The BIMTech Podcast

Episode 7 | Safety First: From Industry Standards to BIM Innovations

• BIMTech Media

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In this episode of The BIMTech Podcast, Matt McGuire sits down with Richard Oxley, Director of Kenmac Associates, to discuss the critical role of Health & Safety (H&S) in modern construction. They explore topics like the connection between BIM and H&S, strategies for effective risk management, building safety-focused cultures, and how technology is shaping the future of safety in construction. 

We good? Hiya We're here now today to do our next podcast. And today I'm joined by Richard Oxley. Richard runs a company called Kenmac, and they're a health and safety consultancy for... Is it mainly just construction or is it other industries? Yeah, we do other industries and I suppose by looking after the back of house of companies and large office companies, it's like across various sectors. The main focus of the high risk element of the work is big projects in construction and rail. Just taking a step back, actually, because one of the things I was going to say before we got into talking about the health and safety and that sort of side of your profession. Was kind of how you got into it, because I know you were a professional rugby player. Yeah. And sort of... Yeah I was... You don't kind of go professional rugby health and safety. No. They don't seem to go hand in hand because it can be a bit of a, well I wouldn’t say violent game. But it's certainly quite... I certainly spent my fair share of time in hospital with the old rugby career, and I'm still paying for it now as you know, like, we obviously go to a gym together and like, it takes about 20 minutes to get warmed up, but, yeah. I was really lucky, when I was playing rugby, I had a sponsor, a guy called Gareth Jones. I actually saw him on Saturday, the team I used to play for was playing up in Manchester, and I went watch the game, and, yeah, he owned a big demolition company. But was also the health and safety director, and he basically sort of got me to one side and said, what are your plans after rugby? You know, at that point, I'm a 24 year old professional rugby player, and I didn't have any plans after rugby, because you just don't think it's ever going to finish. Yeah. And he said like, well, come with me. And we went around a few jobs, sort of had a look at this business and we had a look at what everyone, all the different people do in the business. And I decided what he did actually looked really good and nice mix of being on sites and being in offices and meeting clients and sort of seemed to run his own diary and that sort of thing. And I thought it looked really interesting and yeah. He just sort of pointed me in the right direction. And then by random chance, my best friend, like growing up had got into health and safety at the same time, like, focusing on the rail. And we just ended like working together at Kenmac at the same time. Right. And after a year or so, we got the chance to do a management buyout. Oh that’s good then. Put everything on the line really. And, it was a really great company. It was set up really well with some, like, great clients and was, like, ready to grow, really. And, I'd done a little bit of a career working for some construction companies along the way, and, was ready to go into consultancy myself. So, yeah, we just joined the business and put a plan in place for the management buyout. And I think that was about ten years ago now. Right. So it's been a while. Yeah. So like health and safety obviously, I mean everybody has a general idea of what health and safety is, but I think it's become what I've noticed over the years. It's become more at the forefront of construction than it used to be. Yeah. I think there used to be a time where I think probably third world countries still do it. They actually put a value on life of how much risk they're prepared to take on life. Yeah. Compared to what the cost is of making a site safe or whatever. But I think in the UK now that that's kind of gone, that sort of thinking now everything has to be 100%. And I go to building sites all the time and they have like charts on the wall. How many Near-Misses. Near-misses they've had that month and things like that. And fortunately, most sites you go on now. You never see there’s a death on a site, it’s very few and far between now. But like with the health and safety like I don't know if you can... Yeah, yeah, I Could 100%. Expand on that a bit. Yeah, I mean you say Third World. But I mean I know it's the summer holidays when everyone’s sending me pictures of bad scaffold from Spain, you know. Yeah. Well yeah, true. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, probably a day doesn't go by in July and August where someone’s saying, oh, I'm on holiday here. Can you believe this is going on? But... Yeah. You know, and that's sort of our European neighbors who for a lot of the legislation that we adhere to, you know, some of it started in the EU and we've adopted it. Yeah. You know what I mean? So, it's a lot better here. And I think in the early days it was poorly delivered. The health and safety message. You were seen as sort of want for a better term, a little Hitler with a clipboard, who would just walk around giving everyone a hard time. And there's so much work goes into it now. When you're training in your health and safety, you know, you're learning like cultural and behavioral science, how to deliver messages, all this sort of thing, just the way the brain works, the way human motivation works. And I can talk about it for hours. But, you know, when we're planning a safety message, we think about the motivations behind the people who are going to receive that message and what's, what's going to tickle a fancy, really. And, you know, and that's I mean, safety professionals will probably laugh at this because it's day one, really. But, you know, you've got three big motivations for people to manage health and safety. And that's moral, legal and financial. You know, and