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Building a safer, healthier future for all construction workers

The health and safety of all those who work in construction extends beyond the physical, with emotional and mental wellbeing gaining the attention they deserve at this year’s Construction Industry Federation Health and Safety Summit

Dermot Carey, director, Safety, Training & Skills, CIF; Sinead Gaines, EHS manager, PJ Hegarty; Mike McLoughlin, associate director, Health, Safety & Sustainability, John Paul Construction; Brian Molloy, Enterprise and Employee Support Team, Health and Safety Authority; Jonathan Healy, conference host; Osvaldo Sousa, chief technology officer, Kianda; Derya Sousa, chief executive and co-founder, Kianda; Derek Murphy, head of EHS, Designer Group; Meabh Smith, director of communications, CIF’; Ivan Conway, EHS director, Winthrop Technologies Ltd and Shay Cloherty, managing director, iQuest and Business Post LIVE. Pictures Maura Hickey

If there was a sign that this year’s Construction Industry Federation’s (CIF) Health and Safety Summit 2023 resonated, it was in audience engagement. The volume of questions submitted was so high that Jonathan Healy, broadcaster and summit chair, joked about how it was his favourite audience to MC with.

To the 270 delegates who gathered at Croke Park on Thursday, May 25, Healy set the tone by emphasising how health and safety has changed in recent years, evolving from physical to something more broad and empathetic.

Kicking off the summit proper was a welcome from Frank Kelly, chairman of the Health & Safety Committee for CIF, who gave a detailed overview of the many developments happening within the sector. While much progress has been made, there’s still more to do.

“Only we can affect change, and I encourage all of you to reflect more on what we can do to build on the foundations of what has already been achieved,” he stated. “So that we have an industry with health and safety at its core.”

This set the stage for the first panel session detailing the work done by the CIF Health and Safety Group. The panel included Derek Murphy, head of EHS at Designer Group; Dermot Carey, director of safety, training & skills at CIF; Mike McLoughlin, associate director of health, safety & sustainability at John Paul Construction; and Sinead Gaines, EHS regional manager at PJ Hegarty.

Talking about how the key function of the committee is to advise key decision policy makers, Carey elaborated on an earlier point Gaines made about their time during Covid and how establishing its collaboration and shared focus before the pandemic ensured it hit the ground running.

“There was a broad range of skills that allowed us to get up and running very quickly and pool our information and put together a viable plan to get the industry back up and running,” stated Carey.

“Having that structure in place was beneficial to us and having the broad range of expertise to allow us to do things like develop our induction, we did that in a short period. It was a testament to the commitment of our members.”

Just after the panel finished, Conor Greham, business development executive, learning and development at CIF gave a brief overview of the benefits of CIF to the audience.

The construction industry is continuously undergoing modernisation, he stated, with updates, changes and new initiatives coming down the line.

One area was scaffolding apprenticeships which was discussed with John Kelly, manager of national construction training Centre at Mount Lucas; Keith Dwyer, managing director at Summit Scaffolding; and Spencer Attle, senior contracts manager at McCrory Access Ireland.

Raising the standards to ensure safety across the board, Attle mentioned that the basics of scaffolding remain the same, no matter what the project is.

“It should be treated the same because we’re all there to provide access for others and keep things safe,” he explained. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a bit of scaffolding on the side of the street, it should be erected the same way.

“It’s trying to get this culture that the one way to do it is the right way.”

Before the morning coffee break, there were two talks on local and national initiatives.

The first was on heavy vehicle safety, specifically Dublin City Council (DCC)’s efforts on reducing HGVs traffic in the city, delivered by Niall Bolger, its acting senior executive ITS officer, environment & transport.

The second was CSCS Location of Underground Services (LUGS) training delivered by Sean Mannion, SHEQ manager at Ward & Burke Construction Ltd.

Likening it to open heart surgery, in that you don’t know what you’ll come across, he spoke about reforming LUGS and about how improving data capture of existing and new infrastructure is crucial.

Education and awareness

After the coffee break, it was straight to business with the upcoming Construction Safety Licensing bill and what it means for the industry.

Discussing it was Sarah Miley, principal officer of apprenticeships & Public Policy Partnering at the Dept of Further & Higher Education, Research, Innovation & Science, and David Smith, director of construction, quality & green skills at Solas.

