ERH

Over 70% of the Welsh economy and over 3 million residents rely on the M4 motorway to move in and out of the country. This vital link between the Welsh capital Cardiff and London sees over 50 million trips on the motorway each year.

For most of the last 30 years, the Welsh government relied on ERH for maintaining and upgrading the technology along the M4. ERH provides installation, maintenance, and commissioning services for high-quality highway communications infrastructure, smart technology, and traffic management systems.

Making safety easier, better, and a priority for everyone

With high volumes of road users and economic prosperity in the balance, maintenance work must be completed safely and efficiently, with minimal disruption to the public. Managing vital infrastructure under these circumstances is a huge challenge.

For Jack Stuckey, Contract Communications Manager at ERH, SafetyCulture is a vital tool for him and his team to overcome this challenge safely.

With a huge amount of area to cover and hundreds of traffic and comms assets spaced throughout the contracted area, it’s tough to keep on top of issues being raised and make sure they’re followed up. The impact of weather, corrosion and long-term use all take their toll on these assets.

ERH has used SafetyCulture since 2021, initially as a solution to capture these issues on-site, and quickly assign any maintenance work.  The solution was quickly embraced by the entire team:

“We have a diverse engineering team looking after the roadside assets. We have seen all of the team take to the Safety Culture system via smart phones and tablets without any issue what so ever and with minimal training being required as the system is so intuitive.”

At ERH, Improvement Is A Team Effort

In the subsequent 18 months, ERH massively expanded how they used Safety Culture as they see the impact of the platform to help them drive improvement internally. Vehicle checks, cleaning inspections and regularly scheduled inspections are now all captured in SafetyCulture.

Not only that, but job packs are circulated through Heads Up for quicker, more dynamic communication. “We get our health and safety guy to complete Tool Box Talks and other important circulations via Heads Up, which not only shows people have received it but allows us to check and confirm they have read and acknowledged the circulation.  Previously important communications would have resulted in staff having to attend the office for a specific Tool Box Talk and sign to say they have received it massively disrupting the working day.

From an initial 20 users, ERH now has their entire organization using the SafetyCulture platform, connecting frontline workers and senior leaders better than ever before. Teams responsible for engineering, IT, documentation, health and safety, and project management are now all working from the same paperless page.

This top-to-bottom visibility brings teams closer together and provides more visibility to senior leaders. This greater visibility extends to their client too. The Welsh government regularly receives detailed reports generated in SafetyCulture, updating them on work completed, and any issues raised.

SafetyCulture Keeps ERH Ahead of The Competition

SafetyCulture is so embedded at ERH that it’s forming part of their tendering process. Being able to demonstrate the efficiency, visibility, and agility of what they’re doing is crucial to show they’re the team for the job. “We need to be able to spot patterns and make sure that when we collect data, we collect it once and we collect it right. Whenever there’s a safety instruction from them, we schedule it in SafetyCulture and when the time comes, our SafetyCulture dashboard shows us what needs to be done.”

Jack and his team have successfully turned ERH into an improvement engine, one that’s delivering a safer network for their engineers and all road users, with SafetyCulture as their operational heartbeat.