Lucy Gardner

Said the following about Stuart Haden:

“I nominate Stuart Haden, the Arup Head of Rail Safety, for his work on integrating the concepts of health and wellbeing into our projects and the Arup organisational structure. Stuart devised a detailed strategy, originally for our HS2 projects, which introduced tangible mechanisms for identifying health and wellbeing hazards and mitigating them. This approach has encompassed health and wellbeing mitigation during the design stage (including construction, maintenance, operations and demolition / decommissioning) and the health and wellbeing impact on Arup staff during project delivery. In devising the strategy at the bid stage, Stuart had the conviction to follow through his commitments by realising a step change in Arup leadership, to ensure that the correct resource and expertise was provided on our projects. In building a skilled team around him for the delivery of these aspects, which includes clinical expertise on the main causes of occupational ill health, the strategy has been a considerable success and has changed the perception and behaviours of Arup staff and our supply chain. I have seen huge benefits in this approach and the positive impact on the design interventions and the wellbeing of employees has been significant. The teams led by Stuart have devised a wide range of creative means for empowering designers to think about health and wellbeing in new ways, and to link their design options with the health and wellbeing consequences. This has included:

• Interactive hazard identification workshops, which includes expertise on the main causes of ill health, using a variety of engaging methods such as personas, role play, imaginative scenarios and structured health and wellbeing guide words and prompts;

• Strategies for devising health and wellbeing Red, Amber, Green lists and identification of practices, materials, substances, construction techniques and community facilities that eliminate health and wellbeing hazards;

• Creative social-economic input to appraise the community impact and identify health and wellbeing hazards, including those relating to social mobility, employment, lifestyle choices, community mental health, isolation / segregation of communities;

• Strategies for integrating key stakeholders and external decision makers into the process, to arrive at holistic interventions that provide the greatest impact;

• Clear link and input of health and wellbeing hazards into recognised design tools such as integrated CDM / CSM Risk Registers, and support from clinical expertise to assist designers in devising control strategies;

• Development of health and wellbeing cost benefit analysis tools to appraise the potential benefits of mitigations in a balanced way;

• Wide ranging training and development opportunities for designers, developed by the Arup health and wellbeing experts, to introduce the key concepts of health and wellbeing in design.

Furthermore this general approach has been extended to the structure of Arup projects and has been used to appraise project delivery. Using the same methodology, health and wellbeing hazards that affect Arup staff and our supply chain, have been identified and mitigated. Workshops have been held, utilising health and wellbeing expertise, to review the resource profile, role descriptions, programme, project team dynamics, task design, activity risk assessments and overarching expectations to identify all possible threats and opportunities. Resultant health and wellbeing hazards are again captured and managed in recognisable project tools such as the project risk register and task specific risk assessments. Stuart has led the project teams to devise extremely effective interventions that have massively improved the perception and profile of health and wellbeing within the firm. This has included the following exemplary techniques:

• Senior leadership commitment workshops, including the client and key stakeholders, to explore what health and wellbeing means for the project collectively, identify positive and negative influences through our behaviours and actions and to agree on our commitments and values;

• Regular embedded project team engagement including tailored surveys based on our analysis of key project health and wellbeing hazards, focus groups devising interventions for key issues such as presentism and work-life balance and one to one interviews;

• Use of detailed analysis to identify trends relating to health and wellbeing perceptions and behaviours, to inform interventions;

• Development of project resources such as bespoke interventions pertaining to key issues such as lifestyle, working hours, diet, mental health and employee recognition, employee / leadership wellbeing toolkits detailing how they can provide an environment in which health and wellbeing can flourish and development of wellbeing champions to promote best practice.

To summarise, I have been inspired by the foresight, commitment and practical effectiveness of the strategy led by Stuart. The teams he directs have realised a real step change in how the firm views health and wellbeing, which in turn, has vastly improved the legacy of our designs and the environment in which our projects are delivered. In changing our collective perception of the topic, and supplementing this with practical design and project management tools, Stuart has engendered a feeling of empathy within the firm. An evolutionary shift toward exemplary health and wellbeing leadership is the ultimate result, which Stuart should feel proud of.“