Mabey Bridge is a specialist supplier of high quality steel bridging, infrastructure, wind turbine towers and heavy plated structural steelwork to markets across the globe. Based in Chepstow, South Wales, the company’s history can be traced back to the construction of Brunel’s Wye railway bridge in 1849. SG World have been providing safety inspection and visitor management systems into Mabey Bridge for over ten years, developing solutions to support their total ongoing commitment to health and safety as the business expands.
Mark Cain, SG World Account Manager took over the account in 2006, working closely with Debby Symonds, Mabey Bridge’s SHE Officer for the Lydney site, providing visitor /contractor passes and health and safety inspection documentation for site cranes, ladders and fork lift trucks. The Lydney factory is one of three Mabey Bridge sites situated around the Welsh border. Debby recommended SG World to her colleague Shaun Oldfield, SHEQ Officer at the Chepstow HQ who also adopted SG World’s inspection systems.
In 2011, Mabey Bridge’s new state of the art factory was formally opened by Charles Hendry, Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change. The 33,000m2 Newhouse facility was dedicated to the fabrication of wind turbine towers, monopiles and other tubular steelwork for the UK’s wind energy industry. Nick Clewer was appointed to manage site health and safety, “ we are manoeuvring 60-tonne tubular steel structures around the factory, we have to be safe. I needed to adopt effective inspection processes across a large pool of moving and lifting equipment including overhead gantry cranes, fork lift trucks, and scissor lifts”. Nick’s colleagues introduced SG World and Nick was quickly able to roll out Safe-INSPECT inspection systems that were flexible enough to cover a simple step ladder to a large-scale industrial transporter. “The Hedin Carrier is a 30 ton, heavy duty, robotic transporter used for moving the wind turbine tower sections around the factory. This is certainly one of the largest pieces of equipment that SG World have designed an inspection system around but the safety principles we embody in our Safe-INSPECT solution work right across the board,” commented Mark Cain.
Mabey Bridge’s commitment to Safety and Health is reflected in an accident frequency rate which is significantly lower than the industry average and which continues to show an improving trend. This achievement has been recognised by numerous external bodies including RoSPA, who have awarded the company their Gold Award for Occupational Health and Safety across all sites and divisions. “The Hi-Vis safety status tags always attract the attention of visiting inspectors and allow me to demonstrate we are constantly monitoring the safety of our equipment,” said Nick.
Mark Cain sums up SG World’s work with Mabey Bridge: “Sometimes you walk into a company and have to ‘sell’ the benefits of our Safe-INSPECT product, Mabey Bridge were totally on board from the word go. I keep in regular contact with the all of the Mabey Bridge Health and Safety team who are always pro-actively looking to identify new ways to maintain and improve their excellent track record, for example we are currently looking at introducing an inspection system for the company cars.”
For more information on Mabey Bridge please visit www.mabeybridge.com