Olympics Countdown: Safety onsite

In the run up to the 2012 Games the site of the Olympic Park has been a frenetic hive of activity right across this 500-acre area in east London.

Long before world-class athletes get to dazzle, the effort required to transform Europe's largest building site into a world-class theatre of sport is an impressive feat in its own right.

Hundreds of firms and thousands of workers have been working tirelessly with one aim: to ensure the 2012 Olympics goes off without a hitch.

HSB Engineering Insurance has been supporting contractors onsite with health and safety compliance through engineering inspections.

Logistical headaches are par for the course in a place like this, so careful coordination of engineer surveyors with clients and various agencies has been vital to ensure everything is done according to plan.

Clearly, managing and containing traditional construction-related risks is a large consideration onsite.

However this is no ordinary building site but a high-profile symbol of national pride, which is why the security, quite understandably, is extremely tight.

It is not unusual for it to take 45 minutes to get through the exhaustive range of checks, which includes among others vehicle testing, drugs checks and the intervention of specially trained dogs just to make sure you are fit to proceed.

Once onsite, the biggest challenge has proved to be site transport. Owing to the nature of our business, travelling from site to site carrying out inspections on cranes and engineering equipment was proving difficult, especially as machinery is often moved around and therefore not always easy to locate.

Some contractors HSB work with kept an up to date machine register to help keep track of important equipment.

One of our larger clients even fitted their machinery with tracking devices in order to minimise the time taken to locate key pieces of equipment in such a large area. This was a definite advantage that helped us to work more speedily and effectively.

As the opening ceremony approaches we have to think and act at Olympic speed ourselves to adapt and implement new methods of working to meet fast approaching deadlines.

It has been an honour to be part of a project of such magnitude and national importance as the Olympic site.

It has also been rewarding that we have been able to support the construction-phase contractors in their health and safety objectives.

Peter Milton, managing director engineering division, HSB Engineering.