Grace under fire

Central Market, under construction in Abu Dhabi, has won an award for site safety, an accolade partly put down to incessant training and tool box talk

“From Aldar’s point of view, there are three drivers of health and safety,” explains Broderick. “Moral, legal and financial.

“We take our moral responsibility extremely seriously. We want people to feel safe and secure when working on one of our sites. Our HSE policy is contractual – it’s in every document and all contractors get a copy, which is updated each year. Contractors such as Atkins and ACC also have site-specific contracts that will be completely individual to the project. No two projects will be alike.”

“And, finally, there’s the financial driver. Aldar, of course, has very good insurance for a project like this. Things like fire hoses on every level up to two below the top current working level is stipulated by insurance, which is very expensive. It pays for us to go that step further.”

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As far as regulations are concerned, Broderick highlights the fact that local authorities are fast catching up to those of western countries, with six sets of international codes set to be introduced later this year.

“Aldar has already been contacted about using our projects for case studies,” he beams. “In many ways, until now, we’ve had to be self-governing, as we’ve a huge reputation. Very few developers have HSE teams, relying on the project manager instead. We want to pave the way – safety is about lives. Sometimes, being a developer is not about financial decisions; it’s about doing the right thing.”

And working with the right partners, it seems.

“We’re really happy with ACC – they take it all very seriously. They’re experts in high-rises, but also experts in fire safety,” says Broderick, pointing out the net protection and triple barriers around the edges of the slab – regulations only require doubles.

So, I ask, hoping that I’m not tempting fate with my theoretical question, what exactly would happen if there was a fire on-site right now?

Bottomley fields this one. “Once the alarm has been raised, everyone would head to their designated assembly point where fire wardens – trained by third party assessors – control the area. Foremen count the men and wardens count the foremen, while guards control the street.”
 

There are regular drills on-site and the last one took 18 minutes in total, although this figure will obviously increase slightly as the building height increases.

A significant part of the process follows each drill when the HSE team discusses any problems that arose and how to put them right.