HIGHWAYS ENGLAND BLUE STAR AWARD
The prestigious Highways England Blue Star Award – an accolade awarded to projects which demonstrate exceptional performance or innovation.
The latest Blue Star award has been presented to the M27 motorway upgrade scheme for safety innovation, after McCann introduced industry-defining hand protection for the workforce on the project, with the support of Bam Morgan Sindall Infrastructure Joint Venture (bmJV).
At STALSEN, we are delighted to have partnered with McCann to introduce the Rayza RX565 glove to replace their standard issue work gloves, in order to reduce the risk of hand injury, improve hand health, reduce environmental waste, and improve operative satisfaction and uptake.
McCann were facing a common challenge in the workplace where standard issue gloves were not adequate, as McCann’s Project H&S Manager Dave McPherson summarised: “We consulted our workforce and much of the feedback we received suggested that no single glove offered the right levels of comfort and dexterity for multiple jobs. This means that operatives frequently change their gloves throughout the working day, often multiple times per hour – creating barriers around practicality and convenience. This can create a vicious circle because if products are not popular with operatives and they don’t like wearing them or they wear the wrong glove for a given task, we can end up with a higher probability of accidents. All of this makes it harder to achieve high levels of compliance – creating an ongoing challenge around ways of thinking about hand safety.”
Because of the way we work at STALSEN, starting with the challenge and not with the glove, we took the brief from McCann, applied our experience, and as a result the Rayza RX565 seemed the perfect answer.
The beauty of the RX565 is the story of innovation that formed its three-layered design, as the graphic below outlines.
While ensuring a high level of cut protection, the Rayza RX565 also enabled a vast improvement in hand health. Either from wearing no gloves, or from wearing the wrong glove, wearers previously faced a significant risk of developing serious long-term health problems associated with uncontrolled exposure to concrete or other hazardous materials, including sensitization to chemicals and occupational dermatitis. The Rayza RX565, being fully coated rather than open-backed, ensures that the whole hand is protected at all times.
Crucially, all of this protection is achieved without sacrificing dexterity – which is vital, so that the protection nor the comfort inhibits the functionality of the glove. Using gloves which are too cumbersome makes handling objects or performing tasks incredibly difficult. The RX565 is an 18-gauge liner so it’s very lightweight, allowing wearers to feel what they’re working with while knowing they have the protection they need.
Following the highly successful implementation, we received extremely positive feedback from various stakeholders within the M27 project.
“Since introducing the new glove, the project has reduced glove consumption by over 60% and reduced non-compliance with hand protection requirements to zero. This is fantastic to see,” – Dave McPherson, McCann
“We are extremely proud that the M27 is associated with this brilliant innovation which fully complies with Personal Protective Equipment (Enforcement) Regulations 2018. The glove’s adaptability has proved to be a major benefit as it is multi-operational while also being waterproof, cut resistant, light and supportive of dexterity. It is even known to be resistant to lean concrete. The glove is more efficient by eliminating the need to replace it for various tasks undertaken by the same workforce and has been a huge asset in our working practices.” – Victor Johnson, Highways England’s Project Manager
“The safety and wellbeing of everyone involved in delivering our schemes are of paramount importance to us, and by working with McCann we have reduced the potential for hand injuries on our M27 scheme, we’re also making our operations and the industry a safer and more productive environment.” Nigel Fullam, BMJV Project Director
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