Kier Highways’ mental health wellbeing campaign “Safety in Mind” is gathering pace with the release of a series of videos examining the pressures and dangers road workers face.
Charlie’s Story shows a road worker struggle to deal with the after-effects of a near miss he witnessed when working on the carriageway behind Kier’s new mobile safety barrier.
The film, which is part of a series of six, aims to raise awareness of the trained Mental Health First Aiders available across the business to provide support to those in need.
David Wright, executive director of Kier Highways, said: 'This week has seen ‘Time to Talk’ – a fitting time for us to release Part 3 of Charlie’s Story. Like most people, we know the industry isn’t great at tackling the issue of mental health, but this is our way of trying to do something about it.'
In the autumn of 2018, Kier Highways launched the mobile safety barrier with a safety video – Part 1 of Charlies Story. The footage shows a distracted road user colliding with the barrier while Charlie is working on site.
In December, Kier Highways followed this with Part 2 of Charlie’s story where we began to see the level of impact an incident like this can have on an individual.
Mr Wright added: 'When I first saw the mobile safety barrier video, it was obvious to me that there was a much bigger issue to address than simply demonstrating the safety attributes of the barrier. We know that being involved in any sort of accident can have a detrimental impact on the individual and their families and so we wanted to show that we understand this. We won’t leave people to deal with these problems alone.'
The plight to improve health, safety and wellbeing across the industry is being supported by a safety sub-group comprising key players in the industry, at all levels of the supply chain.
Partners of the Collaborative Learning Circle (CLC) have been meeting to focus on addressing key issues in a more holistic way.
Mr Wright, who is the founder of CLC, said: 'We can only raise the bar by working together. Industry changing safety initiatives that we have been involved with in the past such as the removal of carriageway crossings for TM crews, the use of SafetyCam to control site traffic speeds/minimise incursions in roadworks and autonomous operations to remove the people/plant interface have all been the result of us working closely with our partners. This group will help us to keep moving forward in that way.'
Video part one The footage shows a distracted road user colliding with the barrier while Charlie is working on site
Video part two We start to see the level of impact an incident like this can have on someone
Video part three In this video we find out about the role of trained Mental Health First Aiders available across the business to provide support to those in need.
