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Civil engineering company hits 300,000 hours without lost time incident on offshore wind project

A civil engineering company has reached 300,000 hours without recording a single lost time incident (LTI) as part of its work on the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

Jones Bros Civil Engineering UK is delivering the land-based infrastructure for the first two phases of Dogger Bank Wind Farm, near Hull.

An LTI is an injury sustained by an employee that leads to a loss of productive work time, which means they are unable to perform regular work duties.

Key to avoiding this has been developing the right culture, which has included making sure all employees are taken seriously whenever they raise a concern.

Steve Ollerhead, Jones Bros project health and safety manager, said: “Keeping a site team safe may well be its own reward, but it also has benefits in keeping a project on-track and to schedule by ensuring a team doesn’t have to stop to deal with incidents.

“Here at Jones Bros, we’ve developed a fantastic culture of openness across all levels, which means if ever there is a problem, or even the potential for one, we get to hear about it straight away and can put systems in place to keep everyone safe.

“At the end of the day, it’s the operatives on site that would be hurt if things went wrong, so we make it a priority to make sure whenever they flag an issue up, they feel like they’ve been listened to.”

James Lockwood, Jones Bros project manager, said: “Safety on site is of the highest importance, especially in the middle of a pandemic, so we’re very pleased to have hit this health and safety milestone

“I’d like to congratulate everyone that has worked on the site for contributing to this by closely following our guidelines. We have dozens of staff here at any one time, and they all have to play their part.

“I also want to express our gratitude to both Jones Bros’ and our clients’ health and safety teams for their support, without which this would have been much more difficult.”

Jones Bros is currently installing high voltage power cabling on site, with more than 80 miles set to be used to connect the first two phases of the offshore wind farm to the national grid over a 20-mile route.

The company is also working on joint infrastructure for the third phase of Dogger Bank Wind Farm and the Sofia Offshore Wind Farm on a site near Redcar.

Onshore project manager for Dogger Bank A and B, Ollie Flattery, said: “As a key contractor in the development of the onshore infrastructure for Dogger Bank Wind Farm, it is very pleasing to see Jones Bros maintaining the high safety standards we all aspire to on the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

“We thank the Jones Bros team and congratulate them for achieving this important safety milestone. The safety of those working on the project, and the wider public, remains of paramount importance as we progress our work to install the infrastructure that will provide renewable energy for 6 million UK homes.”

Dogger Bank A and B is a joint venture between SSE Renewables (40 per cent), Equinor (40 per cent) and Eni (20 per cent), while Dogger Bank C is a 50:50 joint venture between SSE Renewables and Equinor. Sofia Offshore Wind Farm is 100 per cent owned by RWE.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sam Harris .