07 December 2012
Foremans Publishes New Paper - A Client's Guide to Health and Safety During a Construction Project
Foremans Relocatable Building Systems, the UK's largest supplier of refurbished Portakabin buildings, has published a new paper - 'A Client's Guide to Health and Safety during a Construction Project'.
Managing health and safety during the construction of a new facility is a complex and critical issue - and the human, financial and legal costs of getting it wrong can be huge. This new report provides organisations in both the public and private sectors with a comprehensive guide to ensuring the highest safety standards are maintained on a building site.
Commenting on the new report, Mike Williams, Managing Director of Foremans, said, "Good health and safety planning will not only help organisations protect their staff, reputation and the public but will help to ensure that a building project is well managed and that the risk of unexpected costs and delays is minimised."
"Our aim with this report is to help construction clients be more informed - whether a building project uses a site-based or modular construction solution. Far too many building sites still fail the HSE's safety checks and if the risks are sufficiently serious, enforcement action will be taken, either stopping work immediately or ordering improvements to be made. As most projects work to challenging deadlines, it is vital that clients verify their contractor's health and safety standards and procedures before work begins."
The new paper, which can be downloaded from the Foremans website, www.foremansbuildings.info/reports, offers 10 practical steps to help construction clients improve health and safety planning. These include:
- Verifying working practices
- The importance of method statements
- Preparing for access to the site
- Working at height
- Fire safety issues
- Safe electrical systems
- Selecting a building partner
- Useful resources.
Foremans' modular buildings are supplied in single and multi-storey configurations and can be designed and refurbished if required for a wide variety of uses, including offices, teaching blocks, transport depots and hospital ward accommodation.
Foremans will also purchase quality steel-framed modular buildings which have become surplus to requirements and will undertake the safe dismantling and removal operations with the minimum disruption.
Operating from its headquarters and production centre in East Yorkshire and its southern operational centre in Hemel Hempstead, Foremans offers a full range of modular construction services, including planning advice and submissions, Building Regulations approvals, funding options, and all aspects of the building design, space planning, project management, ground works, fitting out, delivery, site installation, testing and commissioning.
To download a copy of the new guide, visit www.foremansbuildings.info/reports.
Editor's Notes
The advantages of refurbished Portakabin buildings include:
- Programme times which are up to 70 per cent faster than new build, for earlier occupation
- Less disruption to existing operations during construction
- Foremans buildings can easily be expanded, reconfigured or removed to meet an organisation's changing needs
- High quality steel-framed modular buildings, which are built to last and require fewer ground works than site-based construction - further reducing cost, disruption and programme times
- The approach generates less than 10 per cent of the carbon emissions and uses less than 3 per cent of the energy during construction, compared to a newly manufactured building of equivalent size (source: MPBA/Arup).
- This is a highly thermally efficient solution. All refurbished modular buildings supplied by Foremans meet the requirements of the revised Building Regulations Part L2A 2010 (England and Wales) and Section 6 2010 (Scotland).
