Our approach to health and safety

We believe occupational health and wellbeing matters as much as safety. Our commitment is to:

• raise the profile of occupational health and wellbeing;
• design and create positive workplaces that empower our people to thrive; and
• eradicate, wherever possible, and minimise exposure to the top five causes of occupationally acquired illness and/or disease.

Over the next five years we will pursue several key interventions to achieve this. They include: the use of independent research into the causes of those illnesses and diseases; developing next-generation systems that will monitor exposure to health risks in construction; improving worker wellbeing support; and attracting more occupational health professionals into construction.

We believe every member of our workforce, during the construction and operation of the railway, has the right to go home unharmed. Our commitment is to:

• develop, promote and reward our frontline and operational supervisors for their safety leadership;
• maximise the use of technology and smarter ways of working; and
• develop a Safe at Heart culture across the programme, empowering every individual
  to speak up and make safe decisions.

The interventions we will manage over the next five years include: developing how we measure safety culture; using technology and innovation to improve shared learning; and enhancing leadership and recognition in our supervisor community.

We will measure the impact and effectiveness of our health and safety interventions through robust assurance processes. Our commitment is to:

• undertake risk-based assurance to identify potential issues; and
• develop a learning culture, where people feel empowered to report and where the business takes action to embed learning.

Our emphasis over the next five years will be to further develop our processes and procedures for assurance and shared learning and ensure this is continuously improved as new contractors join the programme in Phase One and on to Phase Two.

We will engage all tiers of the supply chain in transforming health and safety standards so they contribute to the success of the project. Our commitment is to:

• select and develop our supply chain partners based on their ability to demonstrate shared values and excellent safety leadership;
• be an empowering client, enabling, incentivising and, where beneficial, partnering with our supply chain to innovate and deliver safely; and
• hold each other to account for high standards of occupational health, safety and wellbeing.

As we continue to procure and manage our growing supply chain over the next five years we will: work with supplier relationship management to develop health and safety improvements; ensure health and safety is embedded into strategic supply chain market engagement; and develop health and safety engagement with suppliers in the tier two and below communities.

We will set new standards by building our design capability to identify and mitigate health and safety risks in construction, maintenance and the future operation of the railway. Our commitment is to:

• manage the impact of design and specification changes, ensuring health and safety is always our first consideration;
• wherever possible, design through a virtual environment to ‘design out’ risk and error and reduce unnecessary design-related site visits; and
• design infrastructure so all routine, planned trackside maintenance can be carried out outside operational hours.

Over the next five years, the interventions we will manage include: improving how we manage temporary works design; improving our knowledge and understanding of health risks during design stages; and facilitating the sharing of lessons in the design community.

We respect the people and the places that are affected by our work. We recognise that while the long-term benefits of HS2 will be huge, construction affects the lives of thousands of people. Our commitment is to:

• get to know the communities along the route so we can understand the effects of construction on vulnerable people and respond in the best way we can;
• invest in the communities where HS2 operates, and plan our works to minimise adverse health, safety and wellbeing impacts on communities and our workforce; and
• adopt measures to minimise road-related risks in communities and those driving to work in our supply chain.

The themes we will develop over the next five years are: enhancing our approach to road risk; developing our strategy for supporting vulnerable people affected by our works; and enhancing our approach to specialist security.

We will design and build a railway that is safe for our future operational and maintenance workforce and future passengers. Our commitment is to:

• always protect our workforce when they are required to work on or near the line;
• provide a safe means to access all areas of the infrastructure, including trackside, for future operations and maintenance workforce; and
• design our railway and future train service so they can be operated safely.

Our approach to managing this focus area is in line with the regulator’s requirements to bring the railway into safe operation. To achieve this, work areas include: safety assurance processes; design and ergonomics; and continual engagement with Network Rail.