The Health and Safety Event, NEC Birmingham 2024
Our Director of Health and Safety, Martin Hembling, recently attended the Health & Safety Event at the NEC in Birmingham.
The Health & Safety Event is the UK’s largest gathering of anyone responsible for running a safe and efficient workplace, and includes a line-up of seminars, practical workshops, and exhibitors.
“It’s important to stay up to date with all things Health & Safety as management but even more so in my role as Health and Safety Director,” says Martin, “My main objective was to see what’s newly developed in the market, compared to what we currently use and to think about if we could upgrade, to keep both our internal and external staff safer”.
Martin also took the opportunity to catch up with an advisor from HSE, to discuss some of our practices at Swiftclean, and what additional things we can do to help our staff.
There was also a chance to meet potential training partners to expand our compliance training offering.
As a BESA-approved training centre, Swiftclean Academy already offers training courses such as the Grease Hygiene and Air Hygiene Operative and Technician courses; Legionella Awareness and Responsible Persons courses, and are looking to expand on this.
During the day at the exhibition, Martin looked at different types of PPE, and spoke to ‘The Breathing Experts’ to discuss respiratory protection including masks, face fit training and all aspects of indoor and outdoor air quality.
Making the most of the show’s exhibitors, Martin discovered some new types of safety gloves; we currently use between 10-20 different styles of safety glove as part of our PPE kit list, depending on the type of compliance work or task. There are thousands available so it was useful to learn more about the breadth of choice.
Safety boots were a big theme at this years event. Martin noted; “it was interesting to see the development of technology concerning footwear – I remember when I first started on site over 20 years ago, safety boots felt like you were wearing flippers and were really heavy, now boots are comfy and light and offer even more protection than ever.”
At our workplace, we value the overall health and safety of our team members. We believe that mental wellbeing is just as important as physical safety. To ensure that our Swiftclean team gets the necessary support, we are actively exploring a government counselling initiative we learned about at the event. This will help us provide the right assistance to our team members if and when required.
Martin added that a highlight of the event was listening to the mock trial, organised by ‘Driving Better for Business’ investigating safe driving.
Some of our regional technical sales consultants from across the country also attended the event, including Midlands based Stuart Day and Matthew Gardner, both technical sales consultants for ventilation services, and Eddie Cunningham, technical sales consultant for our Northern water services.
