Bondeck has secured additional safety accreditations for 2012/2013 and now holds CHAS, NHBC Safemark and SMAS Worksafe certificates. All three organisations are part of the SSiP (Safety Schemes in Procurement) umbrella group.

Peter Bond, Bondeck’s operations director reiterated Bondeck’s absolute commitment to health and safety and welcomed the additional accreditation “our commitment to providing the safest working platforms installed by fully qualified and certificated staff means our customers enjoy collective, passive fall prevention via our safety decking platforms that is unrivalled in the UK”

Both our systems are available on a hire only basis. Basic training is provided for your installers (though we recommend an extended training period). Lead times for hire vary are usually 2-3 days lead time. Unlike supply and fit which is limited geographically, hire requirements can be supplied throughout mainland  UK. Please contact us for a quotation based on your particular requirements.

Bondeck has supplied a LoDeck installation to London Underground to facilitate refurb work on their maintenance pits for carriage inspection. This unique requirement enabled LU crews to work at a safe height for ease of access as well as providing a fall prevention platform.

The system was quickly installed and allowed for panels to be removed and quickly replaced to allow access for surveyors to undertake alignment work at various points. The LU engineers and all associated with the refurbishment were very impressed with the product.

LoDeck provides a very simple, lightening fast platform installation which suits a range of applications including ME, HVAC, plastering and any fix requirement at ceiling level or as in this case to bring a pit floor up to substantive floor level.

CHAS and NHBC renewals

Bondeck has once again secured accreditation to both the CHAS and NHBC safety schemes.

Rick Bond Bondeck’s MD commented “Clients are becoming ever more safety focussed and both Bondeck & Bond Brick are ahead of the game having operated best practice with regards to safety for some time now. The safety of our employees is at the forefront of everything we do”.

Bondeck’s Operations Manager Peter Bond agrees “We welcome the scrutiny that accreditation brings. It provides an excellent opportunity to improve areas of potential weakness by using the CHAS & NHBC’s auditors advice and guidance. Every year we learn something new and this, in addition to our existing commitment to best practice, brings significant safety benefits to the business.”

Both Bondeck and Bond Brick are now compliant to both CHAS & NHBC until March 201.

Following our successful accreditation to the CHAS safety scheme in 2009, Bondeck has won accreditation to the prestigious NHBC Safemark scheme.

The NHBC Health and Safety Competence Assessment Scheme for Contractors is recognised by the umbrella organisation Safety Schemes in Procurement.

This award further demonstrates Bondeck’s absolute committment to Health and Safety best practice.

Bondeck’s Commercial Manager - Peter Bond, commented on the award “Health & Safety accreditation is becoming an essential part of securing a place on the tender lists of the major commercial developers. Housebuilders Morris Homes and Bellway Homes now require Safemark and no doubt many other blue chip housebuilders will follow their lead”.

Bondeck remains committed to best practice in everything we do. We take safety seriously and these awards satisfy the onus on developers under CDM regs to demonstrate due diligence in sub-contractor selection.

Peter Bond added ”We continue to develop our safety systems and procedures as well as focussing on the professional development of our management and staff at all levels”.

The 5 timber frame buildings with an area totalling 550m2 were successfully decked out in under 2 days with our teams working in a rolling programme to keep ahead of the trusses being fitted. This enabled work to proceed without a single delay to the delight of the site manager and the joiners.

The joinery foreman commented how much more quickly and safely the project progressed than usual. “This is the first time I have worked on a safety deck. It saved us a lot of time and obviously is much safer than bean bags which don’t stop you from falling and can’t be worked off. I also appreciated your guys working through the rain to keep things going. Superb job”.

Bondeck will price for any trad, timber, steel frame or other type of build.

The client estimated the use of decking provided a fourteen day saving in the build programme (the alternative had been birdcage scaffold).

The system was fully braced and tensioned to ensure a stable lightweight working platform. Both the client and the carpentry sub-contractor, neither of whom had used the system before, declared themselves delighted with the result commenting that they “liked the simple solution the system brought to the project”.

Rick Bond, Managing Director of both companies, is delighted with the success; “these prestigious awards further demonstrate our ongoing committment to health and safety by ensuring that our personnel, systems and management reflect best practice”.

 We witnessed this mess at a site near our offices. The decking platform has clearly been erected by operatives who have no idea how to install the system they were using.

The platform collapsed shortly after it was installed. Apart from the dangerous gaps left between rows of decking, the overlapped boards have been incorrectly installed (see rear right hand corner of plot) and the overlapped area in the foreground has collapsed completely.

This unfortunate circumstance may be the result of a lack of training or the drive toward cost & resource cutting (or both).

 At Bondeck we work hard to price competitively but we always price to do the job properly. All our installers are trained and certificated and undergo continuous professional development. As a CHAS accredited company, our systems and procedures are audited to ensure we acheive the highest standards of health and safety.

As these images show, not all safety decking companies work to the same high standards.

This is in line with the HSE’s “hierarchy of safety” where working platforms sit at the top in terms of providing fall-prevention as opposed to the fall-arrest/mitigation provided by bean-bags.

Several of our clients have now insisted on replacing air-bags for the installation of concrete planking and now use safety-decking for this task and, at the same time, providing brick-layers with a platform for preventing falls into the building.