Topic: Health, safety and wellbeing

By Myrna Rickards
September 16th 2025

Enhancing value through project closure Highlight Report

 

Effective closure is about much more than just wrapping up a project’s activities and moving on to the next job. It is a critical phase in the project lifecycle where lasting value can be secured, lessons crystallised, and insights harvested to shape the next wave of projects within a programme.

This virtual seminar brings together leading voices from government and industry to explore how to extract more value from project closure. With a dynamic mix of project case studies, programme over views and expert analysis, this is an opportunity to:

  • Explore what “good closure” looks like across a broad range of major projects.
  • Learn how to turn closure into a value creating step in the project lifecycle.
  • Understanding common pitfalls and how to avoid them.
By Manon Bradley
February 28th 2022

Wellbeing in Major Projects

Creating and managing a workable wellbeing policy is complex. Through a series of events, discussions and research the Major Projects Association set out to explore some of these complexities and provide a starting point for organisations seeking to create a policy or to understand the impact of poor wellbeing upon their teams and their projects.  This report summarises the key findings, gives some detailed case studies and signposts helpful resources.

By Jonathan Norman
May 12th 2021

Wellbeing – The Major Projects Performance Accelerator Highlight Report

As the world recovers from the impact of COVID-19, our ability to deliver high quality Major Projects will be central to how countries bounce back. We must rise to this challenge and consider how to create and maintain high performing teams that can deliver when it matters most. Wellbeing has been brought into sharp focus in recent times – what have we learnt from this, and can the wellbeing of our people be the project performance accelerator that we need?

There are numerous external factors which influence peoples’ productivity and performance. Wellbeing is an aspect companies can positively influence. Though often seen as ‘soft and fluffy’ or a nice to have, rather than an investment in peoples’ future performance, organisations are starting to place a greater emphasis on employee mental health and wellbeing, previously overlooked, and largely encouraged by events of the past year. Westfield Health (2020) state that if wellbeing strategies reach their full potential, subsequent increased productivity could add £61bn to the English economy by 2025. To achieve this change and realise the benefits, there needs to be an organisational shift in culture, approach, time and effort.

Developing and embedding wellbeing throughout an organisation, encompassing both behaviours (adaptability, proactivity, and participation) and leadership can help people to feel motivated and empowered to do their job better. Reducing factors that negatively impact, such as stress and high job demands can have a positive impact upon performance.

How can we develop and embed wellbeing and potentially lead to improved performance in Major Projects?

By Manon Bradley
January 25th 2021

Emotional Intelligence in Major Projects

Through a series of events in September and October 2020, the Major Projects Association explored the hypothesis that emotional intelligence drives better business performance. This report captures some of that content and expands on the ideas delivered and discussed at the events, including feedback from a recent survey on emotional intelligence. It also provides a guide to resources and a useful reading list, to help major project professionals embrace emotional intelligence as a leadership tool.

Using case studies and first-hand experiences, the report demonstrates how emotional intelligence has been instrumental in meeting the challenge of driving better business performance, project delivery and better outcomes in major projects.

By Jonathan Norman
October 24th 2019

Innovation & Health and Safety Highlight Report

Health and safety is embracing new technology, and innovation is the main driver behind this dynamic and continuous cycle. Product discovery, development, review and commercialisation enable companies to reinvest in new products and processes. The resulting improvements in health and safety within the workplace benefit all. High end technology has aided a revolution on major projects with forward looking companies embracing new ideas such as the use of drones, augmented reality, automated robotics and artificial intelligence. These projects and their staff are bristling with tech. This event will bring together a panel of experts to explore how we can drive innovation in an ever-changing environment, investigate how some sectors do this well and discover ways to beat the benchmark.

By Jonathan Norman
October 24th 2019

Innovation & Health and Safety Full Report

Health and safety is embracing new technology, and innovation is the main driver behind this dynamic and continuous cycle. Product discovery, development, review and commercialisation enable companies to reinvest in new products and processes. The resulting improvements in health and safety within the workplace benefit all. High end technology has aided a revolution on major projects with forward looking companies embracing new ideas such as the use of drones, augmented reality, automated robotics and artificial intelligence. These projects and their staff are bristling with tech. This event will bring together a panel of experts to explore how we can drive innovation in an ever-changing environment, investigate how some sectors do this well and discover ways to beat the benchmark.

