The project saw Amey develop three innovative safety toolkits used to gather non-traditional safety metrics, as part of its work toward its ‘Target Zero’ (zero Lost Time Injury Incident Rate by 2021) ambitions.
The award was part of RoSPA’s specialist ‘Inspiration Awards’ category, given to ‘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 that examines 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 statistics 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.
In April, Amey was awarded two RoSPA 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.