Safety is a core value of Browne and has been for 50 years. We believe that sending our people home safe and well every day is the single most important duty we have as a business.  

We have built  a strong collaborative safety culture where leadership is encouraged at all levels with a particular focus on influencing behaviours and looking after each other. Our behaviours flow from our values and our family business culture.

Working with industry-leading businesses, we have demonstrated our ability to meet the industry’s most stringent health and safety standards and built long-standing relationships based on these shared goals. We have a principal objective of ‘target zero’ incidents in our business and operate a Health & Safety management system that we regularly review, setting new areas of focus and targets annually.

Industry-leading standards

• We are certified to ISO 45001

• We also maintain SSIP accreditation as well as UVDB ‘Verify’ (Category B2)

Employee training and review

• Our externally-recognised behavioural safety programme along with regular work shops and safety alerts ensures that safety is always front of mind with our team.

• We identify training needs against our competency matrix and set minimum training standards for operatives, supervisors (SSSTS), and operational managers (SMSTS).

• We ensure our supervisors are equipped with the necessary leadership skills to run safe sites, and all staff complete our Cultural Behavioural Safety programme and Crossrail’s Frontline Leadership programmes

Employee engagement and support

• We engage with our people and encourage involvement through an active employee safety committee, local project health and safety meetings, and daily task briefings as part of our commitment to effective co-operation and co-ordination. A recent safety innovation relating to cycling was recognised at the Thames Water annual safety awards.

• We are active members of a number of safety organisations that share safety improvement ideas with our fellow contractors and clients including Thames Water, South East Water and Affinity Water.

• All our staff have access to our occupational health programme.

Health & Safety calendar example

The wellbeing of our employees is of paramount importance to us here at Browne. That’s why our people receive training, regular communication and a targeted occupational health programme – all designed to help them stay healthy and happy at work.

We provide all staff access to wellbeing medicals and ask all new joiners to complete pre-employment questionnaires. We run campaigns throughout the year on topics like heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol and cancer to improve awareness of key health issues and organise screening clinics for staff.

We have adopted the Mates in Mind ‘Start the Conversation’ programme which has reached our entire workforce and supply chain. Currently 5% of our workforce are mental health first aiders (MHFA).