Skanska and SGB are taking a fresh approach to ensure workers stay out of hospital beds to deliver a 300m medical marvel. Ross MacMillan reports.

THE IRONY of working at height on a fully operational hospital site is not lost by the health and safety project team on Skanska’s £300m Nottinghamshire hospital project.

Its job is to keep nurses and patients away from the construction work, while preventing the builders ending up in the hospital ward.

The PFI healthcare scheme will provide new services at King’s Mill Hospital, Mansfield Community Hospital and backlog maintenance work at Newark General Hospital.

The four-year project will become the latest addition to Skanska’s clutch of medical facilities in the Midlands, following major healthcare developments in Walsall and Coventry.

Challenges
At King’s Mill in Mansfield, three T-shaped ward blocks linked together over five floors will rise above a Diagnostic and Treatment Centre and Women and Children’s Centres that will become part of a single 28-ward hospital.

Skanska’s medical marvel hinges on its joint venture with SGB project services, who have set up a dedicated access and service point onsite.

All access equipment, from aluminium access towers to scaffolding systems, are available to Skanska operatives and its supply chain.

Throughout the phased construction period, the hospital remains fully operational and with 43 different trade contractors and more than 500 workers onsite at any one time, confidence in the support team is crucial, says project health and safety manager, Paul Basson. “The key fact for any manager in any shape is the confidence of your support. We are confident SGB are delivering what we want.”

SGB business development director Tony Knight explains that on large projects such as King’s Mill most contractors do not consider what happens after the external scaffolding goes up.

The benefit of the site shop, Knight says, is that it steers the subcontractors into hiring out equipment that is fit for purpose, safe, and is for the right type of job.

Erecting and dismantling aluminium towers can be a highly dangerous activity, especially given 52% of construction fatalities stem from falls from height. Last year, five people died falling from aluminium towers, Knight says. “The misconception is that falls from height are 40-storey drops and they’re not. In fact 80% of them are actually less than head height.”

As part of SGB’s service, there are two fully certified and trained access specialists onsite at all times, checking access equipment hired out.

Basson explains that for a main contractor, the access shop provides both standardisation in terms of equipment and reduces the opportunities for people to misuse the equipment.

“The idea is that SGB’s management team goes onsite and checks the trade contractors equipment,” he says. “It’s about the safety of the whole operation. So we’re giving out the right kit to do the right job and we’re giving out the right training to do the right job.”

Transport
Knight says that having the SGB site shop onsite reduces the amount of transport coming in and out of the hospital, which is crucial considering there is already a number of vehicles coming in and out through patients and hospital staff.

“Minimal site traffic is very important, especially on these projects where its a live site,” he says. “From our point of view, the fewer vehicles we have onsite the less chance there is of someone being hurt. It also benefits the trade contractor, because they are not paying transport or delivery costs on the equipment they’re hiring out.”

This is the fifth major project SGB has worked on for Skanska.

The company has recently been contracted to provide an access and service point onsite for Balfour Beatty’s £521m Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. SGB is also talking to HBG over two large developments due to start in the New Year, which at time of press are still out to tender.

Learning lessons
Knight says SGB has developed a computer-based system that checks equipment into and out of the site shop. “We had a site like this for Skanska in Coventry a few years ago and we lost about £4,000 worth of equipment,” he says.

On the King’s Mill site, SGB gives every subcontractor a unique reference number corresponding to the piece of equipment it’s hired out, allowing Skanska’s health and safety operatives to know exactly what kit is on hire and to who.

The system also prevents trade contractors from not taking out the full items of equipment. “If a worker comes to the trade counter and wants to hire an access tower without outriggers and not bother with toeboards, the system won’t let us check it out,” says Knight.

Working in unison
Basson explains that SGB’s monthly reports back to Skanska allows the contractor to learn about the performance of different access equipment. A recent factor to come out of those meetings was the preferred use of SGB’s scissor lifts.

“We gave the subcontractors these electric units that go up and down. Originally they thought it would be more expensive but they came back to the meeting and said, that actually they get three or four times the work done. We’ve now got 55 of these units out there. It’s quicker and safer.”

The scissor lifts are part of SGB’s phased stock control, says Knight. “When the programme first kicks off from a fit out point of view its large open spaces,” he says. “So the type of equipment you can use is different to when you start getting all your walls in. So we phase the stock in and bring the smaller products in as each of the developments starts to come to the closing stages.”

Peter Wright, Ucatt health and safety representative for the project, holds the lifts in particular high regard. Liaising with the workers on a daily basis, Wright’s reports feedback into the monthly meetings between the union and the working committee.

“The little pop-up scissor lifts were introduced instead of using the more cumbersome mobile towers and podium steps which are more difficult to use and get about,” he says. “The guys themselves take to the popup lifts more than the towers and podium steps, especially when we get to this stage of the works where we’ve got little rooms. Trying to get mobile towers through the doorways can be very difficult.”

Wright feels the industry needs to train operatives to address the industry’s flagging fatality rates from working at height, especially in respect to harnesses and arrest systems.

“I find a lot of people either need refresher training or they get complacent and they need that refresh of the memory to tell them why they need to do the checks.”

This is particular prevalent in Skanska’s own project statistics. Basson admits that the majority of accidents the company has encountered have been workers in their late 50s to early 60s. “It is guys that have been in the industry for 30 to 40 years,” he says.

As such site product and work at height training is carried out onsite as part of SGB’s service at the training rooms provided by Skanska. This allows operatives to train and refresh working at height practices and allows Skanska operatives to be trained in what to look for in terms of the misuse of equipment.

Both Knight and Basson are confident that when the project reaches its end date in 2009, none of the workers on the King’s Mill site will still be at the hospital for any other reason than for admiring their work.