I am Paula Corrigan, Health and Safety Manager at Plus Dane Housing. I joined the organisation earlier in the year and have thoroughly enjoyed meeting all the teams and seeing how everything works. Everyone I have met has been supportive; I have an amazing Health & Safety and Facilities team behind me and look forward to working closely with them and other teams moving forward.
I have worked within Health & Safety for several years now, mainly in the construction industry, but with experience in fields such as housing, schools, and hospitals to name a few.
It is something that has always been of interest to me; I like to think I am caring person in general, so to be involved in the health, safety and welfare of others and making sure workers return home to their loved ones, well there is nothing better. Health & Safety is challenging on a day-to-day basis, but is also rewarding at the same time and I enjoy making a difference.
Plus Dane has a robust Health & Safety management system in place, although like every organisation there is always room for improvement. But I’ve seen for myself that the backbone of it is strong and so I’m not starting from a blank canvas; we can continually improve as a team and can only get better.
It was great news to hear we recently won our fourth consecutive ROSPA Gold award – it is such a big achievement. The award demonstrates a commitment to Health & Safety and prevention of accidents, and stands as one of the largest occupational awards programmes of its kind in the UK, so to win four years running is amazing! Our success clearly shows how as a business safety comes first, it is our main priority, and our colleagues matter. Hopefully there will be more awards to come and I am personally looking forward to the challenge.
Priorities for the team at the moment include reviewing our RAMS (Risk Assessment Method Statement) documents and introducing a risk register where all assessments will be recorded and reviewed to make sure they are kept to date and identify the correct hazards. We have carried out a review on mandatory training to ensure competency through all levels of the business; and are considering our main risk such as personal safety and lone working.
We are also going to be looking at driving safely; this is an area that will cover all drivers through the organisation and make sure we are considering proactive measures rather than reactive.
Lastly we will be getting out and about with the repairs team to see how things work on the ground, focusing on what works, what doesn’t and making more of presence for Health & Safety.
For this year’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work, we took the time to focus on certain areas such as accident and near miss reporting, the importance of wearing of ID badges, and risk assessments to name a few.
Outside of work I love spending quality time with my family and I am a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, so anything like jumping out of planes or ziplines then I am first to volunteer.