this is day one of your training, day one of the most simple course you can do. Like morally, you don't want to hurt yourself or see anyone else get hurt. And you certainly don't want to be the MD of a business that has to deliver a message to a family that... Yeah That their mum or their dad in the family's been killed on a building site, do you know what I mean? You don't want to do that. So that's the moral reasons. But actually, more often than not, it's the financial or legal reasons that really motivate companies. I’m sure it is, yeah. And there’s the stick and the carrot here. You've got good financial reasons. Like if you've got a good safety record you win work. I mean, our biggest feedback really, good feedback is that we will put policies and procedures in place, help them get accreditations, get the site standards great. The workforce trained and off the back of that they win loads of work. Yeah. And they just say, we thought you were going to help us be safe. But the company is winning so much work that we didn't think we'd get because of your safety systems. And your quality management systems and your environmental systems. So that's one of the financial positives, is that they start winning work by having a good safety performance. But the stick side of that is if they do badly they end up with fines. They end up losing work. Their insurance premiums go up. All these negative things that come with it. I mean, on a tender, you know, we were talking before you mentioned near-miss rates and all the stats that you see displayed on sites these days. If you, if you look at accident rates, if you've got a poor accident rate, you might as well tear up the rest of the tender because you're not winning that job If it's a hospital or a school or something like, Ministry of Justice or one of the big government projects, they've got minimum requirements for this. And if you've got a poor safety record, the weighting on the tenders is so high that you just might as well not fill out the rest of it because you're just not going to win the tender. Yeah. So it's taken a lot more seriously. And then obviously the legal bit, you know, if that goes wrong you've got directors going to jail now. Yeah. Yeah. And individuals. Yeah. Well I know what you were just saying there about, sort of tendering work is, because we work with big construction companies and we have to do PQQs. So the Pre Qualification Questionnaires. Yeah. and there's a full section on health and safety. Yeah. And although we're basically an office based company. We do the odd site visit and that. But we're not based on site. So our risk is minimal compared to to some businesses. But they tend to be like a generic questionnaire that comes out. So we're getting the same questionnaire as maybe a scaffolding company or whatever is getting. And the amount there is on the questionnaire about health and safety. And what, like you say, what policies have you got in place and everything. And I know it's something I want to talk to you about afterwards. I know we we've got the bare minimum that we need to have because we're like an office company and employ more than five people. But I would be interested in getting us sort of better health and safety, which would make these PQQs a little bit easier for me as well. Yeah. I mean, it's just a snowball effect. You know, you make your safety culture better then the PQs become easier, then you win work and better jobs. And then it all just keeps getting better all the time. But yeah, unfortunately a lot of these PQs are blunt instruments that you know, I’ve got a lot of niche clients who they're filling out a PQ and they’re saying, I don't know what to put for this. Yeah. I don't do this that it's asking it for. You know, I just go to site like once a month and measure something. You know, I don't build things. Yeah. Like, we're the same. We have it both ways. We’re a safety consultancy. Sometimes they ask us questions and I'm like, we will always be accompanied when we walk around the site. Yeah. But another thing, sometimes they just don't ask us anything. And I'm like, well, we're not bulletproof. Like, I'm happy to show you this. But even down to like, you’ll be familiar with the CSCS cards and everything like we used to be able to just get a visitor's card and you just have to do an online sort of quiz. Yeah. Which you could virtually pass without even reading the book, because I remember reading questions and they were things like, you come across somebody who's grabbed hold of an electric wire and is being electrocuted. Do you A, turn the power off, B grab hold of him, C Yeah. Run away and pretend you didn't see it and things like that. And you can just kind of I know what you mean. Bluff your way through it. But now I've noticed you can't do that anymore. So the CSCS now it's like they say you've either got to have professional qualifications or you've got to go on like a three day course or something to to pass it. They’ve kind of really... Oh yeah. It's been ramped up. Definitely. I mean, we've got various building surveying companies on the books and they thought actually, you know, this doesn’t apply to us. And then a handful of times in the past you've had building surveyors go through rotten floors when they're looking round a building or... Yeah. Disturb asbestos when they're poking around to see what's above and ceiling tiles, you know, and actually people on their own or in pairs poking around in empty buildings is actually as much of a risk as a building site. And these days, I think going back to what you were saying, the really big sites can be really safe places to be. And as a result, you'll actually find that your enforcing bodies like your HSE don't focus a lot of time there, because they know that the really big tier one contractors are putting so much time and resource into managing the sites really well. Yeah. And the stats that come out from the HSE every year show that in that the risk and unfortunately the deaths that occur are going on, on smaller worse managed projects or even