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Always Safe, Always Ready

Always Safe, Always Ready (ASAR) is an element of the company’s culture, emphasizing the importance of safety in all activities of the Ferrovial Group and its subsidiaries – including Budimex.

Its aim is to promote safe work, health protection, well-being and to highlight the role that employees play in creating a safe workplace.

In the Budimex Group, we always challenge ourselves and our partners to take care of safety (Always Safe) and to increase it. At the same time, we are aware that sometimes work does not go according to plan and therefore we must always be ready to respond to threats (Always Ready).

Always Safe, Always Ready is not just a slogan. These are all initiatives that improve working environment conditions, as well as the safety, health and well-being of employees. ASAR combines our four values – Ambition, Responsibility, Cooperation and Ethics.

The entire management of the Budimex Group is involved in promoting the Always Safe and Always Ready campaign in order to set a good example and emphasise the importance of safety in the daily running of business.

Health and safety is our top priority and a priority. There is no work so important or urgent that we cannot take the time to do it in a safe way.

Always safe, always ready

Safety Week

ASAR Leaders

Ferrovial Global Awards

Safety Week

It is a nationwide, annual initiative organized on construction sites, during which trainings, competitions and meetings with employees are held. All this to raise awareness, educate and spread a culture of safety among members of the Budimex team.

Safety Week 2024 in numbers is:

  • 210 committed contracts and offices from the Budimex group,
  • 532 activities for the protection of life and health,
  • Record number of participants. as many as 12337 people!, including 5245 employees from 1207 subcontractors,
  • OHS gamification, in which over 470 participants participated,
  • webinars on good sleep, mental health and pre-veterinary first aid, which gathered over 300 listeners at a time,
  • a total of 32 first aid trainings and 8 courses in the field of fire protection,
  • 81 people examined with a dermatoscope.

Always Safe, Always Ready Leaders

Here are examples of people for whom the slogan Always Safe and Alwayds Ready are not empty words, but everyday life.

Bartosz

District Director

Initiator of monthly meetings at the level of Contract Manager / Site Manager and Health and Safety Service.

Marcin

Site Engineer

He did not hesitate to provide first aid to another co-worker.

Marek

Works Manager

Together with the construction staff, he developed detailed rules for changing the lock in the middle lane. This solution turned out to be a phenomenon on a European scale.

Patryk

Works Manager

He thinks long-term. He easily finds solutions to the challenges posed by working on a construction site, taking care of the safety of his employees in the first place.

Grzegorz

Contract Manager

Organizing training for the company’s employees and PDW on the evacuation of crane workers and the purchase of equipment needed for this evacuation.

Robert

Warranty Contracts Group Manager

Together with the team of the North Region, he designed and implemented m.in. individual temporary traffic organization assuming the use of “chicanes” in order to slow it down before the works on one of the road investments are completed. This and several other proposed solutions have made it possible to ensure the safety of both employees and travelers.

Klaudia

Site Manager – winner of the HSW Awards 2021

Her goal is to strive for “Zero Accidents”. She organizes many activities through which she tries to reach the most “resistant”. She emphasizes that safety does not know shortcuts, and everyone should be reached in such a way that they understand that by following the rules, they will safely return home and their family.

Barbara

Works Manager

She organizes and takes part in the WORKCAMP campaign. It is a non-profit initiative involving construction students in the implementation of renovation and construction works. This year, as part of the project, the renovation of the Support Centre for Disabled Children and Youth at 4 Świtezianki Street in Olsztyn is being carried out.

Kinga

Head of Affairs Health and Safety of the Region

Winner of the Agreement for Safety in Construction competition under the slogan of the Safety Week. She is proactive, also in terms of promoting the principles of first aid on the construction site.

Ferrovial Global Awards

The Ferrovial Group’s Health, Safety and Wellbeing Awards are designed to identify and recognize the Leaders, Teams and Innovative solutions that have made our workplaces healthier and safer in a given year. We invite you to read an interview with one of the finalists of the HSW competition – Klaudia.

What turns you on in the work of an engineer? Why did you choose construction?

Klaudia: Passion for creation – this term is the perfect answer. The work of an engineer requires a lot of responsibility, creativity, patience, analytical skills and flexibility – this makes it both demanding and rewarding.

