Utility Week

Operations & Assets Event Utility Week health and safety conference 1 November, Hilton Metropole Birmingham A long with ageing asset infrastruc- ture, the mental health of employees is important for companies to factor in when coming up with their health and safety strategy. And awareness of the issue has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Karl Simons, chief health, safety and security officer at Thames Water, took to the stage to speak about his company's atti- tude towards tackling problems with mental health among its employees. "Understand- ing the psychological health of the business and the organisation comes as a result of understanding the psychological health of individuals," he said. Simons talked through Thames' psycho- logical health strategy, "Time to Talk", which has trained more than 200 mental health first aiders. Thanks to the company's mental health initiatives there has been a recorded 46 per cent reduction in work-related mental health absences. Northern Powergrid's director of safety, health and environment Geoff Earl was keen to point out that vast improvements have been made with regard to safety. In fact, he said, people joining the industry in 2018 are ten times less likely to suffer a report- able injury accident than in 1990. However, he said that "hard lessons" had been learnt along the way. Meanwhile, Steve Cros, head of health, safety and wellbeing at Tideway, gave an insight into his company's immersive "Epic" induction programme – a compulsory course for Tideway's employees that features live actors in realistic incident scenarios. Another key theme of the conference was the role of technology in health and safety. Dylan Roberts, director of health and safety at Skanska UK, discussed how using tools such as augmented reality – a computer- generated image of a user's view of the real world – can help industries see beyond bar- riers to ensure a safer working environment. Using technology is beneficial in a health and safety environment because it allows workers in the utilities sector to see exactly where they are digging or drilling, so they are less likely to stumble across dangerous pipes or wires. Tony Leach, UK BU health and safety director of Engie, spoke about how the com- pany has used technology to improve the collection of data in its organisation. He emphasised how changing the way data is stored can help the sector innovate. "We have one single source of data and we are controlling that," he said. Utility companies know they have a duty of care when it comes to operational safety. During the aernoon session at the confer- ence, Severn Trent's head of health, safety, Setting your mind to health and safety The mental health of employees is just as important as their physical health – that was a key message emerging from Utility Week's Health & Safety Conference held earlier this month in Birmingham. Adam John reports. 20 | 23RD - 29TH NOVEMBER 2018 | UTILITY WEEK

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