Safety starts with me – every person, every action, every day

The construction industry improves the experience of life for people everyday. It’s an industry I’m proud to work in and optimistic about.

Before a teacher walks into a classroom, before a doctor or a nurse steps foot into an operating room – an engineer and a trades specialist were there first. The world around us is imagined and built by talented people just like the ones I work alongside. Our people are at the centre of every decision we make. That’s why I’m determined to make sure that they don’t end up patients in the hospitals they build by fundamentally changing the way we go to work.

We do extraordinary things. But we still do them in the same way we have been for decades. If you walk on to a construction site today you will still see lots of people, doing difficult, repetitive, body breaking work. It doesn’t have to be like that. It is in our gift to change it – to chase the advances that evolve our industry to make it safer and more sustainable. That’s why we are reimagining what construction can be.

The work we do in industrialised construction is pioneering. Deploying advanced manufacturing techniques underpinned by digital design. Robots powered by the expertise of our people. AI used as a tool to solve problems in a factory before they happen on-site. This is reimagining construction with safety at the centre. Our work in offsite manufacturing, digital engineering and automation is creating better, more rewarding, careers that remove manual strain, making work safer, healthier, and improving people’s lives.

Changing the way we work is foundational to the three pillars on which our approach to safety is built – Engineered Safety, Delivery Excellence and Human Performance. Together, they define how we remove risk, how we go to work, and how we support our people.

Engineered Safety is about eliminating risk before it gets to people. It is how we design and plan our work so that risk is designed out before it gets to site. That only happens when we approach risks with curiosity, when we ask ourselves if there’s a better, safer way. Curiosity improves outcomes, using our experience, our data and our technology to anticipate rather than react to risk.

Delivery Excellence is about controlling risk during work by applying the highest standards. This pillar depends on consistency, clarity and accountability. It is reliant on creating environments that allow challenge and that encourage people to speak up. Speaking up gives us the chance to prevent ourselves or someone we work with getting hurt.

Human Performance is about creating conditions where people are empowered to speak up and where they can be their best. Our operating environment has never been more complex with competing priorities and distractions everywhere. That is why safety must be the first choice for each of us every time.

Plans change, priorities are often competing and pressures build. But one thing never changes – the most important outcome of our work is that everyone goes home safely. That takes something from all of us.

It means being curious – asking questions of yourself and the people you work with. It means speaking up if something doesn’t look right. It means reimagining our industry so that the people who work in it are healthier and happier. It means choosing safety every time.

Because that doesn’t start somewhere else. It starts with me. It starts with you. It starts with all of us, through every action, every day.

Together we can imagine what’s possible to create a safer, healthier construction industry.