David McLean has outlawed informal smoking breaks during working hours.

The company last week vowed to help its employees to stop smoking ahead of a blanket workplace ban on 1 July.

There has already been a smoking ban on sites across the construction industry for some time due to health and safety issues, but David McLean is pioneering the ban throughout the workplace.

Business development director Phil Burgess told builderandengineer.co.uk: “I don’t think us taking the stance we have taken is particularly bold,” he said. “In a lot of clerical and manufacturing industries there is no smoking in the workplace at all. I think the construction industry is now falling into line with a lot of these industries.”

Burgess said that the company is trying to ease its employees into a new way of working. He said: “We’re not doing it in a draconian way. We’ve got give up smoking clubs and we’re providing nicotine patches. It’s a health related issue more than anything else.”

Burgess said the response to the ban has been generally well received: “I get the impression that most of the smokers have resigned themselves to the fact that it was always going to happen.”