CRH Plc: Promoting health & safety company-wide
Company Description:
CRH plc is one of the top six in the building materials sector worldwide and has operations in 28 countries employing over 80,000 people. Within Ireland and Northern Ireland, over 7,000 people are directly and indirectly employed by Group Companies, involved in the progressive manufacture and supply of a comprehensive range of high quality building materials and products for the construction industry.
Business Issue:
Health and Safety is the number one priority for all CRH companies. CRH is committed to achieving industry best practice in safety at every location. The challenging goal is zero fatalities and zero accidents. CRH continues to devote substantial management, employee time and all the appropriate resources to this area, and is always looking for innovative ways to bring the safety message to all.
Solution Applied:
The CRH Simon Safety Challenge is an all-island initiative involving 130 CRH locations and assists in Simon’s important work in tackling homelessness. For every accident-free quarter (3 months) achieved at a CRH company location across the island of Ireland, a sum of money is donated to the Simon Community operating in that region. Company locations that achieve a full accident-free year donate an additional 25% bonus payment on top of the four combined quarterly donations. Extensive H&S Audits are carried out at all locations several times a year and best practice is implemented in training and procedures to drive safety improvement.
Company Benefits:
- Launch and running of the scheme bring a common safety awareness to all staff.
- Feel good factor for employees to be involved.
- Donal Dempsey, Regional Managing Director with CRH says that, “in 2006, 79% of CRH locations had zero accidents. If this figure were to be repeated this year, that would mean a donation of €900,000 to Simon. The trend from year to year has been a steady improvement in health and safety, so we hope to beat that 79% figure this year and reach the €1 million mark”.
Stakeholder Benefits:
CRH making an annual contribution towards the Simon campaign to end homelessness while achieving improved safety in the workplace. According to Patrick Burke, CEO Simon Communities of Ireland,“we are delighted this project will deliver a twin benefit in the form of much needed funding for important homelessness projects while helping improve health and safety standards within CRH. We look forward to working in partnership on these important initiatives”.
Challenges:
The scale of designing and implementing the project for over 130 locations and CRH Group companies including Roadstone, Northstone, John A Wood and Irish Cement entailed a lot of hard work for those involved and briefing the workforce on Simon with direct involvement of Simon personnel.
Tip:
“Accident free begins with me.”
Departments Involved:
All Departments
Solution Champion:
Jim Rea, Roadstone Dublin, jrea@roadstone.ie and Naomi Cooper, CRH plc, ncooper@crh.com
Year
2007
