Health, safety and wellbeing 

We introduced a number of health, safety and wellbeing initiatives to enhance the competency level of our supervisors and reduce the risk of our workers on site. 

We had a Health & Safety manager on site who closely monitored the works and was the point of contact for the team.

Works on this project were completed throughout the pandemic and we provided serviced apartments to everyone on site, which meant they could have their own personal space, do their own cooking and have their rooms cleaned regularly.

We installed 360 camera sensors for our machines, and our supervisors underwent Black Hat training in order to gain added responsibility on site. 

We also ensured that none of our people worked over their allocated hours and had a 12 hour break between shifts. 

Due to the size of the project and various subcontractors using heavy machinery, strict health & safety precautions had to be taken in order to ensure people were not working in close proximity to this machinery. This required careful coordination to avoid clashes with work.

We ensured our partners were FORS accredited and introduced plant requirements such as FORS silver for heavy vehicles. 

Competence and capability

Throughout our works, we drove a culture of ‘right first time’ and demonstrated our ability to adapt to unforeseen scenarios to ensure quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 

We were engaged with the client’s pre-construction teams before works started in order to prevent any design ambiguities and to suggest improvements that could save the client money. 

Collaboration

Our team attended weekly planning meetings with other subcontractors to promote collaboration across the site. We also sent out a weekly ‘look ahead’ note so everyone was aware of what was going on. This worked well and improved communication across the site. 

We set up a weekly site tour with the appropriate supervisors and engineers to agree our aims, assess if that section was ready to undergo works, and determine who else would be undergoing works there.

We collectively came up with a weekly plan, which managed expectations and eliminated ambiguity around what we wanted to achieve that week. This collective and visual approach led to effective planning sessions. 

Digitalisation and Innovation

We vastly improved it document control with the introduction of office 365 applications such as One Drive and Microsoft Teams in order to share information in one place. 

We introduced and improved the online site diary and allocation sheets, so that all parties were happy with the information included. 

In addition we introduced a digital quality check procedure. This is something that we would like to implement going forward to ensure greater collaboration and visibility of what is going on.

Social Value

We collaborated with our partners Balfour Beatty, Skanska and Costain IDT on a number of initiatives to benefit the local communities throughout the project.

Examples of this include;

• A funding pot of £400,000 was launched in July 2016 by the A14 Community Fund with £110,000 of it already allocated to 16 local projects, including to encourage outdoor activities such as cycling and walking. 
• Grants of up to £10,000 are available to those living along the A14 in Cambridgeshire.
• Built local footbridges for schools, providing pupils with safe access. 

Commercial

Throughout the scheme, we took a proactive approach by seeking to agree quotations in advance of the works to help with forecast and budget certainty. 

We ensured regular submission of revised programmes, with detailed breakdowns of progress to date along with additional works and delays, to identify potential impacts to the critical path and/or the completion date.