projects with no management at all. Yeah. I remember, kind of a bit of a little funny story. I think it's funny anyway. When I was down at Bristol Airport, it was the first job I’d done using 3D software for modelling building services. Yeah. And I had to do a site induction because I was based down on site. And when I went in the induction room, I was waiting for them to set the video up and get going. So while I was there I just picked up the accident book and started reading through the accident book. And there was one that just made me laugh. And this guy had put, so he'd wrote it himself in his own words and he said, was on site, saw a big piece of plywood on the floor picked it up, stepped forward and fell through hole that it was covering. And I just thought How stupid must you be to do something like that? But. You shouldn’t laugh, but I mean, we've had stuff over the years. I read one on a site that said, removed two guys from site. They’d dragged the insulation to a site cabin and were doing roly polies off the top of the site cabin onto the insulation, and these are like grown men and they basically had ten minutes and thought, do you know what I'll do? I'll just do some backflips and rolly polies off the site cabins onto some insulation for abit of fun. Yeah. But, no, you shouldn't laugh at it, really. But... Yeah. Yeah, it’s the lack of common sense in a lot of cases. And that's why, you know, the old blanket rules that you get from these contractors. We talked about blanket rules on PQs, but you get them on sites where everyone's got to have all the PPE on no matter what they’re doing. Yeah. Stick to this rule. No phones. And the big contractors are getting really criticised for it. But I can understand why they do it, because they've just got to take like every equation off the table that could end up in something going wrong. Yeah. So anyway, getting back to I guess what you do and that. And I guess one of the reasons we've got you in as well is to try and talk about sort of how BIM can come into this now as well with the health and safety. I mean, we're doing certain parts of what we're being asked to do by our clients where we're identifying risks. Yeah. And we're putting hazard markers within 3D models. Yeah. And then they've got sort of data attached to them, which... Yeah....will identify what the hazard is and what the recommendations might be to sort of minimise the risk. Yeah. Are you seeing that now in what you’re doing? Yeah, so when we've been speaking with you, we see it and I've seen it a little bit elsewhere, but it's still a major opportunity in the industry. And I speak to my clients a lot about it. Part of what we do on the big projects like Project Safety comes under the CDM regulations, construction, design and management. And that's, you know, our role either as principal designer or CDM advisor through that project is to help mitigate risks. Well, eliminate risks that if we can at design stage. But anything that can't be eliminated just to reduce it to the lowest, like risk measure or risk total as we can. And then inform people about it. And you’re informing like 3 or 4 lots of people about it. The construction company. So for the construction phase. But then you also need to inform the end user and the end maintainer. Then essentially people who might demolish the thing in the future. Yeah. About it. And BIMs just perfect for that. You know it's intuitive and it actually makes it an interesting process. You know, At the minute things generally get run off risk registers which are inevitably excel, and it's just another Excel that a client's been given to look at. You’re giving things a risk score if you can't remove it, if you can't remove that risk. Whereas if you're presenting all this on a really great BIM, 3D model, it's just a lot more interesting and easy to deal with for the end client. Well I think It gives them the visuals as well, doesn't it? It does. You can get it so realistic now the 3D models that it makes them easier to visualise what... Yeah....what those risks are. 100%. And as you know, it can just be built up and laid up and altered over time. So if you've build it from the original build and then there's an extension built or a refurb done down the line that can just be added to it. So it becomes a really great live document. And that's the problem with all these things. It's things getting lost and that's a large part of what we do, is making sure the right information gets put in front of the right people to reduce risk on projects. So yeah, but BIMs like, there's companies already using it, but I'd say it's really like the top end and the higher end of the construction industry at the moment. But there's a lot of large organisations not using it who could be. So just moving on then to sort of training, something like we sort of pride ourselves on here is that we've created like an in-house training to try and train our guys. Yeah. Because we can't find any sort of outsource of training because again, one of the things we found with employing people is we can either get people who are experienced in building services, or who are very good with software and the technical side. We struggle to find sort of the combination. Yeah. So, we kind of looked at different things and we decided that if we can get the technical people in, we can sort of try and fast track their education on building services. So we've created our own in-house training to sort of upskill them and get them to that level as quick as we can. And have you done anything similar in your business? Yeah I think the best training in the worlds built bespoke. You know, you can you can go off a framework that's maybe like a minimum legal requirement for something or a minimum standard, but you have to, you know, you can't really pass on true experience from how you've learned to do the job really well unless you bespoke the training and, you know, there's a lot of good trainers out there. But, you know, I suppose it's the difference between attending a one day course or being on a training program, like