2021 Heath and Safety Aaward Winners

Cornerstone has achieved a very high level of performance, demonstrating well developed occupational health and safety management systems and culture, outstanding control of risk, and very low levels of error, harm, and loss.

At Cornerstone, we hold the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certificate in Occupational Health & Safety Management. This is an international standard setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organisations, which develops and publishes worldwide technical, industrial and commercial standards. Our certificate has specifically been based on the acquisition, design specification, passive build/upgrade, management and maintenance of the passive assets of our cell sites. This forms part of why we feel pleased to win the RoSPA award, as it highlights the work behind the scenes for achieving our ISO certification.

What are your main principles at Cornerstone to ensure we prevent accidents?

Our aim is to provide the safest and most sustainable environment whilst continually challenging our business processes for efficiency and quality. Our main principles are highlighted below:

• We follow a strict framework that allows us to perform our health and safety processes in a measured way.
• We listen to industry experts and follow best practice guidance.
• We actively investigate incidents and analyse performance data to ensure a culture of no harm and continuous improvement is adopted.
• We continue to deliver in accordance with our ISO management standards.
• We reduce our environmental impact across our estate.
• We deliver business resilience and risk management.

How did Covid-19 affect your health and safety standards and site visit processes?

This was a challenging time. Our health and safety standards obviously had to be enhanced to follow the Government’s Covid-19 guidelines. We had to consider how we could safely visit our sites without putting others at risk. The telecoms representatives were considered key workers. It was an even more crucial time for the public, organisations and businesses to get the connectivity and coverage during lockdown.

We quickly developed our business continuity plans further on how we would manage this, and briefed all our suppliers and contractors on the rules they had to follow. We issued specific Covid-19 health and safety guidance to all those visiting sites and were in constant communication to review if site visits were being carried out safely.

With the support of our landlords, we continued to visit sites for the build or upgrade of work, maintaining the critical national infrastructure that we all needed during the pandemic and still do.

Although lockdown measures have softened across the country, we are still following strict health and safety rules on sites to keep each other safe.