Our Safety Innovations

We’re using the latest technology to reduce the risks our people and supply chain partners are exposed to.

Innovation has a key role in keeping people, construction sites and the environment surrounding them, healthy and safe.

Technological advancements including off-site manufacturing, virtual reality simulators and other automations are moving work into safer, more predictable environments. This allows us to devise how to deliver tasks and projects safely and in a way that has the least impact on the environment.

Balfour Beatty continues to invest in and roll out preventative measures through safety innovations such as 3D and 4D computer models that are produced by our in-house visual design team. This allows our project teams to test processes and procedures virtually before doing things on site.

Recent programmes have also demonstrated how digital rehearsals strengthen planning discipline on complex works, helping teams anticipate challenges earlier and embed safer sequencing before arriving on site.

The tools we use are becoming lighter, faster and more responsive and new technologies, such as drones are reducing safety risks by making it faster and safer to inspect our construction activities, especially those at height. 

Across several major projects, enhanced plant safety measures – including improved equipment monitoring and strengthened maintenance regimes – have also helped reduce plant-related incidents and support safer interfaces between people and machinery. 

We will always continue to look for new ways to reduce the risks to our workforce. 

Some of our recent safety innovations include:

As team leaders and the first point of contact on our sites for many, supervisors play an important role in our day-to-day operations. Our Supervisor Passport is a two-stage training scheme focussing on key competencies. The Passport helps supervisors get up to speed faster with working on Balfour Beatty sites, equipping them with the skills they need to reduce the risk of incidents and makes sure health and safety remains our top priority.

Following the successful launch of our Supervisor Passport training programme for supervisors employed by Balfour Beatty, we are undertaking a phased roll-out of our Supervisor Passport to supervisors who work on our UK projects and are employed by our supply chain partners.

A high potential incident (HiPo) where the consequences could have been much worse is a call to action and an opportunity to learn.

Observations play a vital role in Balfour Beatty’s drive to achieve Zero Harm and ‘Report all unsafe events and conditions’ is our third Golden Rule. To help people make observations we launched a new version of our Observation App across the UK and US, responding to feedback raised via My Contribution, the company’s employee-led change programme.

The new version of the app makes raising an observation quick and easy, streamlining the process to ensure the right information gets to the right people quickly, allowing people to be on-site doing their jobs rather than being tied up in offices filling in forms. The Observations App – downloadable freely on app stores – enables reporting to ‘celebrate the good’, ‘fix the bad’ and learn lessons from both.

On several programmes, improved observation quality and volume have strengthened proactive reporting cultures, helping teams identify trends earlier and act before issues escalate. 

One example of Balfour Beatty demonstrating leadership, setting the benchmark for best practice, and using its scale to help drive health and safety improvements across the sector, was in making cabbed dumpers mandatory across our UK sites.

Following reports of near misses around excavators and dumpers, Balfour Beatty worked with its supply chain partners to introduce impact-tested cabbed dumpers – the first in our industry to do so.

The use of cabbed dumpers, where the cab is enclosed, has health and safety benefits for the operator as it provides better protection should an incident occur. The operator can also stay in the cab whilst being loaded removing risks associated with getting on and off a dumper.

Some of the cabbed dumpers have the added benefit of being able to be driven by the operator in the direction that he or she is facing by rotating the seat, removing the need to reverse the vehicle – making the operation safer all around. The cab also ensures a better working environment, allowing workers to operate in a dry air-conditioned cab rather than an open-air seat.

Alongside cabbed dumpers, other plant safety developments trialled on recent projects – including safer refuelling methods and redesigned equipment interfaces to eliminate working at height during plant operations – are helping to further reduce risk.

SafetiBase is an award-winning system designed to improve the identification, management and communication of health and safety hazards for construction projects, allowing the sector to be increasingly data-driven in how it addresses health and safety risks.

It was developed collaboratively by a number of industry partners including Balfour Beatty VINCI, 3D Repo, AtkinsRéalis, Mott MacDonald, Laing O’Rourke, Costain, Bentley, HS2 and Tideway. Funded through i3p and Innovate UK, SafetiBase stores structured health and safety risk data in the cloud to provide a better way to manage health and safety information than the unstructured and complex landscape that existed previously.

SafetiBase allows users to identify and manage health and safety risks within a 3D model. By using a common coding language, it can be used to benchmark project safety performance and easily share lessons across disciplines. As it is a fully integrated element of the 3D Repo platform, users from any discipline, skill level or location can easily collaborate to mitigate risk in the context of the 2D, 3D or 4D model.

Users can draw on previously identified health and safety risks to inform the identification and mitigation of risks on their projects. The system records the issues that have been considered, actions taken and who has responsibility.

SafetiBase has been designed to conform with PAS 1192-6:2018: Specification for collaborative sharing and use of structured Health and Safety information using BIM.

SafetiBase is currently being utilised for some of our clients such as HS2 main civil engineering works and Old Oak Common station projects and for National Highways on the Lower Thames Crossing.

To find out more about SafetiBase on their website.

We have mandated a digital permit platform to be used across all Balfour Beatty’s UK projects and contracts.

The web-based system, which can also be accessed via app for iPhone and Android, is a one-stop-shop for requesting, issuing, approving and signing-off all work permits required when working on our projects.

Digitising the permit process means we’re able to provide automated and accurate reporting in real-time for our customers, providing a leaner, more efficient, sustainable and secure experience.

Digital permits have also strengthened control of high-risk activities, such as concrete pumping and lifting operations, by ensuring checks are completed consistently and recorded in real time across diverse project environments.