D M A Health & Safety

A Message from Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett, followed by D M A Health & Safety's best practice article

The ability to listen and learn from one another has always been vital in parliament, in business and in most aspects of daily life. But at this particular moment in time, as national and global events continue to reiterate, it is uncommonly crucial that we forge new channels of communication and reinforce existing ones. The following article from D M A Health & Safety is an attempt to do just that. We would welcome your thoughts on this or any other Parliamentary Review article.

Blunkett signature Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett
Pickles signature Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles

www.dmasafety.net

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
30 | DMA HEALTH & SAFETY
Managing Director Ben Mulley
Hamilton Gardens, St John’s Wood, 10 townhouses
with basement car parking and adjacent villa,
completed for Queensdale Properties Limited
DMA Health and Safety Limited provide bespoke health
and safety services. Their workload arises from health
and safety law, with the bulk created by CDM. The
practice was originally formed in 1994, with DMA itself
created in 2007 to facilitate succession planning. The practice
is now a second-generation family business, and they have
maintained an informal and relaxed culture which complements
the roots of the business. Managing Director Ben Mulley tells
TheParliamentary Review
more about the company’s manner
ofoperating.
At our peak, the practice employed eight technical health and safety staff, with
administration and management support covering four satellite locations. In recent
years, we have purposefully downsized, as a consequence of both increased
competition and a growing recognition of the importance work-life balance has to
both health and family life.
We have continued to run a healthy order book since the credit crunch, working
on projects such as community churches, educational institutions, council buildings,
residential developments, industrial sites and high-end dwellings.
Our company’s remit
Working in what is often an unpopular and routinely mocked discipline, we
witness a full range of workplace conditions together with varying levels of
managementcommitment.
FACTS ABOUT
DMA HEALTH & SAFETY
»Managing Director: BenMulley
»Established in 2007
»Based in Suffolk
»Services: Health and safety
consultancy
»No. of employees: 1 full-time,
3 part-time
»Second-generation family
business
»www.dmasafety.net
DMA Health & Safety
31DMA HEALTH & SAFETY |
CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING
Day to day, our typical activities
include communicating with others
to help them comply with their legal
obligations, undertaking site or
workplace inspections, and, principally,
working with people to drive
improvements and ensure that risk
management is considered from the
outset of construction projects.
Accident investigation is perhaps
the ugliest and most difficult of our
functions, but it cannot always be
avoided. It’s frightening how often
we bear witness to the willingness
of others to defend their right to
damage their own health and indeed
sometimes risk that of others. While
the industry was once dominated by
difficult characters, more and more,
the management of health and safety
is being received positively.
The CDM regulations
The latest version of CDM led to
some confusion in the industry; with
criticism from aspiring policymakers, it
released project teams from a statutory
obligation to appoint a health and
safety specialist.
CDM suffers from misunderstanding,
particularly in the more local and
sometimes even in the regional
construction markets. However, the
focus on intricacies and shortcomings
serves to detract attention from its
original purpose.
We look to manage risk from the point
of inception through to completion of
a construction project, considering end
use and beyond, while also working
with various project teams to achieve
this aim.
With any overall regulatory framework,
exceptions and interpretations are
created. The application of the
regulations fits the more prestigious
and organised side of construction
somewhat better than the private,
domestic and maintenance elements,
which have often been invalidated by
their higher-status counterparts. Distribution centre,
Amesbury, completed
for TJ Morris
We look to
manage risk
from the point
of inception
through to
completion of
a construction
project
“
“
BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE 2019
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
30 | DMA HEALTH & SAFETY
Managing Director Ben Mulley
Hamilton Gardens, St John’s Wood, 10 townhouses
with basement car parking and adjacent villa,
completed for Queensdale Properties Limited
DMA Health and Safety Limited provide bespoke health
and safety services. Their workload arises from health
and safety law, with the bulk created by CDM. The
practice was originally formed in 1994, with DMA itself
created in 2007 to facilitate succession planning. The practice
is now a second-generation family business, and they have
maintained an informal and relaxed culture which complements
the roots of the business. Managing Director Ben Mulley tells
TheParliamentary Review
more about the company’s manner
ofoperating.
At our peak, the practice employed eight technical health and safety staff, with
administration and management support covering four satellite locations. In recent
years, we have purposefully downsized, as a consequence of both increased
competition and a growing recognition of the importance work-life balance has to
both health and family life.
We have continued to run a healthy order book since the credit crunch, working
on projects such as community churches, educational institutions, council buildings,
residential developments, industrial sites and high-end dwellings.
Our company’s remit
Working in what is often an unpopular and routinely mocked discipline, we
witness a full range of workplace conditions together with varying levels of
managementcommitment.
FACTS ABOUT
DMA HEALTH & SAFETY
»Managing Director: BenMulley
»Established in 2007
»Based in Suffolk
»Services: Health and safety
consultancy
»No. of employees: 1 full-time,
3 part-time
»Second-generation family
business
»www.dmasafety.net
DMA Health & Safety
31DMA HEALTH & SAFETY |
CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING
Day to day, our typical activities
include communicating with others
