At our Long Stratton Bypass project, our team are making excellent progress constructing the long-awaited bypass of Long Stratton on the eastern side of the town, which will cut congestion and support the local economy. 80% of all earthworks have been completed so far, including excavation of all drainage ponds. Piling works at Hall Lane road bridge and Church Lane footbridge is complete and the team have recently started construction of the pile caps and stabilisation works of the sub-base to the carriageway. All currents works will facilitate the construction of the overpasses and three roundabouts from early 2025.
Our team recently came together with our supply chain partner, Lynch Plant Hire and Haulage and held a safety day to ensure that everyone working on or near the project goes home safely every day. Over 70 workforce members from across our supply chain and customer teams, including operatives, supervisors, and project managers, participated in the day.
Lynch Plant Hire and Haulage led two impactful training sessions focusing on people and plant interface safety. These sessions emphasized the critical importance of establishing and respecting exclusion zones to the entire project workforce. A highlight of the day was the innovative ‘Red Zone’ training—an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience that allowed people to explore high-risk areas in a risk-free environment. The VR technology allowed the team to understand hazards and operational blind spots associated with machinery, ultimately helping team members improve hazard awareness and safe navigation skills. Another essential component of the day was a Toolbox Talk on receiving the ‘Thumbs Up’ to safely approach machinery. It covered visibility concerns, safety technology and featured Lynch’s ‘digital thumbs up’ safety shield, which provides a clear visual, and audible confirmation from the operator, signalling when it’s safe to approach machinery.
Additionally, our STOPThink! Lead Mick Reeves, delivered our STOP!Think programme workshops sharing our culture and helping everyone to understand why we do the things that we do, so that we can think differently and make better decisions.
What is are STOPThink! cultural development programme.
Our STOPThink! team are currently visiting several project sites across our Highways and Rail teams delivering face to face sessions, stand downs and general engagement with our site teams, customers and supply chain! Along with Long Stratton Bypass, our team have recently visited our HS2 site in Aylesbury and Rail sites in Horsham tomorrow and Woking.
Launched as a concept in 2011, our award-winning cultural development programme STOPThink! has enabled colleagues, suppliers and customers to think differently, make better decisions and change lives. Admired throughout our industry, we know that STOPThink! works and really sets us apart from our peers. It’s part of the DNA of Octavius.
We want all our people to be confident applying our STOPThink! principles, become leaders in health, safety and wellbeing culture so that’s why in our business plan we have mandated that all Octavius people complete four main modules.
To further enhance our safety performance and inclusive culture we recently launched two new STOPThink! modules: STOPThink! My Safety Leadership and STOPThink! Equality, Diversity & Inclusion modules.
If you would like to learn more about our STOPThink! programme or would like organise for our team to host a session at your site or office, please contact Mick Reeves.