what you've got on. And that's why, in what we do, they define competencies, skills, knowledge and experience. It's not just going on a course. You know, you could send anybody on the five day SMSDS course, which is what every site manager in the UK needs. It doesn't make them a great site manager. It means they've got a certificate. You could probably send someone who's just good at passing courses on that, and they’d get it, it doesn't mean they're ready to run a really big construction site with 200 people on it. Yeah. So I think you're right. you've got to build this up. So is that for you, a mix of site and office? Or how do you lay that up? Well, like say, we don't really go on sites that often. Yeah. But it's kind of, the guys who we employ. You see, when we're building a 3D model. Because they’re building a model of what will be constructed on site, they’ve almost got to have same knowledge as the people installing on site. Yeah. They've got to know, sort of, how things will be supported and everything. Get an idea of what the weight of things are to know where things can be best situated and everything. Yeah. They've got to know. I mean, I always go to the one of a commissioning set. So on a commissioning set, if you put it in, it commissions the amount of flow of water going through a pipe. Yeah. But that water can't be turbulent. It's got to be like a linear flow. So if you've got, say, a 100 diameter pipe before the valve, you got about five times the diameter. Oh right. So 5 times 100. So you’ve got to have, sort of, half a meter of straight pipe before that valve. Right. And then two and a half times after it. So 250. So your valve might only be 100mm long, but to fit it in you've got to have a meter of straight pipe and it's that sort of knowledge. Like I went to college and I did an ONC and HNC in Building Services. And they taught you how to design pipework and everything, but nobody ever taught me that. Said, if you're going to put in this type of valve, this is how you need to locate it. So there’s all things like that, that's the kind of knowledge we've had to try and put into our training to try and give our guys that sort of knowledge. Yeah. We've developed, we've got a second company called Grid Innovations and we've developed some development like tools and software’s just for this because we find that, first of all, in construction, there's a massive lacking of soft skills like negotiation, conflict management, all that sort of thing. But there's no tracking of people moving on to the next level of things. So it's a system of showing people's development through the career, rather than just saying, like a traditional training matrix, you've got the course, you're good to go. Yeah. This is like you've got the course. This is the start of a journey for you. Now we're going to at that point you’re just basically deemed like basic legal competence. We're now going to take you on to Best in class. And it's like a software that tracks that through and it's really important really because that will track obviously the skills, knowledge and experience. And you can't move out without that, without all those facets really. And like training and competence. It's just a journey, you know, everything moves so quick in both of our disciplines within construction that you have to be constantly at it. I mean, for us this year, the building safety acts changed in the last couple of years and that's involved sort of changes being implemented with building regulations. And it's something that, being honest, it's something that we dealt with and we felt competent in. But this has really upped the ante on what we have to do. And we’ll all have done 20 to 30 hours of CPD this year alone on that and on the new requirements. And that's us who are like the leaders of the business who are sort of more senior in the teams really, the younger guys are basically constantly training and constantly learning. Yeah. And then I know we just talked a little bit about BIM there, but sort of technology going forward in your specific industry, do you see apart from BIM, which hopefully will become part of your industry. But do you see any other technology that's coming? Like I know it's on everybody's lips at the minute is AI. Yeah. And I know we talked about it briefly before we sat down and do you see that coming into your industry? I mean there's technology everywhere and you just have to go to some of these trade fairs that there's just some incredible stuff and some of it's already saving lives. I mean, before we get on to AI, there's things around the protection zones around working diggers. What of a better word excavators in construction terminology, where sort of historically unfortunately there has been too many deaths from people getting crushed or coming into contact with these machines. But there's some great stuff out there for that. Hand, arm vibration stuff that's measuring the risk from that, from the equipment. You know, this sort of stuff has been around a while now, but then, yeah, you start getting the really smart technology. You know, I've heard of camera systems. Fatigue is a big killer. In what we do, if people are tired, yawning, they'll make a mistake. And then it's certainly on the high risk industries like rail and offshore fatigue, can cause deaths. Yeah. And, you know, you starting to get the beginnings of camera technology that can spot when somebody’s, say, daydreaming. Or... I have it in my car. Yeah, do you? My car comes up and it says you're looking tired. Yeah. Take a break. Yeah, that's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. That's brilliant that. And that's where it's getting to. And then what's a shame for me is a lot of the construction industry don't get to see what the top end looks like. So if you go onto these tier one contractor sites, they're already embracing a lot of this. Yeah. And for them it's just normal. Whereas if you took somebody off, even just like contractors that you’d see doing fairly big jobs around Manchester but aren’t tier one