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Learning from the occupational health provision on the Olympic build

Abstract The award-winning occupational health provisions at the London 2012 Olympic Park and Athletes’ Village achieved widespread recognition as some of the most comprehensive offered on a major construction project in the UK to date. The scope of the service was informed by work conducted on recent major projects, such as Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. It involved occupational health professionals and occupational hygienists working together to deliver an integrated clinical and occupational hygiene service that encouraged contractors to take workplace health as seriously as safety. The approach, named ‘health like safety’, involved safety practitioners and project managers working with the occupational health team to develop occupational health monitoring and management tools that closely resembled those used to manage safety issues. Two tools were developed to monitor and improve occupational health management with the potential for widespread use after the Olympic build. The first involved assessing the impact of health exposures in a similar way to near-miss measurement; the second was an occupational health maturity matrix, developed from existing work on a behavioural safety maturity matrix. An evaluation of the service as a whole demonstrated that it had been successfully implemented using established principles of good practice. The approach had positive impacts on managers’ and workers’ understanding of, and attitudes towards, occupational health issues, as well as their workplace health behaviours. The work of the occupational health team, alongside strong leadership on the part of the client, was instrumental in creating a positive occupational health culture across the site. The ‘health like safety’ approach and related tools were a way of promoting discussion, prioritisation and action on occupational health. The model adopted shows how an occupational health approach can be instilled successfully into a large-scale project, although for a sustained legacy it will be essential to ensure client commitment to principles of good occupational health management and develop a convincing business case for the construction industry to prioritise the health and wellbeing of its workers.