Leiths Newsletter Issue 21 - Magazine - Page 12
HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT
ISSUE 21
Meet the HSEQ Team
Alex Mennie – HSEQ Advisor
When Alex joined the business in April 2023, the aim was to increase the
proactive Health and Safety site visits to the Contracting Division. The HSE
site inspections covers civils works, road surfacing, demolition, planing,
road markings, signs and traffic management.
Each Friday Alex has an HSE meeting with the contract managers from
both civils and surfacing to discuss the following weeks work programme
These meetings also focus on the previous weeks reports to discuss both
the positive interactions and if there are any negative points. Within
Markon, the weekly discussions are carried out on a Friday and Monday
with the individual line managers. There are occasions when, as part of our
contractual obligations with the client, HSE inspections are carried out at
set intervals throughout the contract.
In the last 12 months, a total of 97 site inspections have been conducted,
as well as 11 HSEQ audits. These site inspections have been carried out
across Scotland from Inverness down to the Scottish borders.
The HSEQ team are based at our Head Office in
Aberdeen and include Ewan Bennett, Group Health,
Safety, Environmental and Quality Manager, and our
HSEQ Advisors – Alex Mennie and Julienne (Jules)
Murray. You will most likely have seen them around our
offices and sites, and featured within Leiths News over
the last couple of years.
Jules Murray – HSEQ Advisor
Jules Murray had been in her role for 8 months and has settled in well as
part of the HSEQ team.
She has now visited most of our sites at least once, carrying out internal
audits and assisting with the external audit program.
Ewan Bennett – HSEQ Manager
Audits are a mix of reviewing paperwork, speaking to the teams on site
and having a walk round site checking the physical aspects – the quarry
itself, plant, vehicles, workshops etc. All aspects of the day to day running
of the site is looked at during internal audits. This covers Health and Safety
ISO 45001, Environmental ISO 14001, Quality ISO 9001 and Energy
ISO 50001 to ensure that sites are compliant with both the external
certification requirements of BSI & FEMAS - for Highland Lime Animal
Feed Products, and with Company policies and procedures. So far Jules
has completed 15 internal audits, and assisted sites with 16 external
audits.
Ewan joined the Company in June 2022 and has over 16 years’ experience
in both extractives and contracting. Ewan’s time is split between the
office and site visits. A large part of the workload is the upkeep of our
management systems for our external certification and accreditations.
which is with the British Standard Institute (BSI) as we have Health and
Safety, Environmental, Quality, Energy and Kitemark for our ready-mix
concrete plants. In 2023 we had 28 days of external audits and each of
these also requires an internal audit, that works out as over 11 weeks of
work for 1 person.
Other aspects of the job include helping to collate data for the monthly
IMM report and to assist with the production of the monthly Toolbox Talks.
Some less frequent but interesting tasks have been creating and updating
COSHH assessments, reviewing risk assessments
and method statements, and approving controlled
documents.
The days and weeks are varied with two days never being the same. Some
of the work is reacting to what has happened within the business and
some where the business is going. We are currently looking at adding
additional certification into both Lugton Lime and Highland Lime for their
products. In addition to these, work is being carried out on our carbon
footprint data. Ultimately the goal for the company to gain ISO 14068 –
Climate Change Management – Transition to Net Zero.
No two days are ever the same within
the Department!
LOST TIME INCIDENTS
We report on our accident/incident figures to the Company through the
Integrated Management Meetings (IMM) and we also report our Lost Time
Incident Frequency Rate to the Mineral Products Association.
At the end of October 2024 our 昀椀gure was 0.12, the industry 昀椀gure is
currently sitting at 3.28. This is down to you as individuals looking after
yourself and also looking out for your work collegues.
Remember that there are QR codes on noticeboards etc around the
business to report accidents, incidents and near misses – please use these.
If in doubt – STOP!
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