Trying too hard (part
one)
Balfour Beatty, our biggest construction firm, are building
some offices in central London. A construction company in Rome
or Paris or Barcelona would display a little dignity and
style, and screen their scaffolding with
an unadorned illustration of the finished project behind. Maybe it goes with
being the country’s biggest construction company, but BB have chosen instead to
make some important corporate statements.
The first is about safety on site. Every construction site
has a sign of some kind on that topic, warning of hazards, counselling against
risk. This one is displayed in two-metre high type. It says:
WE WILL ACHIEVE ZERO HARM.
ZERO DEATHS.
ZERO INJURIES TO THE PUBLIC.
ZERO RUINED LIVES AMONG ALL OUR PEOPLE.
What? To whom did they delegate the task of writing this? The
Workers’ Safety Committee? The Department of Corporate Anguish? You hardly need to
close your eyes to hear Martin Luther King pounding it out on some angry
Southern rostrum.
It’s supposed to be reassuring. To confirm in us a feeling
of confidence in their dedication to safety. But it does the opposite.
It raises in us the cold fear of the possible. We all knew
construction accidents were unpleasant, at best. But the news that they can
affect the public, as well as the guys who forgot to don their hard hats, is
novel and alarming. And the notion that they can be bad enough to Ruin the
Lives Among All Our People strikes a deadly chord of plague, pestilence and
war.
Yes. I know they mean what they say. They write from the
heart. But there are times when it’s best to temper the message. We all fear
for our loved ones at times. Travelling alone. Walking in the dark. But we just
say ‘keep safe, love.’ We don’t add ‘because you might be grabbed around the
throat by a crazed half-man-half-ape, raped, strangled, then beheaded with a
blunt spoon before being hurled into a septic whirlpool full of starving killer
whales.’
When I see the Balfour Beatty sign, I cross to the other
side of the road, until I’m safely past. I hope All Our People do the same.
Trying too hard (part
two)
Adjacent to their Martin Luther King speech, Balfour Beatty
have given in to the wretched impulse to spill the corporate mission statement,
or vision, or whatever they call it these days. It says ‘How we’ll get there’.
There, presumably, is the place where zero lives are ruined among all our
people. A kind of corporate promised land. The process involves: Leading,
Simplifying, Rethinking, Involving, Learning and Tracking.
What a mess. Everybody can’t lead. You can’t simplify
something as necessarily complex as a construction project (you’re paid to cope
with the complexity, guys). Please don’t rethink the bloody thing when it’s
half built. Don’t involve any more people than you absolutely have to. If you
must learn on the job, make sure it’s on somebody else’s job, not mine, please.
And as for tracking, well. Three white men went that way. About an hour ago.
One of them is wounded in the leg.
Trying too hard (part
three)
These civil engineers with a compulsion to communicate also proudly
claim that they are ‘committed to preserving heritage within (sic) the creation
of an inspiring new office environment’.
A picture captioned Project Start shows a dignified and elegant
four-storey late Victorian commercial terrace, in good shape. Alongside it, a
picture captioned ‘Project Finish’ shows the terrace replaced by a brutalist
lump of piggy-eyed grey concrete.
They may possibly achieve Zero Harm on the construction
site. If the finished job demonstrates their commitment to preserving heritage,
Maximum Harm springs to mind.