In a wide-ranging and comprehensive discussion, Miley said they hoped the bill would go through the legislative process at the end of the year if not the start of next year. It’s an ambitious aim and she encouraged people to engage with the sectoral consultation while it’s still open.

Similarly, the follow-up panel discussion on how employers deal with substance misuse was another highly engaged session featuring Cathy Kelly, SHESQ director at Murphy Ireland; Derek Byrne, co-founder and chief executive at Way 2 Work Ireland; and Kevin Cummins, business unit HSE manager Ireland east at John Sisk & Son (Holdings) Ltd.

Regarding the prevalence of cannabis among workers, Cummins mentioned that of the random tests carried out in 2022 – across 27 sites and featuring 300 people – 12 per cent have a failure rate, with 90 per cent being drug-related.

Much of it must be approached with an empathetic slant to things, understanding their personal life and circumstances first instead of punishing them.

“It’s about education and awareness,” said Kelly. “It’s not about looking down the disciplinary route. It’s not the carrot and stick; you explain to people the reasons why [something is happening].”

Next up was a case study on health and safety compliance delivered by Derya Sousa, chief executive and co-founder of Kianda; and Michael O’Connor, group QEHSS director at Mercury.

Going through the system it uses to ensure its EHS processes are as optimised as possible, O’Connor stressed the importance of making it easy for the user by keeping the entire process to one click or three clicks.

“One thing we didn’t want to have is too many clicks [that would deter people from using it],” he said. “We have an incredibly smart workforce but we understand that they’re busy and have other priorities in their day-to-day life.”

The focus shifted towards climate risk and carbon management, with the following topic being ESG. Discussing this was Aine Healy, HSQE & sustainability director at Glan Agua; Louise Martin, environmental and sustainability manager (ESG Lead) at Walls Construction; Paul Sheridan, director of Main Contracting Services at CIF; and Mike McLoughlin, associate director of health, safety and sustainability at John Paul Construction.

A pertinent issue for the construction industry, Sheridan said that successful policies are reflected at all levels.

“ESG is about leadership and choices, from C-suite to the worker on site,” said Sheridan, “What you try to do with ESG is put a huge amount of interrelated functions within an organisation.”

Before the lunch break, there was a final chat with Mark Cullen, the interim chief executive at Health & Safety Authority, who framed the entire summit in clear terms: “Safety is everyone’s business and we want to make sure that everyone who goes to work returns home safely.”

Changing the culture

After lunch, the topic shifted to mental health and wellbeing. The first of two discussions was an introduction to the Lighthouse Club, delivered by Natalie Ryan, regional ambassador of Ireland for The Lighthouse Club, who highlighted its five main services and emphasised the importance of reaching out if you need help.

“The first step in reaching out for help is the hardest but it’s the best decision you’ll ever make.” she said.

To finish up the chats, Healy was joined by Brent Pope, motivational and wellbeing speaker, who chatted about his journey through mental health, his experiences in the construction industry.

“It would be easy to get off work if you had a broken leg; people would see it and get it,” he said. “Why can’t we treat mental health the same way?”

“The culture needs to change, and for those looking to approach it, it starts with you. Have a conversation with all your people at the start . . . you won’t get there overnight but you [create] a place of safety, say you’re trying to change the culture.

“Once they see it from the top coming down and that other people are vulnerable, they’ll follow suit.”

After this, the attendees broke up into six main roundtables for deeper discussions before Healy spoke to each facilitator about the key emerging themes.

The first was on managing intoxicants in the workplace delivered by Cummins; the second was on the role of the EHS professional, broadening the focus and adapting to change brought by Kathy O’Leary, OHS lead at BAM Ireland, while the third was on mental health being a key part of job safety, delivered by Ryan and Ciara Nicholson, Environmental Health and Safety Advisor for Instrotec Ltd.

Roundtable four was lessons learned from incident tracking with Eamonn Stapleton, managing director of Clonmel Enterprises, and Tim Dowling, senior inspector at HSA. The fifth roundtable focused on the role of technology in promoting health & safety with Martin Searson, founder and chief executive of Quality Positive Ltd, and Osvaldo Sousa, chief technology officer for Kianda.

The sixth and final roundtable focused on managing critical risks and was delivered by Paul Daly, HSQE area manager for Coffey Construction.

With Dermot Carey, director of safety, training & skills for CIF closing the summit for another year, the sun shined in throughout the day, reflecting both the work done to make construction a brighter place and the optimism that the next few years will bring great progress in health and safety.