Amey’s ‘Thinksafe’ project wins RoSPA ‘Initiative of the Year’ Award

03 Sep 2020

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Amey has been awarded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) Initiative of the Year Award for its ‘ThinkSafe’ project. The project saw Amey develop three innovative safety toolkits used to gather non-traditional safety metrics, to drive Amey’s ‘Target Zero’ (zero Lost Time Injury Incident Rate by 2021) ambitions.

Amey accepted the award, part of RoSPA’s specialist ‘Inspiration Awards’ category, at a virtual ceremony on 3 September. The coveted prize benchmarks ‘fascinating, industry leading, innovative solutions to health and safety management.’

ThinkSafe, developed by Amey Consulting and rolled out in Amey’s rail business, focuses on psychological and human factor conditions that may contribute to accidents or incidents, utilising a ‘bottom-up’ approach to understand the risk of everyday activities. The project came out of a need to address the pitfalls of using root cause analysis, audits and accident data to understand risk and reduce accidents. Although useful, these approaches are considered somewhat reactive, therefore potentially posing a safety risk.

ThinkSafe is a series of toolkits which provide high quality data, beyond traditional safety metrics and examine the psychological and human factor variables associated with safety; such as workload, job pressure and safety climate. The toolkits developed following a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Leeds Beckett University’s ‘Psychology Applied to Safety & Health’ research team.

Since concluding the KTP, the ThinkSafe toolkits have continually helped provide insight into other contributory factors of safety. Subsequently, its continued usage in Amey Rail has seen an 11% improvement in the rolling 12-month injury stats in 2019. In addition, ThinkSafe has since been rolled out to over 1,000 employees across the business and is currently being trialled in Amey’s Secure Infrastructure business.

Speaking about the ThinkSafe initiative Robert Doyle, HSEQ Director, Consulting, Amey said:

“We are incredibly proud that ThinkSafe has been awarded the RoSPA Health and Safety Initiative of the year 2020. This innovative approach has been designed inhouse to support our ongoing zero harm philosophy - by focusing on human and psychological factors which can positively or negatively impact on the safety and wellbeing of our workforce. This accolade recognises our ongoing commitment to pushing the boundaries and ongoing improvement against our health, safety and wellbeing agenda.”

Speaking on the award, Joe Docherty, HSEQ Director, Transport Infrastructure, Amey said:

“The health and safety of our people is our number one priority and we are delighted to have received this award from RoSPA. Innovations like ThinkSafe are made possible through the hard work and expertise of our people and the importance we all place on safety. This project has perfectly demonstrated the power of collaboration and innovation both internally and externally. This award is a significant achievement and shows how we remain focused on our journey to reach Target Zero, a zero Lost Time Injury Incident Rate by 2021”

The RoSPA Awards recognise world-leaders in health and safety practice and are the UK’s longest-running Health & Safety industry awards, and speaking, Julia Small, RoSPA’s head of qualifications, awards and events, said:

“RoSPA wants every employee, wherever they are, to work safe in the knowledge that they will be going home unharmed and healthy at the end of every day. The RoSPA Award winners are vital to help achieve this goal, as by entering they are driving up standards and setting new benchmarks for organisations everywhere. Currently, around 7million people are directly impacted by the RoSPA Awards, but the scheme’s influence is even wider.”

This is not the first RoSPA accolade for Amey this year. In April, Amey was awarded two gold awards to recognise the outstanding work and continual improvements being made across all aspects of health, safety and wellbeing in the Transport Infrastructure (Highways) and Secure Infrastructure businesses. Likewise, Amey Consulting and Rail were both awarded the RoSPA President’s Award for winning 11 consecutive Gold Medals, and ALC (Amey’s Joint Venture which deploy and maintain C Vehicles for the Ministry of Defence) was awarded the RoSPA President’s Award for winning 10 consecutive Gold Medals.

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