Joint Seminar with Business Doctors

Gullands teamed up with Peter Searle of Business Doctors in February to host a joint seminar, which brought together the benefits of strengthening health and safety management in an organisation and the value it can bring to the business.

Peter used the Business Doctors’ “Value Builder” system to show the effect on a business’ value of having good policies and procedures in place.  Peter used his own experience as a former Operations Director for Kier Group to warn how a bad health and safety record would be viewed by clients and industry partners, the difficulties that would come up at the PQQ (Pre-Qualification Questionnaire) stage of a tender– and similar questions which a financial buyer will ask, such as what is the company’s accident incident ratio.

Andrew went through the many sources of health and safety legal duties affecting a business, ranging from the basic requirement for a health and safety policy to the criminalisation of “management failings” under the Corporate Manslaughter legislation of 2007. 

One huge legal driver for good health and safety compliance is to avoid costly civil claims by injured employees. Andrew highlighted the importance of engaging employees in a “living” health and safety policy and highlighted sources of guidance and good practice such as INDG417 and HSG65 Managing for Health and Safety.

Andrew Clarke can be contacted at a.clarke@gullands.com