to help them comply with their legal
obligations, undertaking site or
workplace inspections, and, principally,
working with people to drive
improvements and ensure that risk
management is considered from the
outset of construction projects.
Accident investigation is perhaps
the ugliest and most difficult of our
functions, but it cannot always be
avoided. It’s frightening how often
we bear witness to the willingness
of others to defend their right to
damage their own health and indeed
sometimes risk that of others. While
the industry was once dominated by
difficult characters, more and more,
the management of health and safety
is being received positively.
The CDM regulations
The latest version of CDM led to
some confusion in the industry; with
criticism from aspiring policymakers, it
released project teams from a statutory
obligation to appoint a health and
safety specialist.
CDM suffers from misunderstanding,
particularly in the more local and
sometimes even in the regional
construction markets. However, the
focus on intricacies and shortcomings
serves to detract attention from its
original purpose.
We look to manage risk from the point
of inception through to completion of
a construction project, considering end
use and beyond, while also working
with various project teams to achieve
this aim.
With any overall regulatory framework,
exceptions and interpretations are
created. The application of the
regulations fits the more prestigious
and organised side of construction
somewhat better than the private,
domestic and maintenance elements,
which have often been invalidated by
their higher-status counterparts. Distribution centre,
Amesbury, completed
for TJ Morris
We look to
manage risk
from the point
of inception
through to
completion of
a construction
project
“
“
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
32 | DMA HEALTH & SAFETY
For clients with small budgets and
multiple hazards, this risk management
can lead to something of a challenging
environment.
Changes in the sector
During recent years, the rise of
machinery has gradually changed
access-at-height strategies as well as
built construction forms. In supporting
offices, the welcome shift from paper
to electronic media has hopefully saved
otherwise healthytrees.
The erosion of quality control via
clerk-of-works-type roles and the
move towards design and build
construction has affected the industry,
with no shortage of instances where
cost-cutting has led to questionable
decisions being taken.
Mobile phones, which were used
at first as emergency call devices,
have become a continuous presence,
intensifying work (along with their
email counterparts) and arguably
decreasing the quality and skill of
general communication. The free time
that computers were supposed to
create for us is not yet apparent, and
neither is their application to reduce
travel by remote conferencing.
Looking forward
Our main initiative is to continue
managing health and safety. The
industry is being tasked with more
polarising topics, and these are things
we’ll have to bear in mind as we move
forward – for example, mental health
and nutrition being advocated by some
as the employers’ responsibility and
by others as state interference, which
some regard as loss to capitalism of
community, religion and in some
casesfamily.
We often find that people are being
asked to do more with less, and the
rewards their demanding careers
were supposed to bring are being
swallowed up by increased orders and
workplacestress.
One of our key challenges remains
keeping a healthy work-life balance.
Running a small firm, the hardest part
of this can be balancing enquiries with
forecast workload, and on occasion
explaining to prospective clients that
there is an amount of time which is
not available for sale.
We intend to take enough time to
ensure the buildings we assist with are
safe to build and to maintain, and in
turn that they are built and maintained
in a safe manner. In the process, we
hope that we can protect operatives
and others from the various injuries
that work can cause them and, in
doing so, reduce overall suffering. This,
at root, is what we at DMA Safety are
all about. For as long as we commit
to this ethos and keep on top of all
developments in the industry, I foresee
yet more success to come.
The free time
that computers
were supposed
to create for us
is not yet
apparent, and
neither is their
application to
reduce travel
by remote
conferencing
“
“
Health and safety starts in
the design phase
33_BCC |
CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING
Managing Director NeilHickey
Wexford County Council
Based in Glasgow, _BCC provides quantity surveying and
project management services to a wide range of clients. It was
founded in 1998 by Neil Hickey, who grew up surrounded
by architectural and interior design books, scale models and
design. His entire family are involved in the arts; his father was
a successful architect and his brother is an architect, while one
of his sisters went on to become a successful model in London
and the other went to art school. Neil, however, started working
in quantity surveying at 16 and went to college to complete a
quantity surveying degree. Following his part-time degree, he spent
a six-year period working in London as a quantity surveyor, then
returned to Glasgow and opened his own practice: _BCC.
The whole ethos of the practice is based around the arts. Strangely, we did not set
up to do this intentionally; however, looking back it seems obvious that this was
the direction the practice would take. We work on high-end design projects that
need an understanding of what the artist is trying to achieve. Architecture and
interior design touch everyone: walking down the street, turning a corner and then
entering a building is a journey through architecture and design. The difficulty in
these industries for the designer is time and money, which are in a constant battle
with design and quality. This is where we fit in.
We understand the client’s budget and time constraints as well as the designer’s
dreams and aspirations. How we connect these aspects is not found in any formula
for others to copy: it lies in our unrivalled passion for all the parties involved. We
search out a successful resolution between parties and manage the process to
FACTS ABOUT
_BCC
»Managing Director: NeilHickey
»Founded in 1998
»Located in Glasgow, Scotland
»Services: Quantity surveying
and project management
»No. of employees: 6
»Have worked on projects in
Australia and the United States
as well as all over the UK
»www.bccqs.co.uk
_BCC

