The voice of concrete products - British Precast

BRITISH PRECAST BEST PRACTICE AWARDS 2008
Figure 3: A company
vehicle on the roads.
To complement these initiatives, Aggregate Industries
has sponsored a primary school football team and worked
with the school to produce posters promoting health and
safety at work, which were displayed on the school’s canteen
walls. As many of the students were either children or
grandchildren of employees at Hulland Ward, there was a
payback in promoting health and safety in this way.
Donations to local charities
Since 2000 the lost time injury frequency rate at Hulland
Ward has reduced from over 80 to 11. The local community
now benefits from the reduction in incidents. For each factory,
a month passed with no lost time injuries means money
is donated to a charity chosen by people from that factory.
The recipient charities are displayed as a roll of honour on
the outside of the factories and a waiting list of nominations
is on file. In 2007, £6000 was given to local causes from the
combined efforts of the factories.
Aggregate Industries has come a long way since the
1950s when Wellington boots and flat caps were worn in
the factories at Hulland Ward. These four factories in rural
Derbyshire form one of the largest concentrations of precast
concrete manufacturing in the business. In 1999, a
comprehensive survey of safety across all businesses began
a process of significant changes that continue today. The
company seeks a state of being unconsciously safe, but to
get there it needed first to change some fundamentals.
Changing the culture required a serious investment from
the business. The first internal health and safety course
made the right impression: five paid hours out of the factory
for a workforce who were then still paid by piece-rate.
Many of the changes that can be seen now have been put in
place through employee-led suggestions. Better communication
of both performance and good practice has focused
attention and provided the right inspiration for further
improvements.
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Reproduced f ro m CONCRETE December 2008/January 2009 © The Concrete So c i e t y, 2008 15