McGinley continues rail worker safety drive

All inexperienced employees supplied by McGinley Recruitment Services to the various railway maintenance contractors it serves will wear blue hard hats in future in order to make them more easily identifiable.

The blue hat policy was first introduced two years ago but has until now been restricted to those McGinley staff working in the Wessex area for Balfour Beatty. Amey/Seco Track Renewals recently called for something similar in the West Country, prompting McGinley to decide to go national with the policy.

Graham Ellis, safety and development manager for McGinley, said this week: "We knew it had worked well, so we had the confidence to roll it out nationally."

McGinley has 3,500 names on its database and in a typical week 800-1000 of these will be active. At any one time, less than a third of those at work will be blue hat wearers.

The company's policy has been to operate a one-to-three ratio of inexperienced/provisional PTS holders to experienced staff.  "We've stuck to that figure for 18 months and it has gone well," said Ellis,  "and so we're now moving to a ratio of one-to-one. A bonus of seeing blue hats is that you don't offer inappropriate tasks to these employees."