Health and Safety Executive

Find out how DWP turned around the Jobcentre Plus project

In July 2003 the Government funded Jobcentre Plus (JCP) project was in difficulty. The ambitious, programme planned to rebrand and refurnish over 900 former Jobcentre and Social Security offices across Great Britain with values of individual contracts ranging from £150K to £3M. There were problems with adequate surveys, issues with co-ordination and uncertainty about how well health and safety risks were being managed and reported.

The DWP, as client took a decision to establish an integrated team to run the programme, bringing in secondees from industry. Partnership became a reality as contractors and suppliers began to work in collaboration and standards of health and safety were embedded. The ‘Achieving behavioural change’ (ABC) training course was a key part of improving the performance of the JCP project. DWP found that a real benefit of this course was that everyone who attended it required only a short site-specific induction briefing before starting work.

Four years on the achievements of the project are outstanding

  • A significantly improved accident incident rate.
  • Cost savings of 24% over the 2003 projections
  • Quality of finished product that exceeded client expectations
  • Over 900 projects completed without one claim and / or trade dispute
  • Over 10,000 operatives, supervisors and managers trained on the course
  • Regional contractors who have changed the way they work
  • Exemplary standards of worker engagement measured by rigorous audit and reporting regime encouraging continuous improvement

Read more about how this was achieved in the OGC Case Study


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Updated 11.05.10