Bovis goes for zero tolerance

Bovis Lend Lease Scotland is challenging other contractors to adopt its zero tolerance approach to accidents.
Last year Bovis launched its Incident & Injury Free (IIF) policy as a company-wide initiative, and a year on, claims it is working well.
Managing director Harry Thorburn told CJ: "The whole point of IIF is to stop focusing on number crunching and targets. Industry shouldn't be saying it wants to reduce the number of accidents by X%; it should become intolerant of any injury. I'd like other contractors to adopt the IIF policy," he said.
"The approach is less about telling people what to do and more about asking. We want to achieve a buy-in from the workers and get them to take care of themselves."
Thorburn claims the Scottish Parliament project, which Bovis started in 1999, is a good example of where IIF is working well.
"We hold IIF meetings with every supervisor at the Scottish Parliament to get them to consider ways of encouraging their workforce to consider health and safety. We have also made safety glasses mandatory for everyone on site, including visitors," explained Thorburn.
Asked if there has been an improvement in safety at Holyrood since the adoption of IIF, Thorburn said: "Our aspiration is to have an incident and injury-free project, and I don't think we've achieved that yet."