Lessons learned from the safest Olympics ever

Posted on Friday 1 January 2010

Thanks to the emphasis that
the Olympic Delivery
Authority put on health and
safety, the build for the
London 2012 Olympic
Games has been the safest
in history, with not a single
death compared with six
people constru

HSM speaks to the people
who made this possible, and
finds out what lessons can be
learned for the construction
industry as a whole

Lawrence Waterman
head of health and safety, Olympic
Delivery Authority and
senior partner, Park Health and Safety
Services

The London 2012 work has involved
over 45,000 people, hundreds of
designers and contractors and over 80m
hours worked – so summing up the
lessons learned is no easy task. The key
however is to look at our major areas of
focus: leadership and worker
engagement, health as well as safety and
good communications.

Leadership
The commitment of the ODA as a client
was matched by a supply chain of design
teams and major contractors determined
to do their best for London 2012. But
good intentions are not enough, so we
established a structure that meant that a
Leadership Board at the most senior level
led a Leadership Team across the
programme involving the project director
of each major contractor, and at the local
level a Project Leadership Team on each
project led by the Tier 1 contractor with
representatives of the major subcontractors
(Tier 2s and 3s). These
weren’t talking shops. Decisions made
swiftly included: mandatory leadership
and communications training for all
supervisors, the banning of semiautomatic
quick hitches, the “going live”
campaign when electrical systems were
energised and much much more.

Worker engagement
Leadership from the top was vital, but
engagement of the people doing the hard
work was absolutely essential to make the
health and safety programme come to
life. Every technique was employed from
Daily Activity Briefings for every team to
“you said, we did” boards to provide
feedback on near miss reports.

Underpinning the general engagement,
lots of conversations about safety, was a
reward and recognition scheme that
ensured we celebrated successes more
than we used compliance reviews to
identify failures.

Health
We demonstrated that you can run health
like safety. Preventing ill health through
assessing risks in the work and
eliminating or managing them, just like
accident prevention. Every project team
was supported by our modest investment
in good advice on how to manage noise,
dust, fumes, vibration and the other
challenges to health on site. Married with
excellent services such as drop-in health
centres and campaigns on sexual health,
smoking cessation and diet this was a
winning formula.

Communications
No more poorly drafted and even more
poorly designed letters on notice boards.

We used high quality communications
material from our marketing team, and
spoke to our workforce professionally
with excellent posters and leaflets – and
even more importantly, we listened
including carrying out regular surveys
and market research. Our sites were one
big conversation on how health and safety
could be improved while getting the job
done to time and within the budget.

Of course, the best lessons to have been
learned are simply stated:
There is a fantastic level of skill and
knowledge in the construction
industry, and when targeted by a
knowledgeable client they can be
deployed to achieve a brilliant health
and safety result
Workers are proud to work on a safe
project, and very interested in looking
after their own health

The 2012 Olympic Park has been the most
successful construction delivery of any
modern day games. Not only completed
on time, within budget and to exceptional
quality, but most importantly it is the first
Olympics without a fatality. The accident
frequency rate was the lowest and
productivity the highest. So why was this
and what lessons are there to be learned?
The client has to provide leadership in
setting down the standards to be
adopted on the site, the ODA were
exemplary in doing this
The client must engage all stakeholders
at the start of the project including
designers, contractors, unions, HSE,
and of course workers, and get them to
support with their own leadership
Proving good health and safety facilities
and looking after the wellbeing of your
workforce saves you money, it is not a
cost
We have to get the message over that
good health and safety makes
commercial sense
It is important to encourage reporting
of near misses and share route causes.

Client must adopt a procurement
process that lays down the standards
for H&S and encourages contractors to
participate
Mandatory medical checks should
apply to all workers before starting on
site
Safety Leadership Teams to be
established at all levels to include
mamagement and workers,to review
and monitor H&S issues
All workers to receive a daily site
briefing before starting work
Assessment process to be put in place
to review supervisor competence
Every site should have some medical
facility available to all workers either on
site or a visitng service for smaller sites.

The introduction of this on the
Olympic Site has reduced sickness away
from work by 70%, and improved
productivity immensely
Engagement with the work force is
essential, use of observation cards to
seek their views is helpful.

In order for the construction industry to
benefit from the good practice established
on the Olympics, Government needs to take
a lead by embedding the standards in the
procurement process for all their
contracts. Industry through its various
bodies such as the UKCG should adopt these
standards and impose them on their own
supply chains. The relevant information on
lessons learned from the Olympics is well
detailed on the ODA legacy website:
learninglegacgy.london2012.com
Stephen Williams, director of
operational strategy and the London
2012 Games, Health and Safety
Executive (HSE)
The Health and Safety Executive stated at
the outset a commitment to act as an
enabling and proportionate regulator for
the London 2012 Olympic and
Paralympic Games. Our strategy has been
based on early intervention coupled with
targeted inspection of high risk activities,
to ensure that standards are being met.

We worked closely with the Olympic
Delivery Authority (ODA) throughout the
construction project, setting clear
objectives and providing advice and input
to ensure that key risks were identified
and robust management systems put in
place.

The ODA rose to the challenge and
demonstrated what can be achieved when
there is genuine commitment to high
standards of health and safety on the part
of the client.

Health and safety was integrated into
the project from the start by the ODA
through standards and requirements.

Contractors were empowered to develop
their own good practice and drive their
own health and safety performance. This
included a range of worker engagement
initiatives designed to foster proper twoway
dialogue, underpinned by a ‘fair
blame’ culture which allowed workers to
raise issues without the fear of reprisal in
an open and transparent manner and
participate in solving problems. Strong
emphasis was put on the role of
supervisors in leading and engaging the
workforce.

HSE shared with the ODA an aim to
ensure a strong health and safety legacy
from the construction project, and
cooperated with them on a series of
research projects to capture the good
practice and lessons learned for future
application.

We believe this experience can be used
as a catalyst to effect positive change in
safety standards across the construction
industry. The powerful combination of
strong leadership and supply chain
engagement is already evident on
Crossrail and can be repeated on major
projects including HS2 and nuclear
newbuild.

HSE will be challenging not only these
large clients but also small and medium
sized construction companies to prioritise
health and safety and aim for the highest
standards. Many initiatives adopted on the
Olympic construction project were not
costly or complicated and are transferable to
smaller projects. For instance, daily safety
briefings can be done whether you have two
or 200 people on site.

Strong, active leadership of health and
safety at all levels together with effective
worker engagement and clear standards
for all on site, including the supply chain,
can be put in place on all sites.

In addition to the research evidence on
the positive impact of effective health and
safety strategies and techniques, there is a
wealth of practical case study material that
can be taken ‘off the shelf’ and applied to
future construction projects.

And finally there are the many
contractors and thousands of construction
workers who have been involved in the
Olympic project, and who can share their
experience. Their actions and
expectations will be particularly
influential in helping the construction
industry to build on the improvements
already achieved and raise safety
standards across the board.

For more information, visit:
www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/london-2012-
games/lessons-for-industry.htm