On Wednesday 21st of March, the CLOCS team welcomed over 250 delegates to the CLOCS Annual Conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham. The aim of this year’s conference was to bring together regulators and planners, construction clients, principle contractors and HGV operators across the UK, all with a desire to embed a culture of responsibility for health and safety beyond site hoardings. The conference highlights included plenary presentations in the morning followed by networking and a varied timetable of ‘how to’ workshops to support the implementation of the CLOCS Standard.
The event was chaired by Chris Blythe OBE, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB). Chris opened up the day by showing delegates a video from Roadpeace, highlighting why it is imperative to learn lessons from serious and fatal collisions and how becoming a CLOCS Champion can drive positive change.
Anne Shaw
Keynote speaker was Anne Shaw, Director of Network Resilience at West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Anne focused on the WMCA, their vision for 2030 and the challenges that they face along the way. She said that despite these challenges they must work collaboratively to ensure everyone can move safely around the West Midlands, adding that Transport for the West Midlands, endorses the work of CLOCS and would like to see such more organisations adopt the implementation of road safety standards. View Anne’s presentation here.
Derek Rees
Derek Rees, Programme Director of CLOCS, spoke about the progress of CLOCS and the strategy for a wider national adoption. Derek highlighted the 500 of vulnerable road users (VRUs) seriously injured or killed were off site, compared with how many there are on site – four times more fatalities on the road than on construction sites, demonstrating the imbalance of effort within and outside of the hoardings. Derek then went on to discuss the CLOCS Strategy for a wider national adoption by ensuring every UK client, contractor and planning authority plan for safety and efficiency and all have a CLOCS implementation plan. View Derek’s presentation here.
Tim Brent
Tim Brent, Director of Logistics for Jacobs UK, focused on planning for safety and CLOCS. He talked about why construction logistics matter, how it is essential to the regeneration of cities across the UK and how it enables the provision of buildings and infrastructure to accommodate more people, housing and businesses. View Tim’s presentation here.
Martin Blake
Martin Blake, Principle Health and Safety Manager at the University of Manchester followed on from Tim to focus on Clients in Action, why procurement is essential, supplier relations and how to accelerate positive change. He also talked of the early success and key challenges faced and the lessons it teaches others. View Martin’s presentation here.
Tim Oakley
Tim Oakley, Head of Consultancy at LHC, explained how to incorporate CLOCS into client procurement and the need for client-focused guidance to ensure that clients procure for CLOCS compliant site operations and that principal contractors procure for CLOCS compliant fleet operations. You can view Tim’s presentation here.
After presentations, delegates were given the opportunity to take part in various ‘how to’ workshops to support implementation of the CLOCS Standard including, Procurement, Business Case for Implementing CLOCS, Direct Vision Standards (DVS) and Site Access Traffic Marshal Training.
Delegates were also able to enjoy the afternoon sunshine and join practical workshops outside the venue, including vehicle manoeuvring and exchanging places. The vehicle manoeuvring workshop was delivered by Balfour Beatty and allowed the drivers to experience what it is like to be totally reliant on the signals of a traffic marshal.
The second practical workshop lead by Powerday, was an ‘Exchanging places’, which used two stationary HGV’s, a mat to provide scale and proximity and a bicycle. The aim was to allow people to sit in the cabs of different vehicles to appreciate the limited visibility for drivers and the risks to cyclists and pedestrians.
The CLOCS conference drew to a close later that afternoon with attendees taking advantage of a free ticket for the National Motorcycle Museum next door to the conference, housing the largest collection of British Motorcycles in the world.
The CLOCS team would like to thank all of our speakers, workshop leaders, exhibitors, CLOCS Champions and attendees who joined us for this event and also to our event sponsors, Fleet Source Ltd The CIOB.
We look forward to seeing you all in 2019!
