the report

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BUILDING DESIGN &
CONSTRUCTION
THE MAGAZINE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
MAY 2013 ISSUE 185
MAY 2013
MCNICHOLAS
‘S’ IS FOR
SUSTAINABILTY
ALSO INSIDE:
BUILDING DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION
FMTODAY
FERMACELL
MAY GURNEY
ENGINEERING SERVICES
NOBILIA
RB UK
SHELVING AND
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SOLUTIONS
TIMBER FRAME
SUPPLIERS
LOWFIELD
TIMBER FRAMES
LOW ENERGY
CONSULTANCY
MEETING ENERGY
REQUIREMENTS
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Sustainability is ingrained in the way
McNicholas do business and they have
now launched ‘The ‘S’ Word’, to demonstrate
their belief that sustainable growth is good
for the company, good for the environment
and good for the communities in which
they work
he ‘S’ Word is the McNicholas strategic
approach to being sustainable. The
document was created, as confirmed
by Sustainability Manager Emma Ward, “to
demonstrate McNicholas’s belief that sustainable growth is good for the company, good
for the environment and good for the communities in which we work. It isn’t something
we pay lip service to; we are seeing genuine
benefits from the strategy being in place and
are proud to be making such commitments.
“Sustainability is about something called the
triple bottom line; social responsibility, environmental protection and company performance. What sustainability promotes is the inclusion of social and
environmental risks in a business strategy and,
because it hasn’t lost sight of the ‘company’ and the
importance of the pound signs, it is also carrying
weight in the boardroom. From our point of view, it
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‘S’ IS FOR
SUSTAINABILITY
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has to be part of our business plan. There isn’t a
large successful company in the world that hasn’t
got sustainability on its agenda.”
DEFINING THE STRATEGY
The 2012-2015 strategy was launched in May 2012,
building upon McNicholas’s previous goals to
embed sustainability into ‘The McNicholas Way’.
Although an existing strategy was in place, it was
agreed it needed to be given new focus and a fresh
set of objectives for its next phase of implementation. “The initial stage was to create the new document in the first place,” explains Emma. “So it was
essential for us to consult with key people and
departments internally and also with some of our
clients to find out where their ambitions lie. This
allowed us to create a document that people felt
responsible for internally and allowed us to align our
goals with our clients.”
“The ‘S’ Word” commits McNicholas to 34 actions
around three pillars; Environmental Protection which
incorporates the Natural Environment and
Community, Social Responsibility, including People
and Compliance, and Company Performance capturing Company Ethos and the Supply Chain. Each
action is owned by someone within the organisation
whose responsibility it is to both implement and monitor progress towards achieving our goals. “We report
monthly to the Board of Directors on achievements
and then we prepare a sustainability update on a quarterly basis for the whole company,” remarks Emma.
“That’s just a snapshot of some key achievements
we’ve made within the last three month period.
LET’S HAVE A CHAT…
“The challenge we set ourselves with ‘The ‘S’ Word’
was to translate sustainability into something that is
meaningful for everybody in the business, collectively and individually”, explains Emma. “We’ve
done this by talking with people, not at them,
encouraging a conversation about what sustainability means to them.”
The approach taken by McNicholas was to take
each stakeholder and look at what aspects of sustainability meant most to them, accepting that what
the Board of Directors needed was very different to
75% of their workforce which carry out the physical
operational work. Emma explains how this process
was executed: “Even though an existing strategy
was in place, it needed to be given fresh focus with
the boardroom and the senior management team
so the roll-out commenced with a round of awareness presentations. The presentations needed to go
further than the basic definition of sustainability, but
define what it meant to McNicholas. We did this by
applying sustainability to our core values; safety, reliability and responsiveness. This presented it as
something that fitted perfectly with our growth
plans as well as a tool to enable us to offer something different to our customers; something more
‘sustainable’ than just looking at the numbers,
something that recognised that risk management
extends to our social and environmental obligations
too. This revived awareness of the real meaning of
sustainability and has given our board and senior
“THE CHALLENGE WE SET OURSELVES WITH
‘THE ‘S’ WORD’ WAS TO TRANSLATE
SUSTAINABILITY INTO SOMETHING THAT IS
MEANINGFUL FOR EVERYBODY
IN THE BUSINESS, COLLECTIVELY
AND INDIVIDUALLY. WE’VE DONE
THIS BY TALKING WITH PEOPLE,
NOT AT THEM, ENCOURAGING
A CONVERSATION ABOUT
WHAT SUSTAINABILITY
MEANS TO THEM.”
EMMA WARD SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER
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management team confidence to talk about our
commitments to our clients.”
Emma continues: “75% of our workforce is
directly involved with physical operational aspects of
our business. We had to be careful about the way we
communicated sustainability; too much theory would
mean it would be seen as something solely for the
boardroom, which most definitely isn’t the case. Our
LOOKOUT for Safety initiative is our behavioural
safety campaign. It is our belief that a lot of accidents
and incidents are attributable to behaviours. If we can
change the culture of the way people perceive safety and environmental issues, we teach them to
become their own safety and environmental advisors
and LOOKOUT for themselves and each other.
