06 October 2022
Taking a holistic overview of the developments we manage, Property Managers gain confidence to make informed decisions regarding both performance and building safety management, explains Stephen Carbery, Director of Health and Safety at FirstPort.
Embrace digital capabilities
We now see how technology – and more specifically a good digital management system – has the ability to help us take a holistic approach to the buildings we look after, ensuring consistent standards of health and safety across a development’s assets, spanning entire portfolios.
Digital management systems – which hosts asset management platforms – are designed to store, organise, find, retrieve and share content from one place, – a ‘single source of truth’ on all developments’ assets – images, video, documents, and more. Real-time data, producing real-time action.
Effectively it ‘brings the back office to site’ so that site inspections can immediately be actioned– no need to go back to your desk to write up your findings and allows us to share good practice across all our developments. It also ensures no asset gets left behind – every lift, fire safety system etc is checked on time, in accordance with legislative or industry standards.
At FirstPort, we have implemented a digital health and safety system accredited by the British Safety Council (BSC), achieving their 5-Star Health and Safety grading for six consecutive years, and last year attaining ISO 45001 – an international standard for health and safety at work.
Good contractor practices
As our contactors are an extension of our team, it’s vital that we take a holistic approach to the way we work with them, equipping and supporting them to work to our standards.
By the end of 2022 all our contractors – from small local businesses to larger national suppliers – will be well on their way to being members of SafeContractor, a national health and safety accreditation scheme. Membership of the scheme, independent of FirstPort, gives us the confidence about the professionalism of everyone who is working on behalf of our customers.
Good digital capabilities play a role here too – making sure we are always meeting safety standards when it comes to our supply chain. Working with thousands of contractors it’s vital that we can use a digital platform to review risk management information, make sure our contractors meet our health and safety criteria and select the most appropriate contractor for the job we need.
With a holistic, digitally focused approach we can:
- Gain confidence to make informed decisions regarding both performance and building safety management.
- Be better positioned to identify points of failure, be it assets or where incidents could happen, highlighting risks before an accident/failure occurs.
- Highlight patterns of behaviour that previously may have been undetectable to drive continual improvements.
This also puts us in a good position for the forthcoming ‘Golden Thread’ requirements that means we have to be able to demonstrate that we have all the documents and records to actively look after a building and its safety throughout its lifespan.
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