Taking the lead

QPM's HSE director Wayne Harris (left) with guest speakers.

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Contractors, developers and all companies involved in construction should take the lead in creating sustainable, workable health, safety and environmental practices, delegates at the first annual HSE in Construction Conference, hosted by QPM and Construction Week were told.

Held in the Qatari capital past week, just days after the Gulf state was granted the rights to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the conference was targeted at HSE professionals working in the country in a bid to raise standards throughout the construction industry.

Guest speakers included Dr Elias Choueiri, director general of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport in Lebanon; Julie Tuck, senior associate at international law firm SNR Denton; David Morris, chairman of NEBOSH; Belal Kayyali, vice president of HSE at Greek construction firm CCC; Karl Simon, regional director of construction and integreated management systems at Hyder; and Martin Hoerlesberger, manager of the high-rise engineering team, Doka Middle East.

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The conference was opened by QPM’s CEO Dr Nasser AbdulRahman Kamal, who said: “Qatar stands stronger than ever, and it is time for our nation to represent the Middle East, its culture and its people. This achievement demonstrates an important moment in our history, and we must salute those who have made this accomplishment possible. Those whose hard work has led us to victory, those who believe in Qatar’s unrelenting potential.”

“In light of our nation’s most recent achievement, I would like to suggest that the time has come for the region to share its knowledge and adopt best HSE practices across the board.”

“Connectivity, collaboration, leadership and vision will carry our leadership in to the future, and that environmental protection, health and safety will become the currency of our success.”

“The objectives behind creating this forum is ensuring employees, companies and the countries in which they reside gain more information about leading practices in HSE as well as access to the industry’s latest technology.”

QPM HSE director Wayne Harris said Dr Kamal’s vision was a fresh and long overdue initiative for the region.
“If you look at HSE at present levels, and I’m talking globally, we’ve hit a plateau – we’ve stagnated over the past 10 years. We’ve put a lot of investment in, and a lot of time, but we’ve reached a level where we’ve plateaued.

“That’s because we’ve taken a very generic approach to HSE. We see this cut-and-paste approach to management a lot, and once you start to do that, there’s no growth: you just sit there at that level and you accept that that is the way things will be. We’ve got to snap out of this.”

He also said that attitudes towards measuring accidents and fatalities also needed to change. Simply compiling statistics isn’t a measure of effective HSE management, and it was a dangerous approach, Harris said, because it meant companies tended to rest on their laurels, rather than introduce comprehensive HSE directives.

“We’ve got to get away from very old-fashioned approaches to performance which are measured on zero fatalities and zero accidents. Yes, it’s a way to measure it, but it’s not really a true measurement, it’s just a statistic,” Harris said.

“We’ve got to get away from the general approach of being happy to measure accident statistics simply because we’ve had a good year, because the next year, we could have a disaster.”

That, he said, was a key message that contractors and developers needed to bear in mind. In building a brand, a company relies on its credibility and reputation. Reputations, he said, took years to build and moments to destroy – but stringent, transparent safety measures should be viewed as business assets.