Monday – Drive Safe

At Jones Engineering, we are proud to once again, support the CIF annual Construction Safety Week. The goal is to eliminate accidents at work, to drive continual improvement in safety and health performance, to celebrate best practice and to reinforce and promote the importance of safety, health and overall wellbeing in work and in life.

This Bank Holiday Monday we urge you to drive safely. Typically Bank holiday weekends can be more dangerous than others. This is because there are more people on the road who are travelling longer distances than usual.

We urge everyone to heed the advice from the Road Safety Authority and adjust your behaviour on the roads taking all necessary precautions. This advice includes factoring breaks into your journey, particularly if you are travelling with children and making sure you are well rested before you start your trip. Remember if you begin to feel tired, pull over, have a cup of coffee and take a 15 to 20 minute nap, then get some fresh air. This should allow you to continue driving for another hour or so.

Our goal is always to ensure our people return home safe to their families at the end of every day. Safety has always been the number one value for Jones Engineering. Priorities can change but values do not.

#DriveSafe #TeamJones #CIFSafety21

Tuesday – Mind Your Health

The #CIFSafetyWeek topic for today is Mind Your Health. Historically, construction health and safety has always prioritised the more immediately obvious physical hazards and their impact on site safety. But attitudes are thankfully changing, as people realise that the silent issue of mental health is just as dangerous and potentially fatal.

We have signed up as a Company Supporter to the Lighthouse charity. Lighthouse have recently launched their ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ campaign to raise awareness of poor mental health within our industry. ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ provides a huge range of pro-active support and resources for our construction community including a 24/7 Construction Industry Helpline, free app and mental health training. We would encourage everyone in the industry to take advantage of these fantastic resources at https://www.lighthouseclub.org/help-inside-the-hard-hat/

#HelpInsidetheHardHat #TeamJones #CIFSafety21

Wednesday 27^th Oct – Working Safely at Height

We’re halfway through #CIFSafetyWeek 2021 and today the topic is Working Safely at Height. As our EHS Manager Declan Grady put it, “CIF Safety Construction Week provides an invaluable platform to highlight areas of safety concern within our industry.  It is an opportunity to refocus and double down on our commitment to strive for an injury free workplace.”

Throughout the week, the Working at Height 3M Mobile demonstration unit will be providing awareness training to a number of our Irish sites. We have also arranged a selection of webinar events and socially distanced video screenings of the bespoke videos we have created with theatre-based learning company Theatre at Work. The online webinars are very interactive, and facilitate energetic discussions based on the roleplayed scenes. We are emphasising a focus on behavioural based safety training for both craft and management. We do this by focusing on choices and the influence of planning and contractor dynamics on risk awareness and safe working practices while working at height. This allows participants to examine their own role in influencing a culture of safety through effective safety conversations.

These types of workshops tie in with our Open Door Policy approach to Health and Safety. In Jones Engineering all levels of management have open ears and open minds. Our workforce is encouraged to share and discuss everything that happens from the ground up and new ideas are not just welcomed they are rewarded.

#TeamJones #CIFSafety21

Thursday 28^th Oct – Safe Lifting /Safe Plant

Today’s #CIFSafetyWeek topic is Safe Lifting; Safe Plant. As a company we pride ourselves on ensuring we have excellent safe systems of work in place to ensure the safety and health of all our employee’s, contractors and visitors to site. This topic will be covered in themed toolbox talks and events on our sites.

The CIF has many fantastic resources and in particular this link from 2020 is worth revisiting; https://cif.ie/2020/08/04/refocus-on-safety-safe-lifting-operations/  Here, CIF Safety & Training Executive, John Egan, provided an update on safe lifting in the workplace and Michael Norton, Managing Director, Proactive Safety has facilitated a brief video to advise of safe lifting practices.

Remember safe lifting is as much about preparation as it is about safe load securing and transportation. Prepare and prevent, don’t repair and repent!

#TeamJones #CIFSafety21

Friday 29^th Oct – Managing Hazardous Energies

Today’s #CIFSafetyWeek topic is Managing Hazardous Energies. We ensure all employees are aware of the seriousness of the substances through toolbox talks and regular training.

As #CIFSafetyWeek 2021 draws to a close we would like to thank all our staff for their energetic engagement and participation with a special thank you to our incredible Environmental, Health & Safety Team for co-ordinating training and events across so many of our sites. Our projects are located across Ireland, Europe and the Middle East and thanks to the bespoke videos we’ve created and the online webinar facilities available to us we have been able to extend our CIF Safety Week events beyond our shores.

As well as the important focus on safety, our teams have managed to enjoy some fun health and safety themed site competitions, safety quizzes and word searches. It has been another fantastic CIF Safety Week and congratulations to all the prize winners!

#TeamJones #CIFSafety21