Delta-Simons Celebrates Double RoSPA Gold Award Win This National Safe Digging Week

Monday 4th to Sunday 10th July 2022 is National Safe Digging Week in the UK. A week dedicated to ensure everyone, in both domestic and business settings, is aware of the pipes and cables below the ground – and the dangers of striking them.

According to the Energy Networks Association (ENA) in 2020, 354 people have suffered life-changing injuries after striking a live underground electricity cable in the last 5 years with nearly a third of tradespeople not always checking for underground cables. Failures in health and safety can cause massive disruptions and costs to business and immeasurable costs to the individual’s quality of life. 

National Safe Digging Week

Line Search Before You Dig (LSBUD), the UK’s leading online safe digging resource, launched the National Safe Digging Week campaign in 2019 in response to the rise of digging activities in domestic households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-pandemic, the UK is experiencing a digging boom with the Government looking to kick start the economy through investment in large-scale infrastructure projects.

The HSE recorded 142 workplace fatalities in 2020/21 and a further 1.7 million workplace-related injuries  It is now more important than ever to continue reinforcing the ‘search before you dig’ message especially during the summer months when workers and home improvers are likely working longer hours due to British Summer Time (BST). Additionally, on construction sites, there may be an uplift in the number of temporary workers on-site to cover for an influx of trade and holidays.

According to LSBUD, the 5 biggest risks of digging blind are:

• Serious injury/death
• Causing environmental harm
• Triggering substantial flooding
• Cutting off power for your neighbourhood
• Leaving neighbours without broadband and the ability to WFH

Whether you are in a domestic setting looking to do home improvements, seeking to commission a contractor or are a large scale operator, the importance of ensuring you and your team are working safely can not be overstated. 

Award-Winning Safety Practices

We are proud to announce that the Lucion Group, parent company of Delta-Simons, has been awarded two prestigious, internationally recognised, Gold awards from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) for the fifth year in a row for our outstanding health and safety practices. 

Lucion Group’s Chief Technical Officer Ross Boulton commented on the achievement:

“The RoSPA award schemes provide invaluable bench-marking of our health and safety management systems. To achieve gold standards, we've learnt that our approach to health and safety has to be far more than simple corporate policies and well-meaning intentions. We've had to be innovative in our approach and lead a culture of continuous improvement. 

Our overall QHSE programme is focused on raising awareness, understanding and participation of individuals. Therefore, I'd like these awards to be seen as a testament to the work our employees are doing on a daily basis to keep our workplaces, and those of our customers, safe and healthy.”

What is involved in RoSPA submissions?

RoSPA submissions require a lot of time dedication and out-of-the-box thinking. They should not be underestimated or mistaken as a simple audit conducted by an external company. RoSPA submissions are extensively detailed submissions detailing how an organisation continually improves its health and safety standards and procedures year on year.

As a market-leading environment, health and safety consultancy, our team encourages all organisations to champion their health and safety practices and champion the individuals within their organisation to help continuously improve their health and safety practices. We believe in knowledge sharing to ensure organisations from a wide range of industries look to protect both their own teams and other contractors on-site as well as other stakeholders. With this in mind, we thought we would give you an insight into what it takes to achieve and maintain our Gold standard (beyond the very late nights and countless hours of writing).

RoSPA submissions involve responding to various questions relating to how, as an organisation, we manage:

• Safety Leadership
• Workforce Engagement
• Active Monitoring
• Accident Investigation
• Performance Reviews across the Group
• Rigorous auditing process to ensure compliance with external and internal health and safety guidance, regulations, and policies

Working closely with Lucion Group’s Chief Technical Officer Ross Boulton, the Technical Team and our bids writers, we collate information and use our best examples of health and safety management, practices and innovation that we have implemented during the past year. 

As well as covering our assurance metrics data, internal training and auditing practices, we also include our homegrown innovative health and safety initiative, Take Care Be Aware (TCBA).

What is Take Care, Be Aware!

As an acquisitive organisation, the Group has significantly grown during the past 12 months, acquiring three new companies since April 2021, with Delta-Simons completing our own acquisition of Ground Engineering Limited in May 2022. As we continue on our growth journey and expand our community team members, we established and continue to develop our internal health and safety initiative, Take Care, Be Aware (TCBA).

Each year, team members from each of our regional offices (both national and international) vote for a health and safety expert who acts as a representative and contact for colleagues internally. The team works together to continue to promote high standards of health and safety across the company.

Our TCBA initiative works on a two-way feedback system. All team members are encouraged to submit observations, suggestions for improvements, near misses and accidents and these are reviewed and used to educate the development of our health and safety practices.

What it takes to achieve Gold

RoSPA submissions take a collective effort from multiple stakeholders and around 3-4 weeks to complete including; drafting responses, revisions and collating all the evidence.

Achieving Gold is imperative for our organisation as it demonstrates to both current and potential clients and the industry, that our approach to managing safety, health and wellbeing is continually improving and that we are a supplier of trusted sustainable risk management services.

Beth Wynne, Lucion Group’s Bid Team Leader, commented:

“RoSPA is a great thing to be involved in as we highlight our innovative and progressive safety practices within the Lucion group. By working collaboratively with Ross Boulton (Lucion Group Chief Technical Officer), Lucy Armstrong (Lucion Group Communications Director), Chris Parr (Lucion Services Technical Director) and Kelvin Hughes (Delta-Simons Technical Director we find areas that we can improve on going forward, helping with policy and procedure development and ultimately improving safeguarding for our Teams and clients.”

About Delta-Simons

Delta-Simons is a multi-disciplinary environmental and health and safety consultancy providing trusted advice and solutions to ‘Protect People and Planet’ through facilitating sustainable development.

We work with clients from multiple sectors including; industrial, commercial & residential developers, retailers, industrial manufacturers, fund managers, institutional investors, hi-tech companies, the public sector and charitable organisations. For the past 30 years, our team has provided a holistic suite of commercially astute environmental services and advice, designed to mitigate risk to both people and the environment, whilst removing the pain from planning or maintaining buildings and/or assets.

Through our thought leadership activities and shared learning, as well as being a founding member of the Inogen Alliance – a global corporation of consultants that provides worldwide coverage through one point of contact for environmental, health, safety and sustainability solutions for multinational organisations – we understand the importance of knowledge-sharing and storytelling to increase visibility and subsequent action needed to mitigate climate change and contribute towards a positive future for the planet.

As part of the Lucion Group, we are a national provider with regional presence with a team of 500 employees, the majority of whom are field-based technical specialists with skillsets in 50+ environmental consultancy services, including hazardous materials, ecology, air and water services, geo-environmental and sustainability among others.

Our team of trusted consultants provide critical insight into environmental challenges and develop the framework of solutions for you to envisage and develop sustainably. We provide tailored solutions and embed best practices so that you can progress your project with complete confidence.

Partner with an award-winning, secure supplier for your environmental, health and safety services and get in touch with our team today.