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safe as houses?

As a young deck hand Howard Woodcock, chief executive of Bibby Offshore, witnessed at first hand the devastating effect an accident can have. That's why he's lending his support to an innovative new safety venture in the North-east

 On average one person died and almost 40 people were injured every 10 days on North-east roads last year.

Across Scotland someone had to seek medical attention every 86 seconds as a result of an accident in the apparent safety of their own home.

Many more are scarred as a result of crime or anti-social behaviour and the emotional toll on victims and their families is immeasurable. And behind the emotional cost, there is significant cost to the local economy both in terms of use of emergency services, NHS resources and local authority budgets and in the impact on the local business community through lost working time.

However a North-east initiative is leading the way in the attempt to reduce the number of victims of road and domestic accidents and to help tackle citizenship issues such as the consequences of crime and antisocial behaviour.

Steering that is a £4million campaign to raise funds for Risk Ready, a state of the art, innovative solution to community safety. The concept focuses on a purpose built interactive village which, coupled with 21st technology, provides an experiential way to learn about safety and citizenship - all with the aim of boosting safety awareness across Grampian.

Visitors will be able to tour different zones in the village and explore potentially dangerous situations in a risk free environment learning valuable real life lessons they can apply in their day to day lives.

Each zone will deal with a different scenario such as fire safety, road safety and the danger of building sites. In addition, there will be areas dedicated to citizenship issues such as the consequences of crime and anti social behaviour.

The village will include:

• A life size house with interactive equipment and special effects
• A road and crossings
• A railway line
• A beach
• Driving simulators
• Training Room and a café

The multi-agency venture is led by Aberdeen Safer Community Trust with Grampian Police, Grampian Fire & Rescue, Scottish Ambulance Service, NHS Grampian, British Transport Police, City and Shire Councils, First Aberdeen and the Maritime & Coastguard Agency all working as part of the steering group.

One of the supporters of the campaign is Howard Woodcock, chief executive of Bibby Offshore, who is only too aware of the potentially devastating consequences of accidents.

In 1988, when he was just 22, he was on the deck of a vessel when a tow line whipped across it hitting and injuring him but knocking two colleagues overboard to their deaths.

"I recognise how real such incidents are because I experienced it," he said.

As a result he strives to constantly improve the safety of his staff and Bibby, like Risk Ready, wants to ensure that the safety culture which most companies promote in the workplace goes home with the staff. As part of this, the company is currently running a "Back to Basics" campaign to promote safety awareness at home as well as in the workplace.

"We work in a very well regulated industry," he told Business Bulletin.

"The subsea construction and the offshore industry generally has lots of tiers of safety regulation which keep people as safe as possible. The point is they don't always take that ethic home with them.

"When we drive out of the car park or get on the bus at the end of the day we don't necessarily behave in the same way at home as we do at work. What I like about Risk Ready is it is very consistent with the way we at Bibby Offshore are trying to get our people to modify their behaviour all the time, not just when they are on duty or when they are at work.

"If we did the risk assessments, took the precautions and thought a lot more about the way we do things out of the workplace I believe there would be a lot less accidents.

"Some of the accident numbers are absolutely staggering. A fatal road accident in Scotland costs between £1 million and £2 million and there were 37 fatal accidents in the North-east last year. If we can reduce that by three the Risk Ready Centre will have paid for itself."

Mr Woodcock, who has just completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge to raise £1500 for Risk Ready (which was matched by Bibby), said that the company encourages staff to support the local community by measures like matching charity fund raising efforts.

"We are keen to get our people at Bibby to volunteer their time, efforts, skills and services to good causes. We have built a business which relies of the community of Aberdeen City and Shire supporting us through giving us a very pleasant place to live and work and excellent resources in terms of infrastructure - but it is the people who live here and contribute to our business who make it happen.

"We want to try to give something back to those people."

Details of Risk Ready are available on the Aberdeen Safer Community Trust website at:

www.absafe.org.uk