I have always been interested in the architecture of interiors and buildings, and most of all the germ of it all. You always have to start somewhere, hammering in the first shovel, and then day by day you can see the progress of work and the end result, just like on a piece of paper. Every day when entering the construction site you have to deal with various problems – diversity, changeability, difficulties, problems, solutions, quick decisions, successes, innovations, effects – that’s why I love what I do. You can’t talk about monotony here. This is what turns me on the most.

And coming back to the question “why construction?”. An ambitious, prestigious, promising direction, unprecedented for women, with the possibility of continuous development.

What is the biggest challenge in your daily work?

Klaudia: I believe that in addition to everyday duties, for which there is always no time anyway, it is concern for the safety of people working on the construction site. The goal of “ZERO ACCIDENTS” is a challenge we strive for as an organization, but it is also my personal priority.

Developing a culture of safety among employees – what is crucial from the point of view of a site manager?

Klaudia: Initially, the correct planning of the construction process, from the technology of execution of individual stages of construction, working methods to the selection of appropriate protective equipment. Due to the wide variety of work carried out simultaneously on the construction site, it is important to coordinate the individual tasks well. The aim of this coordination is to ensure that workers on the construction site who perform various jobs at the same time have safe workplaces and do not put each other at risk.

When it comes to the employees themselves, the key is the ability to reach each of them – to find the golden mean. Sometimes we laugh in the band that in some cases it is a “fight against windmills”. Although we often do the impossible on the spot, we sometimes have to wait a while for miracles. 😊

There are employees who immediately assimilate our safety standards, the rules of safe work immediately become part of their blood, but there are also those to whom I often tell that traffic regulations also exist and do we discuss with a policeman that a given sign should not be placed in this place? Safety knows no shortcuts. A way must be found for every employee or company. It is not about punishing with fines, from my point of view it is the last resort, but you have to be able to reach people in such a way that they understand that we are doing it for them, for their health and life. So that he can safely return home to his family.

A number of trainings for employees with a discussion panel, for owners of subcontractors organized by the supervision of our construction site, as well as in cooperation with the National Labor Inspectorate from Olsztyn, joining safety campaigns organized by our company, taking part in health and safety competitions, during the safety week, reminding of health and safety rules by playing with prizes for employees, daily briefings with each company, Daily sobriety checks, daily contact with each employee, these are things that we treat as normal, but listening to the feedback from the owners of subcontractors and their employees, it is a lot, because each of them feels important, “taken care of”, and not allowed to enter the construction site and left alone.

I believe that it is very important to plan the work properly, as well as to approach the employee, the company, and each individually. It is us as the Site Management who are responsible for the people. The staff on the construction site will not do anything on their own, we must have a team, employees who will do the physical work, so it is up to us to guide them safely, show them the right way.

Is there anything you would like to pay special attention to in terms of safety – do you observe something that is particularly common and dangerous on a daily basis? Or maybe you are just seeing good practices that should be used more widely?

Klaudia: First of all, my desire is for every employee to treat PPE like ordinary shoes or clothes that they wear every day. Awareness of the need to comply with safety rules is the most important and this is what we, as senior management, should pay attention to. A big problem among employees is personal protective equipment, especially when working at height, as well as free-standing scaffolding, which employees often modify to make it more comfortable and faster. On the contract, the companies on our initiative purchased the so-called pharaohs, which were perfect for installation works.

In fact, every activity performed on the construction site can pose a threat, but with the full awareness of each employee and us, we are able to prevent them. I have a few ideas related to health and safety. I started one of them 2 years ago at my construction site and it really brought and continues to bring the expected effect. I would like them to be implemented in the operating system as innovative solutions of our organization.

What does the distinction in the HSW competition mean to you?

Klaudia: I did not expect this distinction. I didn’t know that my Contract Manager, Grzegorz Chudzik, had entered me for the competition. I found out only when I read the message that I was in the top three nominees for the “Individual Leader” category out of 136 people from around the world, from the Ferrovial group. I am happy and thank Grzegorz very much for appreciating the contribution of my work.

What does this mean for me? This is not only my small success, it is also a victory for my team, which is involved in my ideas every time, as well as the entire organization. It is Budimex that instills in us that safety and health are the most important, it is a matter of ethics and social responsibility. As staff, while pursuing business goals, we must take all necessary actions to avoid accidents and reduce the risk to the health and life of employees.

Klaudia

Site Manager – winner of the HSW Awards 2021

Maja

Finalist of the HSW Awards 2022