Howard news

EDWINA PUTS IN THE EFFORT FOR HEALTH & SAFETY

February 2008

When management surveyor Edwina Crowley joined the Howard Property Group (HPG) last summer, she set herself the first task of carrying out a full Health & Safety audit of all of the properties and industrial sites owned by the company.

Edwina had worked for the Environmental Agency and was involved in many Health & Safety issues for multi sites, so she wanted to do a similar exercise for HPG.

The audit involved everything from reviewing fire risk and site risk assessments, to asbestos registers. This was some task, bearing in mind the Group manage in excess of one million sq m of office and industrial space all over the East, Midlands and South East.

"For the first 4 months of my new job, I spent so much time driving from site to site that I felt more like a company rep than a surveyor!" remarked Edwina. "I hadn't realised the company owned quite so much property, but it was an essential exercise that had to be carried out as meticulously as possible. As a company we have a duty to ensure everyone connected with our property is safe and the portfolio complies with all necessary legislation. We cannot put our tenants in any danger, or in the case of a development site, we have to make sure all our contractors conform to our strict H&S guidelines."

There are many duties that companies such as HPG need to carry out. Keeping all H&S reports up to date, checking the competence of contractors, making sure tenants are fully informed of any changes and fully monitoring the situation on a regular basis are just some elements of the continual requirements needed by the authorities. Benchmarking of risk consultants services and fee structure are also regularly overhauled.

"Once I had completed my audit, I put new systems in place to improve what we already did", said Edwina. "I think our H&S processes are now amongst some of the best. We take our tenants and contractors safety very, very seriously. So much so that I have now set up a direct link with all our tenants, they get a 24/7 response for any Health & Safety issues, fortunately I don't get many sleepless nights!"