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“Each year the LOOKOUT committee devise a
road show whereby operatives attend a series of presentations on pertinent subject matters. This year, sustainability featured in the form of “Sustain-a-What?!”
The delivery team helped to define the ‘triple bottom
line’ and then moved onto a conversation about how
everyday activities are part of sustainability; for example, waste management, supporting charities, employee morale and preventing pollution. We were cautious
of how it would be received but the overall feedback
has been very positive.”
There’s a regular newsletter, called
‘The Mac’, that reports the activities
of the LOOKOUT group and features a ‘Pat on the Back’ initiative that
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rewards employees for performing well, having
good ideas, taking pride in what they do or simply
working in line with ‘The McNicholas Way’.
Cultural surveys cover the baseline culture and
how it can be improved, with a maturity matrix
measuring progress.
For supply chain members, participation isn’t a
contractual obligation. However, as Emma point out,
involvement is welcomed and encouraged: “We’re
asking them to do it because it sustains their future
as much as ours. We’ve got communication channels in place and from the conversations we’ve
been having, they’re open to what we’re trying to
achieve and are getting involved within many of the
initiatives we have in place, such as the LOOKOUT
Road show.”
CHANGING BEHAVIOUR
McNicholas is really seeing the benefits from sustainability. For example, applying sustainability to a
campaign to increase the number of near misses
reported has meant it donates £1 to charity for
every near miss reported. Since the start of this initiative, over 1600 near misses have been reported,
the equivalent of every employee taking the time to
help prevent an accident from occurring.
“Our chosen charity is The Lighthouse Club, the
construction industry’s charity that provides financial
assistance to families linked to construction who lose
an income through illness, injury or death,” says
Emma. “The Lighthouse Club charity has also benefited with the donation of over £500 from the sale
THE COMPANY
McNicholas is an experienced service provider that was formed in the late 1940s. It is a tier one
contractor that delivers a comprehensive range of utility infrastructure services to the public and
private sectors through five business units — rail, communications, energy, water and renewables.
For rail, it works on the main rail network and the tube system. It provides a full turnkey and
structural service, working on projects such as Cross Rail and the West Coast Mainline route
modernisation.
The company’s large workforce of multi-skilled telecommunications engineers and in-house
teams provides a whole range of communications installation and management services. Energy
covers the electricity and gas markets, encompassing feasibility, planning, design, construction
and maintenance.
The company has delivered a number of innovative solutions to the water industry, being
fully involved from design through to project management and construction. Renewables is a
growing part of the business, with McNicholas handling the design and construction of several
wind farms representing over 400 megawatts of installed capacity.
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of a 2013 calendar, with illustrations by employees’
children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews based
around themes of safety and sustainability.
“Our social commitment isn’t just about how we
can do our bit with the wider community though; it
has to start in-house. The health and wellbeing of
our employees is vital so we have been corporate
members of Constructing Better Health since 2011.
CBH is a not for profit organisation that sets occupational health standards for the construction industry. Each one of our safety critical workforce attends
a health assessment, in line with CBH recommendations, which helps confirm their health isn’t being
adversely affected by work. In addition, drop in clinics and a management referral service are provided
to all other employees.”
Things are also moving forward with other initiatives. “Since 2008, our carbon footprint has been
certified to ISO 14064-1 under the Achilles
Certified Emissions Management and Reduction
Scheme (CEMARS),” says Emma. “We were one of
the first seven companies in the UK to achieve certification and are committed to continue reducing
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our emissions in line with our management and
reduction plan. With nearly 90% of our emissions
being generated from fuel (white diesel, red diesel
and petrol), it has been a main area of focus. One
project that has seen significant benefits is the capping of emissions for vehicles in the company car
scheme to 120 grammes of CO2 per kilometre.
Since December 2011, average emissions from the
fleet have reduced by 10%. A simple exercise,
which has helped us reduce our CO2 emissions per
£1 million turnover from 92.54 tonnes in 20082009 to 85.19 in 2011-2012.”
GOING FORWARD
The effort has made McNicholas a finalist in the
Construction News Awards 2013 in the Sustainable
Company of the Year category but doesn’t mark the
end of the line. The current version of the strategy
has a long way to run, with much still to do. Even
when the existing strategy has run its course, another will follow and the process will just go on. “When
we are communicating our strategy, there is one
common message,” says Emma. “Be proud of our
commitments, lead by example and encourage others to do the same. There is no such thing as being
100% sustainable. It’s a journey and, once we hit all
these targets, we’ll develop more to make it even
better. It is about raising the bar and that’s what our
clients want to see.”
www.mcnicholas.co.uk
Tel: 0208 953 4144
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