contractors, Yeah. they'd be blown away like even just things you know. I walked onto a tier one contractor site and it told us that on that zone of that site, there was three First Aiders, two Fire Marshals, one Mental Health First Aider and three Supervisors. Because it's tagging where the people with those qualifications are on the site at any given time. And it's so simple for them and they've been doing it for probably close to ten years. But you don't see it anywhere else. No, you can see that just with, like you say there, you go on these tier one sites and you struggle to get on some of them because of the health and safety and everything. But when you do get on there, you see how secure they are and everything. And then, just like you say, driving around, you'll see, I don't know, somebody working on an extension of a house or whatever. And you just see, like, no safety equipment or anything, and you imagine that's where in construction the accidents probably happen on there. Oh, without a doubt. It's going back to what you were saying before you know, the way safety is being taken up. Now, you know, we aren’t the demons really on sites. I go on the sites and the workforce they expect a clean site, expect amazing Welfare. Yeah. They expect a safe site. And if sites are inherently unsafe when you're on the good sites, the workforce will approach you or will get in touch and say this isn't good enough. Yeah. Whereas in the past, there was just a crack on and get it finished but maybe get hurt along the way. But it's totally different, particularly on the high risk, you know, people have got, well they've got a legal right to stand down, but their companies tell them all the time, just don't work if there's a problem, just stop. And they do, they'll stop and flag it and say, we need to redesign this job because, not as in redesign the whole building, but replan what we're doing this task because we can't go forward. And there’s just been a big cultural change. Yeah, I remember during Covid, I don't know if you saw the video where in China they built a hospital in a week. Yeah. And I watched and I thought, oh my God, I can't believe they built that in a week. And I thought in the UK that would take two years. Yeah. And I watched it and I thought the health and safety must have gone out the window. Surely doing something that quick you can’t have... I mean I have no idea, but you'd assume so. You'd assume so and this is the thing, I mean, that was all modular that they were throwing together. And modular is obviously, in the last ten years, been one of the big step forwards Yeah definitely. in construction. That I know you're involved in. Yeah. And you know I've been involved on some modular projects and it's really interesting seeing companies that are experienced at delivering it and then companies that have just tried getting into it and the safety was miles apart, because when people are used to doing it, there's minimal people on site and it is literally going together like Lego. Yeah. But then done badly it can be dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you say, I mean you hear people call it modular. So when we talk modular it's a bit like what you said. It comes together as finished units. Yeah. And it's put on site. The one we did in America, they come and it was like the size of porta cabins they were putting together and the bathrooms were in already. And it was all piped up and ready to go and everything. But then we also do, what we call either prefabrication or DfMA, which is designed for manufacturing and assembly. And they're more sort of you’re service modules that come to site and then they get installed but I mean for us that's one of the things I always say about it. One of the biggest advantages of it is the health and safety. Like what you were just saying there about they’re getting constructed and put together in a controlled environment where everything is how it should be. Whereas you go to traditional install and you get on a building site and like a day like today, where the light's not that great because it's getting a bit that time of year where the lighting is not good, the weather isn't great, it can be windy and you're trying to weld on site or something. Yeah. And it's just, you're not in that controlled environment to do things. Yeah. I mean we were just saying before on the health and safety. The health, it's not just the safety. I think, even in this conversation you’re leaning towards safety a lot. But like the health there, you know, dust is one of the biggest killers in UK construction, whether it's coming from brick dust or wood or just, you know, general construction dust. And it's, yeah, as I say, in the controlled, manufactured environments, they can have the, sort of, all the extraction kit there so that it's just not a problem, whereas it's a lot harder to control when the guys are out on site. The kit, you know, having hoovers out on site and all the extraction gear is like unwieldy. Yeah. They have to do it, it’s a legal requirement. But I can understand why somebody who has to walk a long way from the van doesn't bring all the kit sometimes. Yeah. You know, so if all that risks just taken away off site and done in a controlled environment. That is design and risk management in its finest really because it's eliminated the risk on the site and controlled it elsewhere really. So yeah, we're big fans of it. Yeah. Good. Well yeah, I see quite a lot of, sort of, crossovers between, your company and your industry and what we do. And hopefully in the future we can do some work together. Yeah, definitely. I'm sure we've got mutual contacts and everything and just need to educate some of these people on Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It'd be great to, certainly like the hazard mapping at the end of a project like, it’d be really great to have a look at that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Well. Thank you very much. Yeah. Thanks for coming in. Yeah. Thank you. Cheers for that. It's a pleasure. And hopefully people will enjoy it.