www.dmasafety.net

This article was sponsored by D M A Health & Safety. The Parliamentary Review is wholly funded by the representatives who write for it. The publication in which this article originally appeared contained the following foreword from Rt Hon Michael Gove.

Rt Hon Michael Gove's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By Rt Hon Michael Gove

This year's Parliamentary Review comes at a momentous time for parliament, as we collectively determine the destiny of the United Kingdom. 

On October 31, the UK will leave the European Union. The successful implementation of this process is this government's number-one priority.

Three years after a historic referendum vote, we will deliver on the decisive mandate from the British people. Trust in our democracy depends on it. Until that final hour, we will work determinedly and diligently to negotiate a deal, one that abolishes the backstop and upholds the warm and close relationship we share with our friends, allies and neighbours in the EU. But in the event that the EU refuses to meet us at the table, we must be prepared to leave without a deal.

As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, it is my job to lead on this government's approach, should that scenario happen. Preparing for Brexit is my department's driving mission. But while I am leading this turbocharged effort, the whole of government is committed to this endeavour.

Ministers across Whitehall are working together to ensure that every possibility is considered, every plan is scrutinised and every provision is made. A daily drumbeat of meetings means that we are holding departments accountable, so that preparations are completed on time.

The chancellor has confirmed that all necessary funding will be made available. And we have mobilised thecivil service, assigning 15,000 of our most talented civil servants to manage our exit from the EU.

We will make sure that on November 1, there is as little disruption to national life as possible. Our trade relationships will continue to thrive, thanks to agreements with countries around the world worth £70 billion. Our country will remain secure, thanks to nearly 1,000 new officers posted at our borders. And the 3.2 million EU nationals now living and working among us can remain confident, with absolute certainty, of their right to remain in the UK.

Above all, our goal is to be transparent. Soon, we will launch a public information campaign so that citizens, communities and businesses are ready and reassured about what will happen in the event of “no deal”.

In my first few weeks in this role, I have travelled to ports and tarmacs, borders and bridges, all across the UK –from the seaside of Dover to the rolling green hills of County Armagh. I have heard from business owners and border officials, farmers and hauliers. They are ready to put an end to uncertainty. And they are ready to embrace the opportunities ahead.

Our departure from the EU will be a once in a lifetime chance to chart a new course for the United Kingdom. Preparing for that new course will be a herculean effort. But this country has made astounding efforts before. We can do it again.
Rt Hon Michael Gove
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster