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Guilty or Innocent- You Decide!

“Recently Osborne supported the CECA national Health and Safety forum.

The forum provides CECA’s members with an interest in health and safety to meet periodically to discuss issues of relevance to the sector and to provide the opportunity for CECA members to exchange information, share best practice and discuss topical health and safety issues.

Peter Jones, Deputy Head of SHE, took part in a mock trial, playing the part of the defendant.  The event was attended by over 120 persons from member organisations including four of our Infrastructure graduates, Hugo Blanco- Alvarez, Henry Barkas, Will Stubbs and Simon Wall.

During the Forum, CECA members were shown a simulated courtroom environment for health and safety prosecutions, a position that none of us ever want to be in real life. The trial centred on a service strike that resulted in serious injuries to a person at work.

The defendant and witnesses were questioned and cross examined by real legal professionals employed by DAC Beachcroft to give a true representation of what a real trial would involve.

With regards to the defendant he was almost unanimously found guilty with the exception of our graduates who I think took pity and showed a bit of organisational loyalty!

On a serious note, at Osborne we continuously endeavour to improve health and safety across all of our sites. Our popular STOP Think! Programme, which is widely recognised and often referenced at external events, encourages people to make better decisions to avoid work related injuries. However, when there is an incident on site, our teams step down, reflect and learn from what has happened and implement ways to prevent the incident happening again.

Alarmingly in 2017/2018 the construction industry had the highest number of fatalities across all industries with 38 fatal injuries reported. Furthermore, 58,000 workers sustained non-fatal injuries, with 33% of workers falling from a height, 30% tripping on discarded materials & 29% injured whilst lifting site materials. According to Construction news, industry fines soared by 83% to £12.96m a significant increase compared to £7,09m in 2016, highlighting a need for continuous improvement.”

Peter Jones, Deputy Head of Safety, Health and Environment.

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