Solaglas Contracting Midlands put the spotlight on health and safety issues recently as part of a worldwide International Health & Safety Day on Tuesday 13th June 2006.

215 employees at Solaglas Contracting Midlands site joined 200,000 colleagues from Saint-Gobain companies around the world to take part in the special day, designed to raise awareness of the need for health and safety both at work and at home.

The division held a series of events for staff and sub-contractors during the day including two live presentations.

Safety training experts from SpanSet’s Height Safety and Specialist Access Training School performed live demonstrations showing the correct use of harness equipment. Cheshire based SpanSet are leading providers of height safety training and have been established in the UK for over 30 years. Mr George Grundy, Technical Sales & Training Adviser for the Training School said, “The primary purpose of our demonstration was to illustrate how to recover from, or assist a casualty who had sustained suspension trauma in a fall whilst wearing a safety harness. “Under the new terms of height safety regulations, it is crucial from a compliance and an ethical point of view that staff are properly trained in the use of height safety equipment. We thoroughly endorse Saint-Gobain’s commitment to health and safety in the workplace and were pleased to support this event”.

A crane operation simulator was supplied by Mentor - the largest UK driver training organisation for the materials handling sector. The simulator used projected live action footage combined with audio instructions linked to a joystick and a crane pendant. It is primarily used to help assess and train the driver in basic operation skills such as co-ordination in lifting and manoeuvring within a safe controlled environment. Mr Richard Shore, Managing Director for Mentor comments, “We were delighted to support Saint-Gobain’s International H&S Day. Employees are a commercial and moral investment for any organisation. By taking a pro-active approach to Health and Safety issues such as training, organisations benefit from fewer accidents so reducing downtime as well as ensuring increased profitability. Training has also been shown to both improve morale and assist in staff retention”. Mentor is a privately owned, independent company established since 1988.