Health & Safety at Skanska

Safety is a core value for us at Skanska. We see a safe workplace as the key to a successful project and treat it with the utmost care. Below we would like to offer insight into Skanska's safety culture, the daily lived experience and the activities that are part of our safety management strategy.

Safety culture

The core of our safety culture is engaged people and visible leadership. We value our company values and everyone who embraces them.

We continuously educate and train internally not only our employees but also employees of subcontractors who work on our projects. Training focuses on the knowledge of our Safety Standards and the soft skills that are key to developing a safety culture.

Safety is a dialogue for us - we ask how everyone across our company perceives safety and how we can continue to take it to the next level based on their insights. This is helped, for example, by transparent incident reporting so that we can learn from mistakes and prevent them from happening again.

We are also in dialogue with our competitors - major construction companies in the Czech Republic. In addition, we chair the H&S team of the Road Construction Association, which aims to set equal conditions and improve the overall level of safety in civil engineering.

Living the safety

Safety management begins with proper design and planning - from the initial design, through the implementation phase, to completion. We conduct our activities based on a hierarchy of risk control, focusing first on the elimination of hazards and, as a last resort, on the use of personal protective equipment.

As a construction and development company, we have clearly defined requirements for our internal investments. Each of them requires coordination of the work in progress, hence our emphasis on their safe execution. Supervision of compliance with the requirements is carried out by implementation teams.

We work with health and safety standards to ensure a high level of safety on our projects. They are based on legal regulations, often extending them, especially in the case of high-risk work, such as work at height, work in excavations, vertical and horizontal transport operations or construction site logistics.

Read the Health and Safety Standards.

Safety activities

Safety Week

Safety Week is an event that we organize every year in all Business Units and countries where we are present. During its duration, a series of activities are organized in all offices, construction sites or technical units, dedicated to various aspects of safety and health. These include training in firefighting, first aid, workshops and demonstrations on conducting work at height, or webinars on physical or mental health and stress management.

Agreement for Safety in Construction

Skanska is one of the signatories of the Agreement for Safety in Construction. The initiative involves a number of projects introducing systemic solutions in the field of occupational safety and health, including common document templates, a model for confirming the professional qualifications of construction workers, periodic training, as well as promoting a culture of safety.

Developers' Alliance

The housing company is one of the founders of the Covenant of Developers and Substitute Investors for the promotion, mutual support and cooperation in the area of sustainable development, with particular emphasis on safety issues. As the hosts of our projects, we want to take a conscious and responsible approach to the most important issue - the health and lives of people working on construction sites, the communities neighboring our developments, and the safety of people using the donated facilities.

ESSVs

Executive Safety Site Visits are a visible form of Top Management's commitment to building a safety culture. They are conducted at each Business Unit and at all locations where we conduct our business. Their purpose is to demonstrate clear leadership, raise awareness that safety is about each and every one of us, and reinforce safe employee behavior.

GSSD

Despite the efforts of both Investors and Contractors, the construction industry is one of the most dangerous. Unfortunately, even today, fatal accidents occur. In such cases, each Business Unit discusses the Global Safety Stand Down (GSSD), a fact-gathering material on the accident. Each Skanska employee, as well as employees of subcontracted companies, attends a meeting to discuss the circumstances and causes that led to the accident and to present countermeasures to be implemented to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Sustainability Training

A culture of safety motivates us to ensure the quality of health and safety training for our employees. Internal trainings, are conducted by experienced trainers and implemented using various methods: stationary, online or e-learning. Practice shows that the use of a modern and diverse training form, engages participants in active participation and is a guarantee of continuous expansion of knowledge and competence.

Integrated Management System

The Integrated Management System in place at each of our Business Units is a coherent, documented system that allows us to manage multiple aspects on the basis of objectives derived from established policies. We achieve our objectives within the framework of safety, occupational health, environmental and quality management systems, in accordance with the requirements of ISO 45001:2018, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 9001:2015 and the requirements of AQAP 2110:2016.