed up as a Company Supporter to the Lighthouse charity. Lighthouse have recently launched their ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ campaign to raise awareness of poor mental health within our industry. ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ provides a huge range of pro-active support and resources for our construction community including a 24/7 Construction Industry Helpline, free app and mental health training. We would encourage everyone in the industry to take advantage of these fantastic resources.
Throughout the week, the Working at Height 3M Mobile demonstration unit which will be providing awareness training to a number of our Irish sites. We have also arranged a selection of webinar events and socially distanced video screenings of the bespoke videos we have created with theatre-based learning company Theatre at Work. The online webinars are very interactive, and facilitate energetic discussions based on the roleplayed scenes. We are emphasising a focus on behavioural based safety training for both craft and management.
Some sites will also be running competitions including safety quizzes and word searches and there will be safety colouring competitions for children of staff members. Our goal is always to ensure our people return home safe to their families at the end of every day. Safety has always been the number one value for Jones Engineering. Priorities can change but values do not.
