helmet credentials

Storing credentials in your helmet!

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A Croydon civil engineering contractor have developed a pioneering new hard hat which contains their qualifications and credentials.

Scanning the QR (quick response) code with a smart phone gives access to personnel files with proof of identity, training history, medical details and emergency next-of-kin contract details.

Civil engineering and utilities specialist Blu-3 (UK) believes that the quick response (QR) code-based identification system, developed with Olive Media, improves site safety.

Access to data is restricted to those who have downloaded the bespoke Blu-3 app, but those with the app can access a company-wide database of employees and subcontractors.

Sarah Persad of Blu-3, who has led the development of the system, said: “This really is a breakthrough solution for ensuring staff are appropriately trained and certified for the roles they carry out on a site. Previously, if an employee was observed carrying out hot works one day and then driving a forward tipping dumper the following, the observer (potentially a client or site manager) could only assume that he or she had the appropriate training for both roles. They can now simply scan the worker’s hat and check that the appropriate training and accreditations are in place, resulting in real time, quick and easy competence checks.”

She added: “The beauty of the system is that the complete training record of a worker is held alongside their medical and emergency contact details, which is in full compliance with current data protection requirements. This system enables us to ensure that our ‘boots on the ground’ are competent to do the task and we know exactly who is on site, which is particularly critical in today’s security conscious environment.”

Preconstruction director Lee Lawrence added: “The training identification system stores records of an employee’s training history from CSCS and First Aider to Asbestos Awareness, Confined Space Training and PPE Awareness.
“We are continuing to develop the system adding more capability to support managers and supervisors on site and will be rolling the app out across its sites in the UK and Europe. We’re excited by the potential of the technology and know that it increases a contractor’s ability to manage its workers and maximise its health and safety awareness – a key must for all responsible companies.”

Source: The Construction Index

healthy towns

New builds could now become part of ‘healthy towns’

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NHS England is proposing 10 new healthy towns, with 76,00 new homes, where residents can win cinema tickets, low cost gym membership and money off their shopping bills if they hit their exercise targets, under plans by the NHS to promote healthy living.  

Bikes, running tracks on pavements and community gyms could also become perks of a house sale to encourage residents to become more active.

Citiesmode, an urban planning company who have beat stiff competition to begin designing one of the towns in Runcorn, are offering an urban obstacle course linking public gym equipment and sprinting tracks as well as free bikes, a community kitchen and universal wifi to help access healthy apps and virtual access to GP services.

Simon Stevens, NHS England Chief Executive said that “the much-needed push to kick-start affordable housing across England creates a golden opportunity for the NHS to help promote health and keep people independent.

As these new neighbourhoods and towns are built, we’ll kick ourselves if in ten years time we look back having missed the opportunity to ‘design out’ the obesogenic environment, and ‘design in’ health and wellbeing.

We want children to have places where they want to play with friends and can safely walk or cycle to school – rather than just exercising their fingers on video games.

We want to see neighbourhoods and adaptable home designs that make it easier for older people to continue to live independently wherever possible.

And we want new ways of providing new types of digitally-enabled local health services that share physical infrastructure and staff with schools and community groups.”

The first 10 sites have now been chosen and are:

Whitehill and Bordon, Hampshire – 3,350 new homes on a former army barracks. A new care campus will co-locate ‘care-ready homes’ specially designed to be adaptable to the needs of people with long term conditions with a nurse-led treatment centre, pharmacy and integrated care hub.

Cranbrook, Devon – 8,000 new residential units. Data suggests that Cranbrook has three times the national average of 0-4 year olds and will look at how prevention and healthy lifestyles can be taught in schools from a young age.

Darlington – 2,500 residential units across three linked sites in the Eastern Growth Zone. Darlington is developing a ‘virtual care home’ offer where a group of homes with shared facilities are configured to link directly into a digital care hub, avoiding institutionalisation in nursing homes.

Barking Riverside – 10,800 residential units on London’s largest brownfield site.

Whyndyke Farm in Fylde, Lancashire – 1,400 residential units.

Halton Lea, Runcorn – 800 residential units.

Bicester, Oxon – 393 houses in the Elmsbrook project, part of 1300 new homes planned.

Northstowe, Cambridgeshire – 10,000 homes on former military land.

Ebbsfleet Garden City, Kent – up to 15,000 new homes in the first garden city for 100 years.

Barton Park, Oxford – 885 residential units.

