Building a new railway right in the heart of London brings many Health and Safety challenges. With work spread across 40 different sites, our challenges ranged from dealing with asbestos during demolition and enabling works, through construction risks during tunnelling, excavation and creation of new stations, to the logistical challenges of safely moving millions of tonnes of excavated materials through a busy city centre. The later phases of installing mechanical, electrical and public health systems, with volumes of new people arriving at Crossrail, multiple trades and a more transient workforce, have brought different challenges.
On Crossrail, we don’t call Health and Safety a priority – priorities can change from day-to-day to ensure we continue to deliver on time and within funding. Instead, Health and Safety is a value at Crossrail – our number one value. The Target Zero principles are clear: everyone has the right to go home unharmed; all harm is preventable; we have to work together to achieve this. Crossrail’s 6 pillars of Target Zero are rolled down into the supply chain.
As well as safety, health and wellbeing is a key focus for Crossrail with national standards for occupational health being embedded, into the supply chain to improve the health of the workforce.
Continuous improvement is essential to eliminating harm in our workplaces. Today’s world class performance is tomorrow’s business-as-usual and this Health and Safety learning legacy is intended to share with others the good practice and lessons that we have learned on the way.
Below are listed the key areas of the project that fall within the Health and Safety theme. Each of these topic areas contributed to the learning legacy of Crossrail.