By Jonathan Norman
October 17th 2018

Wellbeing Full Report

Major projects are risky places to work. Engineering, construction and defence projects always include physical risks, which can be magnified by the location of the site. Our understanding of the psychological impact of stress on an employee motivation, performance and physical health is growing and, whilst transformation projects may not pose the same risk of physical injury, the pressurised environment, often tight timescales or resource constraints can generate dangerous levels of stress, particularly if sustained. Creating and managing a workable wellbeing policy is complex. It needs to recognise the nature of major projects and the need for employees to perform under pressure and in difficult physical environments such as high-stress air traffic control or military tours of duty. It also needs to take into account the baseline culture of many of our projects where people might be reluctant to seek support for mental health due to a perceived stigma.

This Major Projects Association seminar will hear how different high-stress organisations have used a variety of techniques to manage their projects in ways which minimize the negative impact upon their teams. The panel session will ask how we can make a concerted effort to change long established industry practice for the better. The panellists will offer personal insights into the challenges as well as some hard evidence from very recent research undertaken by the University of Southampton.

By Jonathan Norman
October 17th 2018

Wellbeing Highlight Report

Major projects are risky places to work. Engineering, construction and defence projects always include physical risks, which can be magnified by the location of the site. Our understanding of the psychological impact of stress on an employee motivation, performance and physical health is growing and, whilst transformation projects may not pose the same risk of physical injury, the pressurised environment, often tight timescales or resource constraints can generate dangerous levels of stress, particularly if sustained. Creating and managing a workable wellbeing policy is complex. It needs to recognise the nature of major projects and the need for employees to perform under pressure and in difficult physical environments such as high-stress air traffic control or military tours of duty. It also needs to take into account the baseline culture of many of our projects where people might be reluctant to seek support for mental health due to a perceived stigma.

This Major Projects Association seminar will hear how different high-stress organisations have used a variety of techniques to manage their projects in ways which minimize the negative impact upon their teams. The panel session will ask how we can make a concerted effort to change long established industry practice for the better. The panellists will offer personal insights into the challenges as well as some hard evidence from very recent research undertaken by the University of Southampton.

By Jonathan Norman
January 25th 2017

We learn more from our own failures than from the success of others Highlight Report

“Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?” Voltaire

We, at the Major Projects Association, may not be as wise as Voltaire but we do try very hard to learn from the experience of others and to enable our members to do likewise. In this evening discussion our four panellists will share their stories of learning – from life-threatening situations to crisis management scenarios; as participants in the learning experience and as experts in the field.

We hope that delegates will come armed with their own points of view and be willing to contribute to the richness of the debate. As always we will absorb the discussion from the event and produce our usual Highlights report which will form part of the Major Projects Knowledge Hub which we hope will soon become “the place to go” for Major Project lessons.

By Jonathan Norman
March 10th 2016

Health, Welfare and Safety – a legal obligation or a moral imperative for a major project? Highlight Report

The physical safety of all those working on major projects is a priority acknowledged by all. Zero tolerance towards risky behaviours has been adopted throughout our industries as the best way to ensure that our personnel remain safe. But it is easy to become complacent and to assume that we have “solved” Health & Safety. We need to ensure that focus and enthusiasm is maintained and that safety is high on the agenda of all leadership teams. We also need to ensure that mental health as well as physical health is prioritised – so that our delivery teams are as protected from the mental stresses of working in this environment; providing them with appropriate training, support and resources in much the same way that we provide them with PPE.

This half day seminar will examine the subject of Health, Safety and Welfare from multiple perspectives including: legal requirements, behavioural modification and learning across industries and countries. We will hear how the Royal Mail have delivered a huge modernisation journey which impacted upon 143,000 employees while maintaining the health and future of the universal postal service and the Director, People and Capability of the HSE will provide insights to their current priorities.

There will be a panel discussion that reflects on the moral imperative and the legal obligations and will cover stress avoidance and the importance of leadership commitment.