According to the NHS, options to be tested at some of these sites include fast food-free zones near schools, designing safe and appealing green spaces, building dementia-friendly streets and ensuring people can access new GP services using digital technology. The developments will reflect the needs of their local populations when working up their plans. Design questions being asked include: Why are children happy to walk all day round a theme park but often get bored on every-day journeys?  Could adventure areas be designed into streets to encourage walking and play? And for the aging population, how far away are we from a town where more older people live independently and safely in their own home, backed by better technology and social support?

The key facts presented by the NHS include:

Britain loses over 130 million working days to ill-health each year.

19% of children aged 10-11 were obese and a further 14 per cent were overweight in 2014/15.  The figures for 4-5 year olds were 9% obese and 13% overweight. In other words, the proportion of children who are obese doubles during primary school – from one in ten five year olds, to one in five eleven year olds.

Today only 21% of children play outdoors, compared to 71% of their parents when they were children, Design Council figures show.

A Design Council guide also estimates that a quarter of British adults now walk for less than nine minutes a day.

Physical inactivity is a direct factor in 1 in 6 deaths, and has an overall economic impact of £7.4 billion.

The Building Research Establishment has published a report on the cost of poor quality housing to the NHS. It estimates that the 3.5m homes in England that have serious hazards such as damp and pests has led to health problems that cost the NHS at least £1.4bn every year.

Professor Kevin Fenton from Public Health England stated that “Some of the UK’s most pressing health challenges – such as obesity, mental health issues, physical inactivity and the needs of an ageing population – can all be influenced by the quality of our built and natural environment.

The considerate design of spaces and places is critical to promote good health. This innovative programme will inform our thinking and planning of everyday environments to improve health for generations to come.”

gender pay gap

Can construction lead the way in closing the gender pay gap?

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According to a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) nearly half of construction workers predict the pay gap between male and female employees will be less than 15% by April 2018.

With the national average pay gap recorded at 18.1% in 2016, today’s findings suggest the construction sector could lead the way in closing the gap, if the employees’ predictions are correct. Indeed, more than one in ten respondents (12%) think that there will be no gender pay gap at all by April 2018, which marks the end of the UK Government’s mandatory gender pay reporting period. However, this positive sentiment is markedly absent in the nation’s capital, with Londoners in the construction sector predicting an average pay gap of 21%.

Sean Tompkins, RICS Chief Executive Officer says that although it’s great to see the sector expects the gender pay gap to be lower than the national average, today’s findings highlight that achieving gender equality in the construction sector requires significant commitment from organisations.

Encouragingly, there is a collective agreement from over a third of both men and women across the industry that companies are not doing enough to attract females into the sector. The findings reveal that it is primarily the responsibility of individual organisations, to invest in schemes and nuture more inclusive cultures that support women to hold more senior roles in the construction industry.

People often tackle diversity from the perspective that it is an issue to be addressed. RICS believes it should be approached from the other way round; diversity and an inclusive culture where you feel entirely comfortable being yourself in the workplace. This must be embedded as part of your business strategy and DNA because you simply cannot afford to not have a diverse workforce today and for the future. Increasingly, clients will expect it and to win the war for talent, you will need a diversity of visible role models.

In addition to tackling gender stereotyping and investing in training to upskill female colleagues, our findings confirm that flexible working is key, with over a third of women identifying more flexible hours as a means to encourage them to stay in the sector. RICS’s Inclusion and Diversity conference last month focused on the importance of building a diverse workforce and some of the steps that businesses can take. We also set up the RICS Inclusive Employer Quality Mark (IEQM) to set an example to organisations within our industry and have already seen 150 organisations sign up and learn from each other since its launch in June 2015.

leasehold

Leasehold ban for new builds

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The government this week announced plans to ban leasehold on future new-build homes, and cut ground rents on new flats to as low as zero.  Flats can be continued to be sold as leasehold, but ground rents will be restricted.

New legislation will close legal loopholes to protect buyers, some of whom have faced repossession orders after failing to keep up with the ground rent. The government will also change the rules on help-to-buy equity loans so that the scheme “can only be used to support new build houses on acceptable terms”.

Traditionally, houses have been sold as freehold, and the buyer has complete control over their property. When a house is sold as leasehold, the buyer is effectively only a tenant with a very long term rental, with the ground the home is built on remaining in the hands of the freeholder. The home buyer has to pay an annual “ground rent” to the freeholder, and has to ask the freeholder for consent if they want to make any changes to the property, such as building a conservatory or changing the windows.  Ground rents can double every decade, crippling home owners and in some cases making a property impossible to sell.

About 21% of private housing in England is owned by leaseholders, with 30% of those properties houses rather than flats, according to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government. A recent government report also found that 4million private homes in England, or one in five, are leasehold.

The proposals are subject to an 8 week consultation.