Health & Safety Improvement – Quick Win at Swansea

Nigel Street, Wharf/Minimix Transport Manager Readymix, reached out on Yammer to share a great solution to address this health and safety issue with a quick win, very low-cost solution.

On the Wharf there was around 100m to 150m of exposed wharf edge with no physical barrier in place to prevent vehicle access or to set a boundary for the non-pedestrian area. This was an issue as CEMEX is not the landowner and access is required to the wharf edge by Stevedores, ship’s crew and ABP staff.

Nigel explains: “I remembered a visit I had to Concrete Products at Wick as part of my role and business familiarisation back over 19 years ago, when I had a tour of Wick Products with Sue Townsend. I was aware of multiple sites in Readymix and Aggregates that had previously sourced ‘lego blocks’ externally at a significant cost and used them for demarcating areas. I remembered from my visit to Wick they used to have waste concrete moulds. I spoke to Sue who willingly agreed to start producing the Jersey blocks for us at Swansea.

The blocks were delivered and put in place by a local haulage contractor, FG Bond, who Wick Products used. By reaching out across different business areas within CEMEX, and with full support form Sue, we only had to pay for delivery and placement costs. This offered us a great solution to the problem at a very low-cost using waste concrete.

The benefits mean the movable edge protection will allow safe access for Stevedores and port staff without fixed structures requiring permission of third-party site owner. They can be handled by forklift or telehandler for placement around site, and for ease of movement during cleaning/housekeeping.

We have since discussed another batch to be delivered to our CEMEX Cardiff Wharf for similar uses and with other boundary demarcating purposes.

Well done Nigel – a fantastic initiative which will help towards achieving our Zero 4 Life goal.