News

Our commitment to health and safety

Fri, 26th Mar, 2021

An unwavering commitment to health and safety is embedded into every SCAPE project, through every service we offer, and reflected across all levels of our operations. That's why we're proud to be a CLOCS (Construction Logistics and Community Safety) Communicator Champion.

Government action to improve air quality and promote active travel is resulting in more and more people travelling by foot and bike across the UK. But with construction activity set to increase in 2021 and 2022, there will be more Heavy Good Vehicles (HGVs) on our roads and in our communities. Ensuring the safest construction vehicle journeys has never been more important.

CLOCS is a national standard that brings together stakeholders in construction to take shared responsibility for health and safety beyond the hoardings.

The standard demands collaborative action to prevent fatal or serious collisions between vehicles servicing construction projects and vulnerable road users, and is delivering real, long-term sustainable improvements.

Health and safety is at the core of everything we do. We welcome the opportunity to align our approach with a consistent national standard, which will give clients and end users absolute confidence that their projects will be delivered with physical and mental wellbeing as our primary consideration. SCAPE take their role as an industry leader very seriously, and we hope this encourages others to maintain the highest standards.

Mark Robinson

Group chief executive, SCAPE

The CLOCS standard was launched in 2013 in a bid to focus the construction industry on road safety. A range of clients, contractors and fleet operators have since pledged their support and implemented the standard throughout their operations, including:

Implementing a construction logistics plan addressing the main transport-safety risks
Creating positive site conditions for the safest fleet operations
Ensuring vehicles are checked thoroughly on arrival and meet requirements
Effective independent monitoring of compliance

Contractors who are committed to the standard understand that it is an active commitment, from defining and communicating the safest routes for lorries to travel to site, to ensuring ground is suitable for safer low-entry vehicles and employing trained traffic marshals at access points.

Safety remains our number one priority as a business. We support CLOCS’ mission for a united response to improving road safety to cut deaths and serious injuries on Britain’s roads. We all must play our part to promote and help raise awareness for safer construction vehicle journeys in an effort to reduce the risks they pose on site and the community. CLOCS raises the bar for construction vehicle best practice.

Joe Hastie‍

CDM and safety manager, SCAPE

A shared commitment

Many of our partners are CLOCS Champions, including Wates, Lendlease and Kier, who already demonstrate best practice in this area. They took a moment to share their thoughts with us:

Wates Group have been an active member of CLOCS since 2017. The CLOCS standard factors into all of our logistics planning across the Construction Group. We manage our projects to facilitate safe vehicular access at the entrance point and whilst onsite including loading and unloading, we take ownership of road safety with our supply chain coordinating deliveries to avoid peak times and also ensuring delivery vehicles and drivers comply with the standard. Within our business this means we prioritise suppliers who also meet the FORS Silver requirements, we check and challenge delivery vehicles upon arrival at our projects for on vehicle signage, side protection, audible alarms and all round vision. Our projects undergo periodic audits via the Considerate Constructors Scheme aligned with the CLOCS standard and we endeavour to continually develop our arrangements with CLOCS in maximising safety on our projects and within the surrounding communities.

Steve Spilsbury

Framework director, Wates Group

As a CLOCS Champion, Lendlease is committed to protecting the communities where we work from the risk of harm from any construction-related logistics activities. Knowing that our supply chain partners are all CLOCS Accredited provides us with the confidence that this is happening both on our sites, to and from them.

Simon Gorski

Managing director, Lendlease Construction Europe

Kier Construction shares the vision to fundamentally change the way the construction industry manages work related road safety. As a dedicated CLOCS Champion, Kier Construction promotes the CLOCS Standard through its contracts which provides a framework for consistency and ownership in managing road risk which can be adhered to consistently by fleet operators and suppliers alike.

Deane Hudson

Framework director, Kier Construction

Improving sustainability

As well as improving safety, there are environmental benefits in implementing efficient logistic plans, routing vehicles away from congested areas and not leaving vehicle engines idling. Reduced vehicle movements improve air quality through reduced emissions and will help support the UK’s drive for net zero. This is something that we are actively working with our partners to facilitate, and small, incremental steps such as these add up, and can make a real difference.

Together, we prioritise continuous improvement for the benefit of all parties beyond construction sites and recognise the need for the highest of standards to be adopted and maintained.

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