As the operator of England’s motorways and major A-roads, Mike Wilson says the organisation is proud to say that the safety of road workers and road users has always been the organisation’s top priority. Add to this office employees, and you’ll start to see where Highways England is going, creating an organisation where health and safety is more joined up than ever before and ensuring everything its workforce does ensures they road users get home safe at night, every night.
“By implementing a step change, and setting ourselves new goals, we’re ensuring we maintain a culture where safety is embedded deep within our daily operations and those of our supply chain. This is vital because more than 90 per cent of the work delivered on our roads is carried out by our contractors so we need them on board. Then there are our own traffic officers (in high-vis jackets) clearing incidents in support of the emergency services and as a further example, civil engineers and project managers out on site.
Yes, the risk on-road and on-site is obvious – but that doesn’t mean the health, safety and wellbeing of those working in our depots, offices, and regional control centres should warrant-less consideration”, says Mike.
While Highways England delivers the government’s Roads Investment Strategy, with £15 billion of projects across the country until 2021, it has to ensure it’s on top of health and safety at all times and constantly improving to deliver on time. As a newly-formed government-owned company there is even greater emphasis on improving the experience of everybody who uses roads. But they are adamant this should absolutely never come at the expense of safety.
“We recently published our overall health and safety approach which now provides clarity over the interaction between road users, road workers and our staff. It’s our starting point that no one should be harmed when travelling or working on our road network and we’re committed to reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured by 40% by the end of 2020.
But there’s a wider array of goals that feed into this including improving the safety, health and wellbeing of our workforce. We’re looking at innovative and safer ways of working across the country, driving improvements in health and safety management so we’re even more proactive and less reactive,” added Mike.
To do this Highways England has given each executive director the ownership of different goals at the highest level so they can drive improvements through their teams and report back regularly to the executive and board safety committees.
Then there are the road and construction workers on the ground and Highways England is ensuring they take personal responsibility for their safety and the safety of others as well as encouraging managers and workers alike to have open dialogue about any further risks they identify.
“My point is that safety is an integral part of everything we do, from recruitment to procurement and from performance management to stress management. For example, we certainly want to make our occupational health services at Highways England more widely available to support our own people so they remain fit and healthy at work – for themselves and for our customers. We’re doing more to identify the best ways to measure office based employees’ health and safety and developing new wellbeing programmes,” said Mike.
Mike Wilson has been the Chief Highways Engineer at Highways England since September 2013. His responsibilities include technical support to enable the organisation to deliver the Roads Investment Strategy, a six-year programme.
Previously Mike led the development of Smart Motorways for the then Highways Agency and was Regional Director responsible for the maintenance, improvement and long-term development of motorways and major A roads in the South West, East Midlands and East of England. Mike led for the Highways Agency on all aspects of operational policy including for maintenance, incident and emergency management.
