Bouygues safety day

Work stopped this week on all 608 construction work sites run by Bouygues Entreprises France-Europe for its annual European Health & Safety Day.

Yesterday, 6 November, work was interrupted simultaneously on the construction sites in France, Switzerland and Spain, with 10,000 employees and subcontractors, along with customers, invited to take part in interactive workshops which the company said took a fresh look at the rules and behaviours required for interdependent safety.

According to Bouygues, this “uncompromising health and safety policy” has made it possible to cut the number of occupational accidents by a quarter in six years, and to achieve a frequency rate of three, which it claimed was the lowest accident rate in the construction industry today.

Philippe Bonnave, deputy CEO of Bouygues Construction, said, “We want to achieve our target of zero accidents rapidly. This means being more demanding and it means spreading a safety culture shared by everyone.”

He said the 2013 campaign, Your Safety is Also My Safety, was specifically aimed at encouraging a sense of responsibility for others in each individual.