SIAC

Source: Exec Digital UK

Date :21/05/2007 16:04:12

SIAC: Quality Control and Safety Management at SIAC Butlers Steel

A crucial part of a construction group with an annual turnover of more than €200 million, Irish steel producers Butlers Steel have been involved in some of the largest steel projects in Ireland, the UK and the Middle-east. The company’s excellence in quality control and safety management has allowed it to build a reputation as an operation capable of handling a challenging and diverse range of projects

Written by James Hurley & Produced by Ben Weaver

Now one of Ireland’s major construction groups, SIAC began life in Cork manufacturing and laying mastic asphalt in 1913. The company traded as the South of Ireland Asphalt Company Limited until 1983 when the SIAC Construction Limited name was adopted for what has become Ireland's leading integrated Civil Engineering and Building Services group, with a permanent workforce of over 950 people in Ireland and the UK. Approximately 550 sub-contractors are also employed by the company at any one time. The group is involved in a range of contracting services, from civil engineering, to commercial developments, aluminium glazing and the manufacture and instillation of structural steel.

Butlers Steel was founded in 1964 and was acquired by the SIAC Construction Group in 1996. It now operates the largest steel fabrication facility in Ireland. Strategically located in Portalington, Co. Laois, Butlers Steel is well placed to service projects anywhere in Ireland as well as the UK, European and Middle-Eastern markets via the Dublin and Waterford sea ports. The company has been involved in many large-scale projects including sporting arenas, bridgework, shopping centres, airport extensions, multi-storey office blocks and a host of other structures. Excellence in safety management and quality assurance has helped Butlers Steel evolve into a successful component of a multi-disciplinary construction group with a turnover of more than €200 million.

Quality Control

SIAC’s dynamic and stringent approach to quality control has been crucial to the success of the company. The quality department performs regular audits on each department to ensure adherence to legal requirements as well as customer and in-house demands. Along with resulting in consistently improving processes and procedures, the pervasive nature and regularity of the audits is credited with improving employee understanding of the role of quality in the workplace.

Aiming to produce high quality products on time and within budget, SIAC Butlers Steel ensures that quality control is a priority for every employee of the company. An internal training programme has been developed which improves quality control and boosts staff morale. A culture of constant communication, appraisal and assistance amongst the employees and management at SIAC means that any problems are identified and resolved in a short space of time.

The company’s quality department has identified five specific areas where quality control is applied: design/development, fabrication, welding, painting and site erection. By constantly measuring the functioning of these departments, SIAC aims to make customer satisfaction the overriding concern throughout the company.

Safety Management

Adherence to health and safety legislation may not be the most glamorous of considerations for a company, but it is a clearly a vital factor for any successful construction firm. SIAC’s impressive and award winning record on safety management compliments its approach to quality control and results in the smooth and safe running of a variety of projects.

Employing comprehensive written standard operations for all of the company’s procedures, SIAC has a strict and detailed policy that ensures the safety of all staff and sub-contractors. The company’s Site Safety Manual outlines a ‘safety management system’ that acts as a reliable guide to implementing strict and consistent standards of site safety. Despite the fact that Ireland’s Health and Safety Authority (HSA) typically issues well over 1000 site safety enforcement notices annually, Butlers Steel has yet to be issued with one.

Ensuring site managers and supervisors are aware of obligatory safety documentation prior to any project commencing has traditionally fallen on the shoulders of heavily burdened Project Managers. SIAC has simultaneously improved safety and lightened this load by making supervisors responsible for weekly inspections that verify compliance. Furthermore, full time safety personnel carry out entirely separate weekly inspections that act as pseudo-external checks and balances on the overall safety management performance at each of SIAC’s sites.

One of the major considerations at any construction site is the safety of personnel working at height. A common hazard is the degradation of materials used in fall protection equipment. While general wear and tear, falls, excessive loading and exposure to chemicals are all common causes of textile damage to safety equipment, recent research has indicated that there is no well defined boundary to separate safe and unsafe equipment. Since no reliable usable life span can be applied to this equipment, the importance of frequent inspections by trained individuals is clear. All of SIAC’s full time safety staff are fully trained in the inspection of fall arrest equipment, a further example of SIAC’s consistently clear-minded approach to all safety issues. The National Irish Safety Organisation (NISO) has recognised SIAC Butlers Steel’s excellence in safety management with an award for the company in each of the last seven years.

Project Diversity

SIAC’s steel fabrication facility in Portalington combines some 15,000 square metres of production space with technologically advanced equipment and a highly skilled workforce to manufacture the products that help the company handle a diverse range of projects. The facility boasts an efficient and flexible operation based on a fully automated materials handling operation. An integrated software and bar-coding system allows total traceability of products and parts from the moment they are ordered to the completion of a project. This allows the facility to respond to changing customer demands and make amendments halfway through the lifecycle of a project. This is part of a general culture at SIAC that emphasises responsiveness to the needs of the customer over concentrating purely on efficiency and output capability.

The combination of SIAC’s strong record on quality and safety and its complex infrastructure has helped the company successfully complete a broad range of large scale projects. Butlers Steel were responsible for the structural steel, metal roof and pre-cast flooring at the contemporarily designed Pavilions Shopping Centre in Swords, Co. Dublin, a 50 metre competition size swimming pool at the National Aquatic Centre in Abbotstown and the construction of two stands on the north and east sides of the pitch at Hampden Park in Glasgow. With SIAC Butlers Steel’s commitment to continuous improvements in safety, quality and working practice, the size, complexity and diversity of projects handled by the company is likely to grow even more impressive over the coming years.